Taexalia

wild.life

Storytelling Workshop

Keyhole

Liminal Spaces

Saturday definitely goes down in my story as a pivotal day. I'm still reeling from the whole thing - it was awesome in so many ways and I was awesome in so many ways that I think I'm still floating Way Up There... Although the floaty stuff came after the workshop as I managed to remain as present as I needed to be throughout..

David Campbell is a genius! He crafted a workshop that gently initiated people into Storytelling and the Celtic traditions. For me it was a very validating experience because instead of feeling like a newbie, I felt that I was bringing my own body of knowledge with me and that I could hold my own amongst a group that ranged between other first-timers and professional storytellers. Afterwards I sat with David in the pub and when he discovered that this was my first workshop and a first attempt at storytelling in front of strangers he nearly fell off his chair - it's rather empowering to have a world famous master tell me how magical he found my input!

One cool thing, on a personal level, was that from the time I woke up I felt very cool about going. I didn't get the or suffer from any delaying tactics - the night before I laid out all my clothes and packed my little bag with everything I would need for the day, I set up my eBay listings and packed up all the evening's orders ready to just go in the postbox. I was prepared so that in the morning I didn't have to stress or rush and I walked from my home to the Canongate and arrived around 20 minutes early. There was another woman signing in for the workshop at the same time so conversation broke out before I was even in the room and I was soon introduced to other people - this is a community I think I will feel at home in :)

One thing that I REALLY liked was that David didn't do any of those usual workshop routines where you have to stand up and say "a bit about yourself" - he simply treated our circle as if we already knew each other and it really fostered an intimacy, I think. I commented on this to him afterwards in the pub and we talked about how the "introduce yourself" routine encourages people to put others into boxes - "that guy over there is an economist" - "Wow I would never have pegged him for that - for some reason I guessed he works with children". We also mused over the fact that we only had 6 hours, such a thing would eat into time and most folk either don't remember or remember too much from learning about people that way. He's a very wise man and an incredible people person.

The first thing that we did was to leave the workshop room and go outside to the High Street. He intended to take us out to a small garden behind the building but the gates were still locked, so we simply had to do our thing amongst the tourists and other folk milling about... Before we left the room he had given us a form to follow - "May the diddly diddly diddly.... Bring us diddly diddly diddly..." We had to find a sight, taste, smell, texture or sound - without thinking too much - and create a small blessing for the circle.

When I got outside, before we even discovered the gates to the garden were locked, all I could here was this crow bantering. I remember thinking "yes I hear you crow now let me be whilst I find this blessing." Crow kept cawking.

Of course!

"May the impudent crow bring us a raucous voice."

When we were back inside tossing our blessing into the circle for the work we were going to do that day I was struck by all the pretty things people were saying and then I stepped in and gave mine and David jumped in glee :) At this point I really knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be...

The last part of the day we got into groups in a very free-form way - going by who had fallen in love with what story... One group had five, one had two, another had three... We went off to do a few different things with the story and then everyone got together again to hear and tell stories. David commented that he loved the way I used my arms to tell my part - "you had your hands clasped behind your back throughout and then suddenly these great powerful arms appeared to tell of the birds and it was as if all the birds could have landed there - or that you were a bird yourself". I thought this was really funny because I stuck my hands behind my back to stop from fidgeting with nerves or crossing my arms in "self defence" - to the audience it looked like a planned part of the drama haha!

Recently I've been having prominent bird dreams and so when Crow blessed me it was a confirmation - but birds and especially crows kept popping up throughout the day and that in itself was a message for me. I'm still digesting the whole thing. I think I have found my calling.

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Posted on April 3, 2007 in Creativity, Storytelling.

One Response to “Storytelling Workshop”

  1. Jessie says:
    April 4, 2007 at 4:12 am

    dang, that sounds like one incredible day! and it was interesting to read about the workshop introductions (or rather, the lack of). having taught writing workshops, that is good advice to remember.

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