A local storyteller here in Vermont used to say, “Stories teach us to be human.” This piece from the New York Times backs up that statement using findings from psychology and neuroscience. “Amid the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of…
Tag: why bother
A couple of quotes from the news recently: “I just had this profound love for storytelling. I think it’s just an amazing thing we get to do. We’re so complex; we’re mysteries to ourselves; we’re difficult to each other. And then here’s this storytelling that…
“Einstein’s thinking somehow presaged this thing about the structure of the brain. He said, ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.’ We have created a society that honors the servant, but has forgotten the gift.” -Iain McGilchrist
“This is your church,” the director said, gesturing to the stage. I was working as a stage manager at the now-defunct Bar Harbor Theater in Maine. We were on break, and the subject of religion had come up. My friend and coworker had asked whether…
…to any who have found their way here from Mrs. B’s! Welcome to Storytraining, a blog full of techniques, news, and inspirations for all disciplines of storytellers: actors, bloggers, class clowns, conversationalists …and the list goes on. Please take a look around: I’d love to…
“[The very existence of stories] overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the…
Why is the Talk to Strangers Campaign – an organization based around film, theatre, print, and other forms of storytelling – monikered the Talk to Strangers Campaign? There are a few reasons, but here’s one: In the C.S. Lewis biopic Shadowlands, one of the characters…
Such stories are not just entertainment. In order to live, we need air, water, food, clothes, shelter, friends – and we need stories, because they teach us what is important in life. They give us models of how to live in a complicated, confusing world.…
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. -Maya Angelou
The Gift starts with an anthropological overview of giftgiving, and proceeds to argue that works of art – which are treated as commodities in modern western culture – ought to be seen, first and foremost, as gifts. This book is a call to suspend concern…