Blog for June 25, 2009
Carolyn Stearns Storyteller
Storytelling Is Like Play-Doh
I have made my weekly trip to the library and carted home another bag of storybooks. Always in search of new material or different views of presenting old classics I pour through the children’s section savoring memories and new treasures. Twice a year our library holds a benefit book sale and towns people donate books from their collections and a garage fills. Come the appointed weekends it takes traffic control police to orchestrate the buyers in to some semblance of order as they arrive in mass at the sale. Here I procure more gems for my collection. This spring at the sale I filled my box with so many treasures and at fifty cents a paperback and $1.00 a hardcover my budget is happy. Over time I draw out the purchases and look through each one. I had a small paperback in the bottom of the box that was left for awhile as a scanned more hefty volumes. At last I cracked the cover and released the stampede from within. This was the treasure of the lot. It is a very simple story from the Savannah of Africa with three characters. Rabbit the instigator, Elephant and Hippo who fall for the trick and end up in a day long Tug of War. It is wonderful in the Beverly Naidoo rendition and I read and reread it quickly. On line I found the many other variants of the story to read. Soon the character of rabbit became a voice in my head and the sounds and the images of the characters began to develop. I began to make the story my own. I told it twice to try it out, once to children and once to adults, both age brackets loved the story, each taking something away from it that suited them. I had a feel for its flow and began to think of new ways of tweaking it.
The last few minutes of the day as I lay in my dark room ever so close to sleep I was thinking still of rabbit. My day list had run and my mind was left with only rabbit to think on and in the absolute stillness of night the real rabbit began to emerge. His thumper foot pounding out a beat, the wiggle of long fine whiskers, the body language, this was the mischief maker of my story. Yes, there was the story rabbit in his well defined self. Now that I could see him in my minds eye more clearly telling his story would be so much easier.
That is when the thought crossed my mind. Storytelling is like Play-Doh! A new can of Play-Doh is a wonderful delight. Snapping off the lid, it is the aroma that hits first. I think in a blindfold test anyone born after 1950 could identify that smell. Then color and texture as the wad of doh plops onto the table in its original can shape. That is how I found the story in the book in its original shape. Soon temptation overwhelms and we dive into the doh squeezing, forming, ripping of bits, smoothing places and a entirely new shape comes from it. My story is the same. Taken in the raw form from the book and other versions it was there, bright, engaging and delightful to look at and read. With my mind and voice and body I have shaped, molded and characterized the story. I tore off bits, I added others. I rolled and smoothed shaped and personalized the tale. In some parts it was as if I, (sorry to those purists of Play-Doh) I mixed the colors! Well my creation is finished and it resembles in some way the book “Great Tug of War” by Beverly Naidoo (publisher: Francis Lincoln Children’s Books,2006,London) but in many other ways it is a different story. It is alive, breathing, colorful, a living creation of several renditions. Of course in performance I always have the option to squish it like doh into something else. ©
