By: Eric Wolf,
on 3/8/2015
Would you like to be a part of a storytelling conference call that supports you in your use of storytelling? If so, then enter your name and email address and you will receive personal invitations to participate in The Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Conference call – most Tuesdays at 8pm Eastern. Name: Email: Share [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 2/4/2013
Eric James Wolf When I say LOVE – what story, myth, fable or fairy tale first comes to mind? Beverly Nelson Comer Cinderella was the first story to come to my mind. Carolyn Stearns Cinderella, I even make conversational references like home before my coach became a pumpkin Brian Fox Ellis Baucus and Philomen, the Greek myth I most [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 8/31/2012
Hi All I just opened my email inbox and once again found on e of those infrequent treastes of the natural world from Doug Elliot. Now I know that if you are like me – you have subscribed to a lot of storytellers email lists. I get emails newsletters about traveling, performing, book writing, [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 6/12/2012
Storytelling: The Oldest Art Tales from around the world told by Cris Riedel Website: http://www.storiesconnect.com $15.00 includes shipping & handling. To order email: [email protected] Reviewed By Linda Goodman This delightful CD, recorded live at Debbie’s Café in Wayland, New York, features familiar multi-cultural tales given new [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 2/1/2012
I wrote an article like this back in 2009 – there has been a lot of water under the that bridge and I rarely write articles for this bog – but recently someone twitted about that old post and I thought – what they heck might as well update my readers. Keep in mind that [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 1/29/2012
Storyteller Mark Goldman has been steadily collecting very short video responses from storytellers you know and love allover the country.
By: Eric Wolf,
on 9/28/2011
Recently I asked the question on Facebook and elsewhere are you comfortable using the word theatre to sell storytelling events? I liked Mary’s reply and I invite you to think deeply about her application of these ideas. Brother Wolf Mary Grace Ketner writes… I would not use the word “theatre” itself, but I often use [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 9/17/2011
The Question that we must ask ourselves is if storytelling is so amazing why are more storytelling events not filled with sold out venues? In today’s internet based world - community, human connection and personal narrative are highly valued and desperately needed in the United States. Modern performers who can successfully and repeatedly bring these [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 9/15/2011
Deirdre of the Sorrows, by Diane Edgecomb with Margot Chamberlain, compact disc available from Diane Edgecomb, P.O. Box 16, Jamaica Plain, MA, 02130 (617) 522-4335. Email: [email protected]. $15.00, plus $1.50 S&H. Suggested age range: 12 years through adult Reviewed by Linda Goodman To see Diane Edgecomb perform Deirdre of the Sorrows, accompanied by Margot Chamberlain on the [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 8/13/2011
By Priscilla Howe. Available at www.priscillahowe.com. (click on Listen to My Stories and from that page click on the CDBaby link to buy this DVD) Email: [email protected]. $12.00. Suggested ages: 3 – 10 years Reviewed by Linda Goodman I first saw Priscilla Howe in April 1989 at the Connecticut Storytelling Festival. She was telling a story [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 7/21/2011
Written and performed by Diane Ferlatte, with Erik Pearson. Order by emailing [email protected] or visit www.dianeferlatte.com Reviewed by Linda Goodman Diane Ferlatte has a rich, silky voice that is full of soul and heart. I could listen to her recite multiplication tables for hours and never feel board. Imagine how pleasant it is to hear her telling [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 7/14/2011
photo by: Simon Brooks Yvonne Zinicola ( Rt.) with Lanes President Joanne Piazzi and President- Elect Tony Toledo Written by Carolyn Stearns This is part two of two of my interview of Yvonne Zinicola our Lanes Exec. Director. Now more than a year into her position we look at where we have come from [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 7/6/2011
Written for by Carolyn Stearns… Part 1- An Interview With Lanes Exec. Director Yvonne Zinicola as of 3-29-2011 I requested to interview Yvonne for the blog as a way of capturing her first year and reflecting on its impact with Lanes and storytelling in the Northeast. I sent [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 5/21/2011
by Stuart H. Nager I found out about World Storytelling Day (http://worldstorytellingday.webs.com/) on February 23, 2011, through a posting on Facebook. The global event, centered around the theme of Water, was to be on or around March 20th. I’ve been working hard as a Teaching Artist, doing my storytelling and other performance gigs here and [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 5/8/2011
The bankruptcy of the International Storytelling Center is a sad affair and a concern to all citizens of Jonesborough, who recognize the great cultural and economic contributions that the Center and its programming bring to the town. For storytellers and storytelling proponents around the country and the world, however, it is a tragedy in the [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 3/29/2011
Written by Richard Martin In 2004 I wrote an account for the UK storytelling magazine Facts & Fiction of how as an Englishman based in Germany I had become a teller of traditional folk tales to adult audiences. The article provided the occasion to look back on what had happened and what I had learnt. As [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 3/20/2011
Peter Guber, Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, has been a force in the entertainment industry for over thirty years. He has told memorable stories in the films he personally produced or executive produced, including Rain Man, Batman, The Color Purple, Gorillas In The Mist, and Flashdance which have resonated with audiences all over [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 3/10/2011
Available from Yvonne Healy, 5193 King Road, Howell, MI 48843, Phone: 810-813-3000. Email: [email protected] Order online from www.yhealy.com/products.html $14.00 (includes shipping & handling) Reviewed By Linda Goodman A citizen of two cultures, Irish and American, Yvonne Healy spoke both the Irish and English languages until she [...]
By: Eric Wolf,
on 2/19/2011
For me, storytelling is a wonderful thing, very precious to my soul because I really feel joy seeing that I can influence in good people souls and lives.
By: Eric Wolf,
on 2/2/2011
The International Storytelling Center has asked a bankruptcy judge for permission to alter or annal their contract with the National Storytelling Network.
This is a very personal moment for me – I am invested in the success of both these organizations. I am an active member of NSN and I believe that the ISC is essential for the success of the American storytelling revival. So who do I side with? I side with both organizations – being that I love them both – I am a child of two parents – long divorced – who are quarreling over money while the riches of the worlds drift through their fingers.
I know that many of you are mad at the ISC – I ask you to practice the better part of your nature and forgive… buy your tickets NOW to next years festival – I did – help this Jewel in the Crown of American Storytelling continue… I also ask the board members of NSN to defend NSN’s right to control the National Storytelling Festival and to negotiate with ISC as co-owners of the brand, name and event for the good of both organizations. Clearly no one wants to see ISC go down or NSN stripped of needed funding from the festival that represents members investment in the long term heath of the national storytelling festival.
All the Best
Brother Wolf
PS: Please comment below for your thoughts on this event…
By: Eric Wolf,
on 12/8/2010
Over at the International Storytelling School I have been busy building a catalog of answers to the most interesting questions on the Art of Storytelling.
Most of the answers are private, available only to people who join the International Storytelling School as audience members for a donation of $15 a month. There donations have paid for new recording equipment and various other handy items that allow me to bring you the Art of Storytelling Podcast and Blog. Perhaps you would consider becoming a member and supporting the production of this show for pennies a day….
Here are a list of all the answers I have been laying out on the school website…
Applied Storytelling #001 - Community and Performance Storytelling
What is the difference between Community Storytelling and Performance Storytelling?
Applied Storytelling #002 – Finding Local Folktales and Legends
I would love to know what Folk tales can actually trace their roots to what became the state of Ohio.
Applied Storytelling #003 – New and Old Storytelling Worlds
With all this young and new innovative things that are happening that is, we don’t call it traditional Storytelling but it is Storytelling – how do we pull this new and old storytelling worlds together with undercutting the new or the old?
Applied Storytelling #004 – Bringing the Love Home.
I have spent this National Storytelling Network Conference with these wonderful storytellers. Now I want to take that energy and that feeling and that attention and bring it out into the real world. How do you get another audience to understand the nature of what you are saying?
Applied Storytelling #005 – Integrating a Story into your Repertoire
Once you have gotten started with storytelling, what is the best way to approach a story?
Applied Storytelling #006 – Theater vs Storytelling?
What is the difference between Storytelling and Theatre?
Applied Storytelling #007 – Building the Membership of Your Storytelling Guild
How do you build to your membership in your storytelling guild?
Applied Storytelling #008 – Story Rustling and What to do about it.
What do you do if someone else begins to tell your own personal story without your permission?
Applied Storytelling #009 - Finding New Venues for Adult Storytelling
How can we inside the storytelling community develop inside the greater community a spot where we can have stories
By: Eric Wolf,
on 11/17/2010
or Teaching Without Pressuring the Teacher to Teach or the Child to Learn
Stories and songs are natural teachers and create natural paths to literacy.
Stir a child’s imagination with stories, songs, and poems, and you feed the roots of learning. Once memorized, a single sentence from a piece of prose, a song, or a poem, creates a model for many hundreds of sentences to come.
The linguistic significance of these models looks deceptively simple, but every sentence or stanza, no matter how short, is packed with grammatical and syntactic models. Let’s take a closer look at one simple stanza from my song, Bug in My Hand:
There’s a bug in my hand,
and it climbed on my nose,
and it played a bass drum,
bum, bum, bum, bum.
Here are a few of the grammatical (syntactic) structures in this one short stanza.
there’s: non-referential ‘there’ and subject-predicate agreement
a bug: noun phrase with singular indefinite article ‘a’
in my hand: prepositional phrase, including possessive ‘my’
and: coordinating conjunction
it: referential pronoun in place of the noun ‘bug’
on my nose: prepositional phrase with parallel structure to first prepositional phrase
a bass drum: noun phrase with adjective-noun combination
These are only a few of the syntactical structures that have been used to build this simple stanza. Memorized in a state of play, every one of the patterns illustrated above and those not mentioned become models for linguistic development and literacy in the future.
What a wonderful tool, especially when working with reluctant learners. (See my blog entry: On reluctant learners)
Reluctant learners are afraid, moody, and often angry. So as not to fail, they don’t try. They play every trick in the book, from daydreaming and disrupting class to acting out. Eventually, if not helped, they may turn into problem kids.
But what if a teacher could turn these reluctant learners around? What if a teacher could teach these reluctant learners without them knowing they were being taught?
Stories, songs, and poems are the key. And they not only work for reluctant learners. They also help to reinforce proper syntax in the minds of even the best of students.
I often talk to educators about ‘giving the gift’. Excite young people to the wonders of stories, songs, and poems and you will be giving everyone of them a ‘gift’, the ‘gift’ of literacy, a ‘gift’ that lasts a lifetime.
Max Tell, a.k.a. Robert Stelmach, the International Troubadour, sings and tells stories from the heart. http://maxtell.ca/content/
By: Eric Wolf,
on 3/18/2010
My friend Tim Ereneta has hit upon a brilliant idea. On Youtube and elsewhere online are hundreds of really good storytelling videos already produced. He has found all those videos with their embed codes and moved them to one place. Just brilliant and just what we need. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is the place to demonstrate storytelling in all its beauty, joy and mastery.
Tim serves as the keeper of the chalice. Giving out only the finest sips of storytelling wine so that we can just enjoy the fine samples he has given us.
I am so enamored of his website I am going to link to it right here on the front page of my site and I am going to refer to it as a recommended link from here on out. He is doing a public service one that should have been provided by the National Storytelling Network or the International Storytelling Center several years ago.
By: Eric Wolf,
on 1/31/2010
The writer is Eric Wolf Storyteller
Art is not limited by state budgets, the few hours of life apportioned or others acceptance. The only limitation of art is our desire to embrace art as we know it and to love that expression that calls us into our passion – into our being – into the voice of God. Of all the arts, storytelling is the most able to thrive despite budgets cuts, institutional ignorance and community apathy. Storytelling brings people together and serves as a beacon for community healing.
To be an artists is to give yourself over to a creative process that promise no fruit with each effort. But instead enlightens our lives with a gift that can only be declared – soul. Art in it’s purist form is God’s hand in our mortal lives. A living testament that their is more to our lives then this simple physical frame. To be an artist is to see the world, not only as it is – but as it can be or will be by our will.
Art makes meaning where there is none, gives power to the powerless, heals wounds long scarred, and above all hold love triumphant for the entire world to see. Successful art brings people together through compassion, forgiveness and understanding. Art and storytelling is held and holds community in it’s sacred trust. Art binds the sinews of the mortal world into a tapestry that ancestors hold in their immortal coil.
When we examine what it means to be dyslexic in a modern society we find ourselves looking at an entire class of creative types who are artists by definition. Though their creative efforts may be far from what society defines as “art”. They as a group fall in the range of artist by their very necessity of invention. Their inability to fit with the bounds of normality causes them to rush into the worlds of creativity that others will never experience. Not to say that to be dyslexic is to be born a painter, actor, poet or artist. Far from that. Dyslexics make the best storytellers by the requirements of the world bent down upon them.
Storytelling is the refuge of sinners and survivors. Storytelling is an art long associated with lying and dishonesty. Oral Narrative is held in disrepute for the same reasons it is so widely successful. The ease at which storytelling can be adapted and used to support the powerless and the oppressed is the same ease that allows sinners and con artists to bends it to their will.
By: Eric Wolf,
on 9/23/2009
Well – see what happens when a summer project turns into a fall release the name of the show has changed. Early release woudl have been better I guess. This is part 2 of the course.
Over the few months I will be releasing the video version of this email course available now on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf
I promise that I send you the seven emails about storytelling over the next ten days or so and that in addition I will send you Announcement about storytelling workshops or activities I am organizing nationally or locally – but never more then two a month if that.
Eric Wolf
| Name: | |
| Email: | |
| Address 1: | |
| Address 2: | |
| Town: | |
| City: | |
| Zip Code: | |
| Best Loved Story: | |
Eric James Wolf When I say LOVE – what story, myth, fable or fairy tale first comes to mind? Beverly Nelson Comer Cinderella was the first story to come to my mind. Carolyn Stearns Cinderella, I even make conversational references like home before my coach became a pumpkin Brian Fox Ellis Baucus and Philomen, the Greek myth I most [...]