We arrived Saturday at our cabin in Strawberry, AZ, for a 3 day weekend, to relax, and sample the freezing night time temperatures (if you have Sahara like images of Arizona, think again, we pegged in the low 20s F last night).
Anyhow, on picking up the local paper, I noticed that last night the Pine Community Center was featuring a storytelling event called Tellebration! and pictured there was Ricardo Provencio, one of our storytelling faculty at South Mountain Community College’s Storytelling institute and also listed was Liz Warren, the faculty colleague who developed the idea for our Hero’s Journey web site.
Tellebration is a worldwide event schedueld the weekend before American Thanksgiving, and the main site lists more that 160 places world wide where people gathered to hear local storytellers (though this community seemed to not have its event listed, this is a small town atmosphere in Pine ;-).
We arrived just as Liz was starting her southwestern story of pottery and the “earth talking”– and the hall was packed! There had to be 200+ people there. It was a wonderful evening of listening to 6 compelling storytellers do their craft- deeply engaging the audience with just their voice.
So reflecting on this, I am curious how many storytellers are making their audio available online, or even podcasting. Now I know many of them would feel this is not the same experience, as from what I hear from my colleagues, their craft builds from what they read in the audience… but it would not take much to extend their stories to people who cannot travel or see a teller in person.
There are smatterings of things you can find Googling on storytelling podcast, and things pop up in podcast directories such as PodcastShuffle and Podcast,net. But there’s a lot of weeding to do for what people label as “storytelling”– it seems that anyone can babble their life tales into a recorder and call it a story. Or almost anything non-fiction. But when you hear truly trained and talented folks like the 6 we heard last night, you can intuit there is a difference. Elizabeth Rose looks like one (I am not sampling these as I am on a pokey 24kbs dial-up).
I am sure there are lots of them elsewhere, but I am betting there are more than not.
Anyhow, it was a remarkable experience to be that drawn in and entertained just by one person, their voice, and a story. No technology required.
Hi, I’m Elizabeth Rose’s husband and noticed the link from your site to hers.
Your observation about most of the podcasts found by Googling storytelling is most accurate. They really aren’t in the same class as true storytelling such as one experiences at a Tellebration event. It sounds as if you had a great experience there in AZ.
One of the reasons Elizabeth and I decided that Podcasting was the way to go is that it is not streaming media and therefore works well with slow dialup connections. If you subscribe with iTunes it will pull the files down while you surf and do other things while connected. After the file has arrived on your computer it is there for you to listen anytime. You certinaly don’t need to feel limited by slow connections.
I hope you’ll listen to Elizabeth’s stories and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate ask, I’ll be happy to help.
OK, so I read only one post when I replied offering my help. I then checked out more of your site and retract my offer for help. If I need help, I’ll ask you! I see now that you were limited by the cabin’s connectivity and not connectivity in general.
I’m slow but consistent.
Thanks for the comments, David. Keep on podcasting those stories!
Slow and consistent won the race 😉