Talk at the Wales Millenium Centre

What is the background to traditional storytelling? How do you adapt to different audiences? How do you interpret a story? How do you capture an audience? What are the challenges to bilingual storytelling?
These were the questions put to storytellers Michael Harvey and Guto Dafis at a talk in the Wales Millennium Centre on Monday, which I attended.
The room was set up in a typical lecture style but that was soon changed by the storytelling folk to a semi-circle. The way the listeners and storytellers arrange themselves for a story was discussed and alternatives to the usual cinema style seating arrangements where explored. I had a picture of a pub in Edinburgh called 'The Brass Monkey' that had a room decked with big, sumptuous cushions, you had to scramble in but once you were in and found a place it was comfy. I could imaging it would have been an ideal place for storytelling.
Guto and Michael gave some background information about they came to be storytellers. Always interesting to hear I find.
Guto being a musician talked about setting the atmosphere with music was something he found useful to capture the audience. The eye contact and the connection with the audence/listeners was highlighted by Michael as being an important aspect of storytelling, in contrast to theatre where the audience is usually not seen by the actors.
The challenges of bilingual storytelling is something Michael and Guto have worked with for a long time, the two languages being Welsh and English. It seems to be a process that is difficult to explain to non bilingual people. Quite a creative process, working with the listeners and there responses to the two languages. The talk was scheduled for only an hour, which is not very long. No time to discuss story interpretation.
It was useful for me to go and it gave me plenty of food for thought as I sat on the train back home.
A big thank you to David Ambrose for chairing the talk and also to Michael Harvey and Guto Dafis.

Halloween

The weather was warm for October, and wind still. That meant that I could tell the story at the Dean Heritage Museum out side and take the listeners for a little promenade too. A big bonus was that two of my spinning friend turned up, so all three of us sat there spinning for a while before the story started. (Look further down the blog for photos)
I still find it a difficult jump to go from spinning to telling, and to continue spinning whilst telling. I wonder if I gesticulate more than necessary? Maybe practicing spinning whilst telling will help me rely less on gesticulation and focus more on the words I choose. That's just a wandering thought.
I enjoyed the setting. Starting the story in one place, then going for a little walk, past the mill, the cider press, the cottage garden and the Foresters cottage, and bringing the story to its conclusion in a different place worked well.