For a storyteller presence is a very important asset There is a good reason why it comes up in so many workshops with so many different exercises to achieve it. So, is presence something that can be learned? Or trained? To be honest – I really don’t know. But I am pretty sure that Colin...
Well, I have to admit - quite profanely - they actually live in my brain. If my brain has the idea that this or that story is no longer needed, it gets deleted and has to leave my brain! Even worse for me: I still have a good idea of the plots of most stories,...
A long time before I even had the idea for this trip the name of Liz Weir kept crossing my path. I don’t have any reliable data on this, but I dare say that Liz Weir is internationally among the best interconnected storytellers. One reason for that, surely, is that she is unbelievably hospitable! When...
And what if you have to decide that within an instant? That could mean that you have just entered the realm of improvisation. To be honest, up until now I have never felt really comfortable within that realm. I didn’t set myself just very few rules on this journey. One of them says: I will...
Very! If you let Rab Fulton tell them. His regular pub is the Crane Bar You find Rab on the upper floor every Thursday night in front of a crowd that represents nearly every flavour of the humankind. And rarely do they come for only one Thursday night. It’s not just roaring laughter all the...
Her great-grandmother told stories to her grandmother. Her grandmother told stories to her mother. Her mother told stories to her. She is telling stories to the whole world When Maria told her mother that she will work as a storyteller her mother didn’t understand her at first: “But everybody in Ireland is a storyteller.” This...
Another festaival! Great!! When I’m thinking ‘festival’ ... I’m thinking hundreds of people, lot’s of shows all over the day, big tents, campers, cars – something that looks like people being out there. When I get to Finuge on a Saturday afternoon it looks rather like a ghost town from the movies. A small ghost...
John Francis Campbell (1821-1885) collected Gaelic Stories. Just about like the brothers Grimm did. But unlike the Grimms he wrote the stories down word for word as they were told to him. He began his work in 1859. And he didn’t pursue this just for the sheer joy of it ... but because even here...
In the middle of Edinburgh’s touristic hotspot there is the Scottish Storytelling Centre. That in itself is very remarkable to me, and it shows what an important part the telling of stories is playing here in Scottland. A few steps further on there is a pub – ‘The Waverly Bar’. Nothing fancy and not touristy...
Another storytelling program that deals with a modern challenge. To be honest until that evening I never really cared or thought much about cuckoos. Of course, I would search my pockets for money every time heard them. But apart from that? After one and a half hours in the yurt on ‘The Land’ I know...