Sunday, January 27, 2008
Aspects of Stories
We talked in class about the possibility of common traits of story telling. One that seemed to show itself in the documentary and in my observations of other people telling stories is that each one seems to have a point. I know it seems a little obvious, but it seems to be beautiful in its simplicity. Each story at some point, usually the end carries some sort of moral, or punch line that the rest of the story was leading up to. Granted that all the stories that we have encountered so far have a western origin and it seems that, like western music, western storytelling is more concerned with becoming rather than being. Another common denominator seems to be that the stories we have heard have a direct emotional connection with the audience. That is to say that a story must appeal to the audiences emotion on some level, thus establishing a connection between the story teller and the audience. Thirdly, the stories appear to be didactic in some way or another, each one speaks to some quality or moral that people can relate to. Even the story of the bees emphasize cleverness, the "what killed the dog story" displays some value as to attachment to material things. These are the only common denominators I can see for now. Any thoughts?
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6 comments:
Great Chip! I like the consideration of becoming vs. being. Re: the emotional connection, Kiern Egan (Teaching As Storytelling) calls it the "affective hook," meaning the initial connection with emotion that opens the listener to the story. Ruth Sawyer (The Way of The Storyteller) reminds us that "what the heart feels today, the mind understands tomorrow."
You mention that the story must have some sort of emotional attachment for the audience, and I definitely agree. But I think the storyteller also cultivates a connection with his or her audience in an effective performance. How that connection is established varies greatly; perhaps the audience knows the speaker (a friend or relation, perhaps), or the storyteller endows the audience with certain characters (I remember this from my summer camp days), or the storyteller makes eye contact with the audience members. We talked in class about finding allies in the audience and playing to those people, and that's yet another example.
Arguably, this idea could apply to anything that includes a speaker and a listener: a theatrical performance, a music concert, a lecture, or even a simple conversation.
You already mentioned this, but I noticed the lesson like aspect of the stories being told. This seems like something that has always been a big theme in stories. This carries through even to novels and tv shows today. Many books, especially YA fiction have lessons. One thing I'm curious about though is whether the lessons themselves have changed over time?
In re: didacticism, the Baron Melchior Von Grimm (no relation to the bros. Grimm) an 18th century critic of the enlightenment, wrote: "The function of art is not to edify, but to render us capable of feeling." Interesting in light of the 2 ideas: awakening feeling in order to edify.
I think communication and interactivity are two integral components of storytelling. I know that the idea of an emotional connection with the audience has already been explored, but communication is ultimately a two-way street. The storyteller must be able to present the material in such a way that the audience can comprehend it. The moral or punchline of the story must also be digestable (I think I'm inventing words here) for the audience.
As a performer, the storyteller feeds at least somewhat off of the audience's response and engagement in the story. There can be a story without an audience or with an unresponsive audience, but the story is greatly enhanced with an active audience. Just as some plays simply cannot be successful without a successful audience, storytellers cannot succeed without storylisteners.
Yes. The storytelling performance is the final phase needed in order for a story to come into being. As some tellers say: the story is never ready until it is told. Likewise, we know that in acting, we reach a point in rehearsal at which we need an audience in order to go further. The communicative event in storytelling has a high degree of reciprocity, making storytelling, in some ways, a much more conversational art form than our common notion of acting.
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