Tag Archives: listening

Read this and I’ll buy you some chocolate…

Recently a mother brought her child to one of my storytelling sessions.  When her boy got up and volunteered she jeered at him.  When he was embarrassed and didn’t want to do it anymore she said “I’ll buy you some sweets if you do it”.  I stopped her saying that volunteering should always be the individual’s choice but what she had done (other than mortifying him and putting everybody else off helping me) was to say to her child and the rest of the audience “sweets are better than this”.  Thanks.

This particular lady thought she was doing the right thing; she had attended the library to listen to a story – big tick.  Unfortunately though, it doesn’t follow that a love of books, reading and stories will rub off by simply turning up in a library.  When I deliver stories it’s very common for children to look around at how other people are receiving the story and judge their own response accordingly; are Mum and Dad watching? are Mum and Dad enjoying this?  You can’t hand a book to a child and say “read this and I’ll buy you some chocolate” because a carrot and stick approach is simply not appropriate when trying to nurture a child’s interest.  Libraries are undoubtedly the right place to encourage a love of reading and books but more often than not a child’s library experiences need to be positively reinforced by an adult.

It’s the same in schools.  We live in an age when many children see reading, writing and arithmetic as purely for tests and exams so, thankfully for me, schools are always looking for ways of inspiring their children.  A good author visit or storytelling day should have quite obvious and immediate short term benefits but authors and storytellers may not have the long term solutions a school is searching for.  The long term legacy of such experiences depend upon them being properly valued at the time and adequately followed up by teachers in the classroom.

I am keen for schools and the public to get the most out of what I do.  I try to encourage discussion of my visits and I try to build opportunities for further writing exercises into my session structures.  In public sessions I try to work with libraries to ensure stories are available to be borrowed and also encourage adults to engage with me on social media so that they are aware of my events in the future.  More often than not my work is about enjoyment and entertainment but by trying to inspire the adult as well as the child I hope that for some children a story becomes more than 30 minutes of fun.  A well-executed storytelling can become a doorway to a whole world of stories or a topic or who knows, a career.

We all have bad habits we can easily shake off.  It can be as simple as singing the songs at toddler rhyme time rather than using the time to check text messages or being seen to borrow and read books or just putting the book marking off and engaging with the class’s storytelling visit.  If we don’t do these things what messages are being shared?  Your learning is somebody else’s problem.  Reading is something you have to do.  I’m too busy for stories.  If we want to encourage and inspire our children we all have to raise our game.

Subtext: Stories in Silence

John Kirk is a storyteller and drama facilitator specialising in drama workshops and theatre for young people.Subtext is a term which is often associated with the work of Constantin Stanislavski.  Stanislavski was a director and drama theorist who developed a system of acting in Russia in the early part of the 20th Century.  Stanislavski’s work was a reaction to the shallow, melodramatic performances of his time.  He believed in a naturalistic style of performance, challenging performers to bring truth to the stage.

Stanislavski advocated techniques, including the “Magic If”, in which performers attempt to recreate their character’s truth by asking how they themselves might respond in similar circumstances to the scene (“What if I were in this position?”).

John Kirk is a storyteller and drama facilitator specialising in drama workshops and theatre for young people.Subtext refers to the unspoken thoughts of a character during a story and can help a performer to sustain their role.

I recently saw “Slava’s Snow Show” (Royal Festival Hall/International), a renowned clowning piece set to music with almost no vocal communication.  The absence of words did not make the piece less engaging because the clowns were telling their stories with their facial expressions and their bodies.  Every move and gesture was carefully played so that the audience could see the character’s unspoken intentions.  Okay, perhaps a clown isn’t the greatest example of naturalistic performance (they are prone to exaggerating and demonstrating their unspoken thoughts) but for 90 minutes they communicated their character’s truth quite beautifully and almost entirely non-verbally.

In Primary Schools I might introduce subtext through a thought tracking exercise in which I ask the participants what their character is thinking within a prescribed frozen picture or I might ask them to think of a line that their character might say to themselves in the bathroom mirror each morning and then challenge them to repeat the line to themselves as they walk about the room.  At the end of the exercise I am interested in how these techniques change the way the participant thinks about their character and the way they inhabit their role.

In Secondary Schools and with older groups a way of exploring subtext is for the performers to act out a scene.  At a given signal the performers must act out their subtext.  In acting out the subtext the performer should feel free to express themselves physically, vocally or verbally, exaggerating and demonstrating their character’s feelings (like Slava’s clowns!).  As the signal is repeated the performers return to their scene with a heightened awareness of their subtext.

I recently lead a play study in which we considered “An Inspector Calls” by JB Priestley.  The story is set against the back drop of a family gathering and is concerned with issues of class, sex and social responsibility.  Throughout the story characters listen to lengthy monologues relating to an incident that has happened.  The performer must respond to the information contained within each monologue as their character might if they were hearing the news for the first time.  Then, as each character is lead to reveal their own secrets do their unspoken thoughts belie their words?

During the play we must believe that Gerald and Eric are uncomfortable long before they are asked to give their accounts.  Equally, Mr Birling’s indignation and Sheila’s shame should be apparent even when they aren’t talking.

John Kirk specialises in drama workshops and theatre for young people.In building a subtext for the character, the performer becomes a more active listener and responds more truthfully to the circumstances of the story.  In our study we physicalized our character’s sin.  Taking the seven deadly sins (Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Lust and Envy) I challenged the group to demonstrate their character’s main vice and then to sustain that vice as the inner life of their character during the scene.  Rather than thinking about the lines or what they might be having for dinner, even the simplest of subtexts will help the performer to remain animated when at rest and to respond more appropriately to the story.

In its simplest application subtext can be very liberating.  The performer has free rein to imagine and consolidate a world for their character with a web of unspoken thoughts and opinions.  For some subtext can help their ability to concentrate whilst for others, sustaining a subtext helps them bring truth to the mechanics of a story (why do I move at that moment?).

The skill of the storyteller is in repetition and in my opinion this can only really be achieved through rehearsal and fully understanding the story and a character’s objectives.  It is important to treat subtext as a tool in a larger kit to avoid unspecific and generalised performance.