Free Storytelling can be Learned

The art of oral storytelling is ancient. The inexplicable, the legendary, the deeply experienced found its way via images into the audible, into the tangible, into sharing and being able to move. Stories are witnesses of human development: every era of our cultural development has its testimonies, its traditional language formations, its pearls of literature. Through storytelling, we can capture dimensions that we quickly lose in everyday life, that nourish us and take us beyond ourselves.

Storytelling means creating images, generating moods, building an arc of suspense, leading into crises, making unhappy solutions tangible and finally bringing everything to a solution, to a joyful or at least hopeful conclusion. It is through us that the spiritual happens, becomes the word, can be experienced by the senses, lifts us above ourselves. Only those who love their story can truly give it away, enter the arena of attention between the story, the listeners and themselves as the storyteller. At best, the story happens anew in the moment, storytelling becomes magic, we are lifted out of our everyday lives, layers are moved within us that reveal new dimensions to us and turn us into becomings.

The ability to tell stories is dormant in every human being. The need to share with others something that burdens us, that touches us, that stirs us up, that fascinates us, that shakes us, that makes us happy, that makes us suffer, is primal. Something that happens inside us seeks a way out, we express ourselves, we share what we have experienced, we communicate. We look for someone we trust and «pour out our heart», find a «sympathetic ear». «Shared sorrow is half sorrow and shared joy is double joy.»

As a child, we were probably almost all familiar with the situation where we didn't know what to do, either out of boredom or out of fear and despair. We feel like we are beside ourselves and are looking for a way out, a solution. Even as teenagers and adults, “not knowing what to do” is an issue: in heartbreak, when searching for what training or course of study to choose or in dramatic situations. Such situations lead to empty spaces which, if we are unable to turn them into creative space, cause us to resign, make us feel powerless and, if things get bad, we fall into states of anxiety, depression, addictive behavior or even serious actions. Stories can be used to transform emptiness and inner death into creative space.

Free Storytelling

Free storytelling balances the three essential elements of the story, the storyteller and the listener. An experienced storyteller once said: «Imagine you are balancing an equilateral triangle on the tip of your finger. Each corner of the triangle – one red, one blue, one yellow - has the same weight. The triangle remains in balance if all corners are equally heavy and you remain flexible. That is storytelling.»

Finding balance

Finding a balance therefore seems particularly important. It means not falling out of the story and maintaining contact between the storyteller and the listener.
After all, this is what free storytelling is all about. In order to find this balance, the storyteller must be awake to perceive the fragile moment. Free storytelling seeks this moment in which an artistic void is created and the audience and storyteller revive and create the story together.

The moment of storytelling

Free storytelling is always different from performance to performance. Audience members, storytellers and stories are rebalanced in the moment of storytelling. No audience is ever the same and the storytellers will also be in different moods depending on the performance. So no story is told exactly the same way twice.

The art of storytelling is to engage in this act of balance without falling out of the narrative. Each of us brings strengths to storytelling. Some immediately connect with the audience, others show their love for their stories and still others only feel comfortable when they are allowed to stand in front of an audience.

Everyone can tell a story

Storytelling is a wonderful experience. It happens when the storyteller loves their story and shares it with the listener. Because you can only tell what you have connected with. The storytellers live through the story and the stories live through the storytellers. Storytelling is an exciting contradiction, is everyday banality and art in one.

A storyteller and a story alone do not make a story. For storytelling to come to life, it needs listeners. Storytelling is not a monologue, not a recitation. It is a dialog that thrives on sympathy and participation. The «I» expresses itself in the «you». Anyone can stand up and start talking, but the art of storytelling is a journey. Fortunately, there are three aspects that help. Firstly, the education of the storyteller by deepening the stories. Secondly, the animation of the stories through the inner life of the storyteller and the audience, and finally the encounter with the audience through the story and their own revelation in the story.

The art of storytelling succeeds when these qualities are developed. You can learn to weigh them up and find a balance. You can only learn to tell stories by telling them.

Good storytellers

Good storytellers are mediators. With their stories, they invite listeners to share their enthusiasm for the fantastic, the uncanny and the fairytale-like. They want to enter into a dialog with the listeners and pass on their emotion, joy and amazement. The listeners encounter the story and the storyteller as a unique person – together they build the invisible, fictional world of the stories.

Storytellers do not need to speak in an artificial way. They have to be understandable, players (not actors) who play with story, language and characters without transforming themselves. They hint, sketch and give their story and the heroines meaning and passion. Their world becomes the world of the audience. Storytelling is always unmistakable, unique and individual.

When we practise storytelling with our workshop participants, we have a number of points that we look at together. The storyteller's movements, gait, gestures and facial expressions must match the story. The gestures should not be exaggerated, but should be in relation to the story. If the storytellers use verbal images, we ask whether they have experienced the images themselves or whether they can relate to them. We look together at how we can open up spaces in which stories can be found. In the memories of the storytellers, in other stories or from far away? We ask where the story can be experienced, in the mind or in the emotions.

Tradition and modernity

We love stories from the oral tradition that are now literature. They address superhuman, typical and defining aspects that are still valid. Fairy tales, legends and myths follow an inner law that still applies in terms of human and dramatic aspects. Even today, their timeless images leave room for individual experiences.