On Storymaking
One of the joys of telling stories to the same audience is that it becomes a collaborative project. After all, you can't have a storytelling with just a storyteller: you need story-listeners too. So I can begin, almost as a formula, with "Are you ready to help spin a yarn, and weave a tale?" and know that they are.
Today at our Family (Toy) Service I told a version of The Gift of the Magi by O.Henry, filtered via Margaret Silf's Wisdom Stories. When I first read it there I thought it was a bit thin, or sickly sentimental. But in this collaborative telling, with suitable pauses and audience response, it came alive. The adults could see the ending coming (but loved it anyway when it came) and the children - well, I find them harder to read, but they certainly listened and were with it all the way.
I still only begin to glimpse this magic, and feel just as far as ever from understanding it. Perhaps I never shall understand it. Perhaps it is good not to.
Today at our Family (Toy) Service I told a version of The Gift of the Magi by O.Henry, filtered via Margaret Silf's Wisdom Stories. When I first read it there I thought it was a bit thin, or sickly sentimental. But in this collaborative telling, with suitable pauses and audience response, it came alive. The adults could see the ending coming (but loved it anyway when it came) and the children - well, I find them harder to read, but they certainly listened and were with it all the way.
I still only begin to glimpse this magic, and feel just as far as ever from understanding it. Perhaps I never shall understand it. Perhaps it is good not to.
posted by Tony at 12/05/2004 03:48:00 pm
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