Non-verbal storytellers

John Kirk is a storyteller and drama facilitator specialising in drama workshops and theatre for young people.

As a storyteller it is not unusual to have people in the audience with a limited understanding of English.  When I presented Private Peaceful I devised a hand out to accompany the session so that learners could follow up the story afterwards.  A hand out is all well and good but what if your audience can’t read?  Well, most of my pieces incorporate a strong visual element so that even if the story is too much for the individual there is something for them to engage with.

I recently visited a school for children with learning difficulties.  I presented Dracula and The Unlucky Mummy to the students (I’d chosen the pieces realising that they are perhaps my most visual and silly) before running a short training session with staff from local schools.  We began the session by articulating what we saw as the challenges in our own working environments to imaginative writing.  It was in this forum that staff spoke about the challenge of working with individuals who for one reason or another, are non-verbal.  In the past I have used this blog to reiterate my belief that we are all storytellers and to discuss Stanislavski’s Subtext but in this piece I’d like to share some ideas about enthusing and empowering non verbal groups with storytelling.  Many of these ideas are inspired by people I have met and worked with over the years and from observing other brilliant professionals at work.  I hope that you will find them as useful as I do.

John Kirk is a storyteller and drama facilitator specialising in drama workshops and theatre for young people.

Encouraging Free Choice  If the objective of the session is to get your young people to be imaginative then you may have to empower them with the idea of a free choice first.  I can express my free choice orally when I tell stories but this isn’t possible for everybody.  One idea for encouraging non verbal free choice is through multiple choice activities in which questions and instructions stimulate the young person to narrative decisions.  Examples of possible instructions might be “pick up the object you think is found in the room”, “move to where you think we should set the story” or “point to the name of the character”.  This can be a slow process but through simple instructions and reinforcing the rules of your activity through repetition you will soon empower young people to tell their own stories.

Storyboarding  Another idea for encouraging free choice in storytelling might be for the young person to draw a cartoon strip story.  Using a simple template of boxes or arrows to indicate the direction of the narrative a story can be structured by the young person.  Such storyboards could then be annotated with assistance.

Using Sound and Movement  Perhaps you aren’t looking at the narrative but are exploring the atmosphere and tone of a story.  This could be done through sounds and working in a group as an “orchestra”.  Offering an idea as a starting point such as “the city” or “the seaside” encourage the group to respond through simple sounds or body percussion.  What does volume or pace say about mood?  This is as much a listening exercise as a sound making exercise and will require your group to work with sensitivity toward the contributions of other people.  Continuing on a musical theme you might encourage the group to express their story, mood or a character through movement or dance.

John Kirk is a storyteller and drama facilitator specialising in drama workshops and theatre for young people.

Using Props and Objects  It may be possible for the participants to use objects to tell their story using objects or props (placing items as the story is told and moving and animating them according to narrative).  Whilst this is a structured activity it would be encouraging an almost child like play.

As a drama workshop facilitator I have used these activities with varying degrees of success when working in Primary and SEN environments and when devising in Secondary and Sixth Form environments.  I think that these ideas appeal to young people because they are easy to access and own and they are fun.  These games encourage a group to risk being wrong without the consequence of failure.  In terms of the non verbal storyteller, used correctly they play to particular strengths rather than underlining weaknesses.

The success of these ideas inevitably depends upon the level of ability within a group and will require patience (your group may not get them the first time) and a variety of accessible stimulations (props and objects which appeal to the different senses, music or imagery).  In exploring and nurturing what an individual can do we hopefully create an environment in which they are able to tell more and more sophisticated and interesting stories.