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Press Play to hear Rafe Martin speaks about Zen and the Art of Spiritual Storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Rafe Martin speaks…
Many years ago (staring in the early 1970’s and on) I began walking two traditional roads – that of formal Zen practice and that of storytelling. My first public storytelling events actually took place at the Rochester Zen Center in 1973. For many years the two roads went running in happy parallel, sometimes visible to each other from across the ravine, sometimes hidden by bushes, boulders, trees and vines. In the later part of the 80’s the two roads began to join up and intertwine, weaving in and out, braiding and re-forming from story elements old and older, ancient and new. The worlds of oral storytelling and writing books began to interconnect for me, too. I wrote picture books and collections, original and ones inspired by traditional tales and communities. I began speaking every year for about a dozen years at Zuni Pueblo, one of the most traditional Native communities in North America where I saw myth come alive, be ordinary and very real at the same time. What a gift!

I wrote a novel, too, that sprang out of the world of the Brother’s Grimm – tales that my mother had loved and read aloud to me, when I was young. Ordinary, daily, personal life, and the ancient world of story began to support and teach each other. All along I kept up with daily Zen sitting and Zen retreats (called sesshin – meaning “to touch the mind”), as well as with working with excellent teachers in that branch of Buddhist tradition. About a year and a half-ago I received ordination in Zen tradition and the two roads of story – both personal and traditional – and the road of personal evolution/ spiritual work I knew from Zen practice, became one.

So, when Eric asked to do an interview on these related subjects right after the recent 38th National Storytelling Festival where I was a featured teller of course I said, “Yes.”

Enjoy!

Bio:

Storyteller Rafe Martin is the author of over twenty books ranging from almost wordless picture books through collections and novels. His work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, and USA Today. He has also been a featured teller at such prestigious events and institutions as the National Storytelling Festival, the International Storytelling Center, the American Museum of Natural History, NASA, the American Library Association International Convention, the Joseph Campbell Festival of Myth and Story, the Sierra Storytelling Festival to name just a very few.

He is the recipient of numerous awards including multiple Parent’s Choice Gold Awards, Storytelling World awards, ALA Notable Book Awards, as well as the prestigious Empire State Award, given for the body of his work. He is also a fully ordained lay Zen practitioner, with many years of formal practice and study. His latest book is Endless Path: Awakening in the Buddhist Imagination – Jataka Tales, Zen Practice, and Daily life. He lives in Rochester, NY. See http://www.rafemartin.com for details.

Press Play to hear Laird Schaub speak about The Application of Story to Group Facilitation and Community Living on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf

Laird Schaub Writes...
"As a consultant, I'm often asked to work with groups that consider themselves stuck. In helping them understand how they got there and the choices they have to move through it, I always start with the stories-the way in which each person makes sense of their reality as a member of the group. Invariably, the stories don't all match. Sometimes the realities are mutually exclusive. Still, I believe them all and do my best to help everyone in the group understand how each person's actions make sense from that person's perspective. Once I've established a bridge of understanding among the various players, it's then possible to build a new story, where each person's reality is now a little bigger and can hold aspects of other's realities as well.

The key to this is to not ask a person to change their core beliefs, change their personality, or change the way they work with information. I just ask them to change their story, and then to adjust their behaviors accordingly. I ask them to make shifts that are in their interest; ones that will help them be better understood and be less triggering for others. I ask them to make changes that will help them build relationship.

Often, people in the group will be in pain. Being stuck doesn't feel good, and if you cannot see past your own story it often appears that others have taken actions that are purposefully hurtful or disrespectful. Ouch! In this sense, pain is a symptom of a problem, and very useful in helping to diagnose where the stories are not in alignment. Because you want to be treating causes and not just symptoms, it's important here to resist the impulse to alleviate the pain as your priority. It's a better strategy to view the pain as an important source of information and explore it for the purpose of surfacing the clues you'll need to build a story where everyone can feel held and respected."

Brief Bio:
Laird has lived 36 years at Sandhill Farm, an income-sharing rural community in Missouri which he helped found. He homesteads there, has raised two kids, and has developed a flair for preserving food and celebration cooking. He is also the main administrator of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, a network organization he helped create in 1986, and that serves as a clearinghouse of information about North American communities of all stripes.

In addition to being an author and public speaker about various aspects of community, he's also a meeting junkie and has parlayed his passion for good process into a consulting business on group dynamics. He's worked with about 75 different groups around the US, many of them multiple times. His specialty is up-tempo meetings that engage the full range of human input, teaching groups to work creatively with conflict, and at the same time being ruthless about about capturing as mu

Press Play to hear Ben Nind speaking on how Storytelling is Essential to Community Health and Life on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Storytelling Is Essential to Community Health and Life.

Do we really have to justify why this is so? Are we so removed from ourselves as purveyors of stories that we actually need to rationalize, in some manner or form - why storytelling is essential? This is an odd question because it means that I have to somehow divorce story from the human experience and that is an impossible task.

The glue that holds all of the pieces together is story past, present and future. Birth, marriage, divorce, life, death, addiction, celebration, grief and victory are woven with stories in every window and door that we pass in our day to day existence. Without stories there is no community, there is no activity and the world is just one big cold ball of rock hurling through the blackness of space.

Is storytelling essential to community life? Say no more. Just listen and let me tell you a story..............

Bio

Ben NInd grew up in the theatre community of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.

In the spring of 2004 he became the Executive and Artistic Director of the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre, a position he still holds. He continues to promote the development of all performing arts in the NWT. His passion lies with the stories of the Canadian North. They are the core material from which his brand of theatre magic is cut. His belief in the stories, and his commitment to the talented men and women who tell those stories, keep this unique and powerful northern theatre movement alive and relevant for contemporary northern audiences.

Press Play to hear Lloyd Arneach speak on a Cherokee perspective on Native American Storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

This Post will be updated by Tuesday - if you want some more thoughts from the guest please come back then -

Biography

An enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, Lloyd Arneach was born and reared on the Cherokee Reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina. He learned his first legends from two storytelling Uncles on the reservation.

From 1970 to 1990, Lloyd traveled throughout the state of Georgia, lecturing on Cherokee history and culture. This was done in his spare time while working for AT&T's computer department in Atlanta. In 1990, he added storytelling to his presentations on culture and history and in 1993 began a full-time career as both storyteller and historian.

Lloyd presents his stories in a style that is humorous, informative and extremely moving. Lloyd's stories range from the "old stories" of the Cherokee to contemporary stories he has collected; from creation stories to behind the scenes of "Dances with Wolves." He tells stories of different Native Americans: Floyd Red Crow Westerman; Billy Mills, an Olympic champion; a young Cree Indian girl with no stories to tell; and a postmaster on the Papago Reservation. He shares historical stories from a variety of Native American tribes. Some of these stories are difficult for Lloyd to tell because of the strong feelings associated with his experiences as a Native American.

Lloyd lectures on Cherokee history and culture in schools, universities, libraries, museums, historical societies, and civic groups. If requested, he can bring a number of Native American artifacts to show and demonstrate. Lloyd also conducts workshops on Native American storytelling, building appreciation of Native American culture and what the stories mean to the cultures from which they grew.

He has told stories at the Kennedy Center, National Folklife Festival (Washington, D.C.), the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.), the Winnepeg International Storytelling Festival (Canada), festivals, schools, universities, Pow-Wows, theaters, and other venues throughout the United States. His CD Can You Hear the Smoke? features stories and legends adapted by Lloyd. In 1992, Children's Press published his book, The Animal's Ballgame, based on one of Lloyd's favorite Cherokee animal stories. During the summer of 2006, Lloyd performed in the Cherokee outdoor drama Unto These Hills - A Retelling. In the of summer (2008), Lloyd once again performed in the Cherokee outdoor drama Unto These Hills - A Retelling.

He has told stories on the Discovery Channel.

Lloyd has finished a new book of Cherokee stories,Long-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee, that was released in early 2008.

Lloyd now lives in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Press Play to hear Baba Jamal Koram speak the responsibility of being a storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Baba Jamal Koram is a storyteller in the African American Griotic TraditionsÔ he is a dedicated practitioner and teacher of the spoken word traditions and is a respected leader in the world of storytelling. Baba Jamal is a groundbreaking storyteller, educator, folk drummer and organizer. He is a past president of the National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc. and is a 2001 recipient of its prestigious Zora Neale Hurston award. Called a storyteller’s storyteller, and a Griot’s Griot he continues to travel across the nation sharing his stories and his presence with thousands of school children and their families. Baba Jamal holds the B.A., M.S. and Ed.S. degrees, and is married and the proud father of children, grand children, and godchildren.

This master storyteller uses his stories to inspire, encourage, and to uplift the positive growth of our children and in our communities.

He has said:

“My South Carolina great grandmother Mary would say to her grandchildren, “Bring me a cool glass of water, and I’ll tell you a story. Then she would proceed to tell them one of those traditional African American Gullah stories, about Bruh Rabbit or one of the many folkloric characters. . . I follow in her storytelling footsteps. . .Call me if you have a cool glass of spring water.”

For More information on Baba Jamal Koram check out his website: http://www.babajamalkoram.com/

Press Play to hear Kim Weitkamp speak about reaching troubled youth through storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Kim Weitkamp writes…
For 15 years I saw first hand the amazing power of story. The right story deposited at the right time is like a time release capsule. I cannot count how many times one of the teens that I was working with would come back to me, after I told them a story, and they’d say, “Hey, you know that story you told me the other day? Well, I’ve been thinking about it…”

When I would hold group discussions, a story would bring together opposing sides. When I was digging into a person’s heart, trying gently to unearth the pain that was causing them to act out in anger, a story would be the trowel. When I looked into the angry hurting eyes of teen, a story would prove to them that I understood and that I had been there too.

I loved working with at risk youth and found great satisfaction in using story to bring healing. It was a worthy calling. But, after 15 years, it wore me out physically and emotionally, so I retired. From youth work, not storytelling. You cannot retire from what you are, you can only retire from what you do. So what I was had to release itself in another form.

I pulled out journals that I had kept over the years and started going over stories that I had written for no other purpose than to make me smile. I started sharing those stories with people outside my family and friends circle. After a few years of puttering around state festivals, schools and libraries, I branched out and before I knew it I was telling full time. But inside of me there was a struggle going on.

For years, I had used my stories to help teens who were suicidal, self-mutilators, violent offenders, lost, lonely and at their breaking point. I had used my stories for a worthy cause, but now I was telling for the sheer pleasure of it. I was using my stories to entertain and to make people laugh. I was at odds with myself. How could I go from one extreme to another? Was I selling out? Was there a purpose to what I was doing? I was constantly asking myself these questions.

One evening I was telling in a tent that was draped in white lights. The night was cool and still and the audience was perfect. I was in the middle of one of my favorite stories, right at a part where I pause for effect, when I had the most beautiful experience. As my gaze swept across the crowd I could see each face individually, expectant and ready. It was like slow motion, a hard thing to explain really, but they were there…with me… in the story, not in the tent. They were waiting to turn the corner with me and see what I saw and laugh at what I laughed at and smell what I smelled and taste what I tasted. They were there with me, in my story, walking with me.

It was at that moment I knew that what I was doing was just as worthy as my previous work. No matter how long I have them, no matter how large or small the group, no matter how funny, sad, silly, or heartbreaking my story is…it’s a miracle.

Each time I tell I have the privilege of taking my listener away from this world. For a few minutes I provide a much needed break from the rent payment, from the knee pain, from unemployment, from the wayward child, from the death of a loved one. It is a form of medicine, therapy, whatever you want to call it I don’t care. I only know that it is good. And to be a storyteller is a worthy calling.

After that experience I went to Jonesborough for the first time and in the glass shop on Main Street I found an art print that brought tears to my eyes. The artist had drawn a picture of a woman and beside it had written: “In the midst of the song she heard every heartbeat and knew she was a part of something bigger.” Nough said.

Bio of Kim Weitkamp…
Written by Diane Pelegro

Kim Weitkamp used applied storytelling for over 15 years within her work with youth. She has been a guest speaker, keynote and storyteller at camps, retreats, conferences, libraries, schools, leadership summits and festivals throughout the country. After overseeing various non-profit programs in four states she retired from youth work three years ago.

At that time Kim decided to take her love of humor and storytelling to the stage, and she has been warmly received. Her impressive performance list as a newcomer includes Timpfest in Orem, Utah, the Exchange Stage in Jonesborough TN, the historic Lyric Theater in Virginia, the Northeast Storytelling Festival, the Storytelling Festival of the Carolinas, The Smoky Mountains Festival in Pigeon Forge TN, The Colonial Williamsburg Storytelling Festival and many others. She holds residencies at the Montgomery County Museum, the JuneBug Center for Storied Arts and the Lewis Miller Art Center.
She currently serves as President of the Virginia Storytelling Alliance and is the Virginia State rep for the National Youth Storytelling Showcase. She is also a commissioned performer for the Virginia Commission of the Arts. Kim has written and performed vignettes and stories for the PARfm Radio Network morning show which has a 3 state listening audience. She has penned numerous children’s stories but is most noted for her original and humorous Pitscreek Series, which has resulted in two CD projects.

Kim is the founder of the Wrinkles Project, a nationwide program that helps raise awareness of the treasure we have within our ’seasoned citizens’ and the stories that they have to share. Kim’s first CD, “This Ain’t Bull It’s Fertilizer” was her freshman release. Her new self titled CD, shows her growth as an artist and writer. The stories are solid and well written and her telling style is casual and warm. The collection is a beautiful example of storytelling at its best. Recently Kim has added the dynamic of singing original songs to her performances. They cozy right up to the story and add depth and additional appeal to her telling.

Kim’s genuine care for the audience, love of story, and natural talent has alloted her a solid position within the arena of spoken word artistry.

To Learn more about Kim’s work check out her website at http://www.justkissthefrog.com/

Press Play to hear Elaine Wynne who is a clinical psychologist speak’s on uses healing stories with children on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Elaine Wynne was a Storyteller first. Stories flowed freely around the kitchen table and from an Anishinabe/Irish man who lived on the farm where she grew up. She told stories to her young children and then in the early 70’s finished a degree in Storytelling and Image Development for Non-Profits. She began to perform as a storyteller and then in 1982 got a degree in the Psychology of Human Development (Storytelling and Healing as a main focus) and became a Licensed Psychologist.

She worked six years at Mpls. Children’s Medical Center and developed a story called “The Rainbow Dream”, used by children and adult cancer groups for many y ears. Later, her work using storytelling to teach self management to 2-5 year olds with asthma (with Daniel Kohen, M.D.) was published in the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, and in numerous medical and psychological journals in Europe. R esearch on using stories and games as teaching methods showed significant reduction in emergency clinic and hospital visits over a two year period.

Elaine has performed and taught storytelling (and storytelling as a healing art) in Norway, Sweden, England, Ecuador, Japan, and Singapore, as well as in numerous places around Minnesota and the US. Last year, she presented a performance workshop at the 12th annual Pediatric Emergency Management of Humanitarian Disasters in Cleveland. She won Grand Prize with her husband (Storyteller Larry Johnson) at the Tokyo Video Festival for a storied exchange between children in St. Paul and London. She and Larry conduct and teach about Cousin Camp which they developed with their 13 grandchildren.

You can read more about her in this cool article in the Daily Planet

Press Play to hear Elaine Wynne who is a clinical psychologist speak’s on uses healing stories with children on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Elaine Wynne was a Storyteller first. Stories flowed freely around the kitchen table and from an Anishinabe/Irish man who lived on the farm where she grew up. She told stories to her young children and then in the early 70’s finished a degree in Storytelling and Image Development for Non-Profits. She began to perform as a storyteller and then in 1982 got a degree in the Psychology of Human Development (Storytelling and Healing as a main focus) and became a Licensed Psychologist.

She worked six years at Mpls. Children’s Medical Center and developed a story called “The Rainbow Dream”, used by children and adult cancer groups for many y ears. Later, her work using storytelling to teach self management to 2-5 year olds with asthma (with Daniel Kohen, M.D.) was published in the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, and in numerous medical and psychological journals in Europe. R esearch on using stories and games as teaching methods showed significant reduction in emergency clinic and hospital visits over a two year period.

Elaine has performed and taught storytelling (and storytelling as a healing art) in Norway, Sweden, England, Ecuador, Japan, and Singapore, as well as in numerous places around Minnesota and the US. Last year, she presented a performance workshop at the 12th annual Pediatric Emergency Management of Humanitarian Disasters in Cleveland. She won Grand Prize with her husband (Storyteller Larry Johnson) at the Tokyo Video Festival for a storied exchange between children in St. Paul and London. She and Larry conduct and teach about Cousin Camp which they developed with their 13 grandchildren.

You can read more about her in this cool article in the Daily Planet

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Faith Based Storyteller 15%

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Press Play to hear Loren Niemi who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on Honoring Elders and Apprentices on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Loren Niemi writes…
I’ve been a storyteller for 30 plus years and yet in so many ways I feel like a beginner learning how to do now, what I learned how to do then. It is – LOL – a very “Zen and now” approach to storytelling: beginner’s mind.

At this point in time, I understand clearly and fondly what a gift I received when I came to storytelling. The gift of generous mentors – specifically, Ken Feit and Rueven Gold – who took a “Zen and now” approach offering friendship, access, who posed and (sometimes) answered questions, encouraged and gave permission for me to find and develop my own voice rather than adopt theirs. They welcomed me wherever they were telling and often made space for me to tell a story at those gatherings.

They were prolific in suggesting, cajoling, handing me books and lists of books to read that would ground me in the storytelling traditions. It is one of the laments I have about a significant portion of those coming into storytelling now, that they do not read (or feel they have to read) widely and deeply. My mentors understood the value of reading anthropology, mythology, theater, folklore collections as well as the importance of listening to stories and storytellers of all kinds from many traditions to enrich our understanding of the power of this art and the breadth of its reach across cultures.

They are dead now, but the stories I heard them tell still resonate for me. What they taught directly and indirectly has served me well over these many years. Many of the tellers (Marshall Dodge, Ray Hicks, Gamble Rogers, Jackie Torrence, Duncan Willimson) who were here at the beginning of the American Storytelling Revival are dead now but I was fortunate to have heard them and cherish the fact of it.

As the generation that is the root of our storytelling culture pass, I also understand that I have been at this long enough to be able to mentor others. I welcome the opportunity. It is consistent with the tradition of storytelling apprenticeship. It is both a responsibility and a pleasure to nourish “tongues of fire.” It is not a matter of ego or authority, but an understanding that if storytelling is to flourish I have a vested interest in passing on to those who would take it, the gift of craft and knowing.

Inevitably I will pass. But stories, perhaps even some of mine, will abide and I would hope that as I have honored my elders I will have shared the joy and terror which is storytelling with my apprentices.

Loren Niemi Bio

“I began as a child fibber
but soon discovered that I was less interested
in telling lies than I was in improving the truth.”

Storytelling is also the only sensible explanation Loren Niemi can offer for forty plus years as a community organizer and public policy consultant, trainer and Lobbyist working with non-profit groups to articulate their dreams, shape their messages, and resolve their conflicts.

Loren has also spent thirty as a professional storyteller, creating, collecting, performing and teaching stories to audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings. He has served as the Humanities Scholar in Residence for Northern Minnesota, the ringmaster and tour manager of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre’s Circle of Water Circus, and is one third of BAD JAZZ, a performance art trio with Michael Sommers and Kevin Kling, experimenting with theatrical and storytelling forms. His work has been called “post-modern,” “on the cutting edge of storytelling,” “with the dark beauty of language that is not ashamed of poetry.” It is, as storyteller, Kate Lutz said, “a sensibility that owes more to the New Yorker than to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.”

He is the co-author, with Elizabeth Ellis, of Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, from August House Publishers and the author of The Book of Plots, on the uses of narratives in creating oral and written stories, published by Llumina Press.

Loren has a BA (Philosophy and Studio Arts) from St. Mary’s College (Winona, MN) and a MA in Liberal Studies (concentration: American Culture) from Hamline University (St. Paul, MN). He teaches Storytelling in the Communications Department of Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, MN) as well as providing organizational and corporate message framing, storytelling branding and community building workshops around the country.

Loren was one of the founders of the Northlands Storytelling Network, a five state storytelling education and advocacy organization, and spent four years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Storytelling Network, the 3000 plus member advocate and promoter of America’s storytelling revival. He was the 2005 recipient of the Oracle award for national leadership and service.

Greetings! I look forward to sharing with you on Tuesday evening October 29, 2008, at 8pm. The focus topic on this pod cast of Storytelling With Children is “Breaking Barriers Through Storytelling”.

My introduction to literature and the planting of seeds that later bloomed into storytelling, came in the 1950’s. In the midst of a social, political and cultural climate that suggested that my family and community were devoid of intellect, history or culture, my father began reading to me the literary diamonds and jewels that came from within our culture. Somewhere around 6 years old, my father read out loud the words of James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes. My father relished and touted the genius of these writers. He handed me the Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, selected a poem for me to memorize and launched me, as a child, onto a spoken word path. Numerous church banquets, teas and special community events were staging grounds for “a reading by Miss Charlotte Blake”.

I’ll share some memories of that time and fast-forward to the place where those germinating seeds and my experience in an independent school crossed paths with storytelling and an immediate realization of the power of this art form. On I faculty of 70, I was one of three faculty members of color. One particular event at the school served as a reminder of how invisible we often were, of how a genuinely well-meaning (and I really mean that!) community could unknowingly participate in perpetuating stereotypes and marginalizing members of their community. My concern was the statement those actions made to the children in the community. When I encountered storytelling, I immediately saw it as a window, a bridge, a tool I could use; a way in which initially children, could access, affirm, value and appreciate a cultural perspective that was different from their own.

That two-story repertoire (plus a set of Kiddie Rock& Roll songs!) later expanded to incorporate stories for all ages. I’ve since told at home and abroad in schools, festivals, concert halls, detention centers, a refugee camp; in collaboration with jazz musicians, choreographers and symphony orchestras. One of my most storyteller-reaffirming moments happened in a refugee camp in northern Senegal. So come on in! It’s okay. This will not be psychologically heavy duty! I am not an academician. This will be a chance to peek inside my head, listen to my heart and perhaps hear a perspective, a view that might serve you well in your own work.

“See you” on the pod cast.

This Tuesday,July 1st at 8pm ET - Jack Zipes the preeminent writer about and translator of fairy
tales will be appearing on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Jack Zipes writes…
At their best, the storytelling of fairy tales constitute the most profound articulation of the human struggle to form and maintain a civilizing process. They depict metaphorically the opportunities for human adaptation to our environment and reflect the conflicts that arise when we fail to establish civilizing codes commensurate with the self-interests of large groups within the human population. The more we give into base instincts – base in the sense of basic and depraved – the more criminal and destructive we become. The more we learn to relate to other groups of people and realize that their survival and the fulfillment of their interests is related to ours, the more we might construct social codes that guarantee humane relationships. Fairy tales are uncanny because they tell us what we need and they unsettle us by showing what we lack and how we might compensate for lack.

Fairy tales hint of happiness. This hint, what Ernst Bloch has called the anticipatory illumination, has constituted their utopian appeal that has a strong moral component to it. We do not know happiness, but we instinctually know and feel that it can be created and perhaps even defined. Fairy tales map out possible ways to attain happiness, to expose and resolve moral conflicts that have deep roots in our species. The effectiveness of fairy tales and other forms of fantastic literature depends on the innovative manner in which we make the information of the tales relevant for the listeners and receivers of the tales. As our environment changes and evolves, so we change the media or modes of the tales to enable us to adapt to new conditions and shape instincts that were not necessarily generated for the world that we have created out of nature. This is perhaps one of the lessons that the best of fairy tales and teach us: we are all misfit for the world, and yet, somehow we must all fit together. Fairy tales have an extraordinary, uncanny power over us, and Georges Jean locates this power on the conscious level in the way all good fairy tales aesthetically structure and use fantastic and miraculous elements to prepare us for our everyday life. Magic is used paradoxically not to deceive us but to enlighten us. On an unconscious level, Jean believes that the best fairy tales bring together subjective and assimilatory impulses with objective intimations of a social setting that intrigue readers and allow for different interpretations according to one’s ideology and belief. Ultimately, Jean argues that the fantastic power of fairy tales consists in the uncanny way they provide a conduit into social reality. Yet, given the proscription of fairy-tale discourse within a historically prescribed civilizing process, a more careful distinction must be made between regressive and progressive aspects of the power of fairy tales in general to understand the liberating potential of contemporary tales for all human beings. Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “uncanny” and Ernst Bloch’s concept of “home” can enable us to grasp the constitutive elements of the liberating impulse behind the fantastic and uncanny projections in fairy tales, whether they be classical or experimental. In his essay on the uncanny, Freud remarks that the word heimlich means that which is familiar and agreeable and also that which is concealed and kept out of sight, and he concludes that heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich or uncanny. Through a close study of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fairy tale The Sandman, Freud argues that the uncanny or unfamiliar (unheimlich) brings us in closer touch with the familiar (heimlich) because it touches on emotional disturbances and returns us to repressed phases in our evolution: If psychoanalytic theory is correct in maintaining that every effect belonging to an emotional impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it is repressed, into anxiety, then among instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs. This class of frightening things would then constitute the uncanny; and it must be a matter of indifference whether what is uncanny was itself originally frightening or whether it carried some other affect. In the second place, if this is indeed the secret nature of the uncanny, we can understand why linguistic usage has extended das Heimliche (‘homely’) into its opposite, das Unheimliche; for this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression. This reference to the factor of repression enables us, furthermore, to understand Schelling’s definition of the uncanny as something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light. Freud insists that one must be extremely careful in using the category of the uncanny since not everything which recalls repressed desires and surmounted modes of thinking belongs to the prehistory of the individual and the race and can be considered uncanny. In particular, Freud mentions fairy tales as excluding the uncanny. In fairy tales, for instance, the world of reality is left behind from the very start, and the animistic system of beliefs is frankly adopted. Wish-fulfillments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation of inanimate objects, all the elements so common in fairy stories, can exert no uncanny influence here; for, as we have learnt, that feeling cannot arise unless there is a conflict of judgment as to whether things which have been “surmounted” and are regarded as incredible may not, after all, be possible; and this problem is eliminated from the outset by the postulates of the world of fairy tales.

Although it is true that the uncanny becomes the familiar and the norm in the fairy tale because the narrative perspective accepts it so totally, there is still room for another kind of uncanny experience within the postulates and constructs of the fairy tale. That is, Freud’s argument must be qualified regarding the machinations of the fairy tale. However, I do not want to concern myself with this point at the moment but would simply like to suggest that the uncanny plays a significant role in the act of reading or listening to a fairy tale. Using and modifying Freud’s category of the uncanny, I want to argue that the very act of reading a fairy tale is an uncanny experience in that it separates the reader from the restrictions of reality from the onset and makes the repressed unfamiliar familiar once again. Bruno Bettelheim has noted that the fairy tale estranges the child from the real world and allows him or her to deal with deep-rooted psychological problems and anxiety-provoking incidents to achieve autonomy. Whether this is true or not, that is, whether a fairy tale can actually provide the means for coping with ego disturbance, as Bettelheim argues, remains to be seen. It is true, however, that once we begin listening to or reading a fairy tale, there is estrangement or separation from a familiar world inducing an uncanny feeling which can be both frightening and comforting.

Actually the complete reversal of the real world has already taken place before we begin reading a fairy tale on the part of the writer, and the writer invites the reader to repeat this uncanny experience. The process of reading involves dislocating the reader from his/her familiar setting and then identifying with the dislocated protagonist so that a quest for the Heimische or real home can begin. The fairy tale ignites a double quest for home: one occurs in the reader’s mind and is psychological and difficult to interpret, since the reception of an individual tale varies according to the background and experience of the reader. The second occurs within the tale itself and indicates a socialization process and acquisition of values for participation in a society where the protagonist has more power of determination. This second quest for home can be regressive or progressive depending on the narrator’s stance vis-à-vis society. In both quests the notion of home or Heimat, which is closely related etymologically to heimlich and unheimlich, retains a powerful progressive attraction for readers of fairy tales. While the uncanny setting and motifs of the fairy tale already open us up to the recurrence of primal experiences, we can move forward at the same time because it opens us up to what Freud calls “unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in fantasy, all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed, and all our suppressed acts of volition which nourish in us the illusion of Free Will.”

Obviously, Freud would not condone clinging to our fantasies in reality. Yet, Ernst Bloch would argue that some are important to cultivate and defend since they represent our radical or revolutionary urge to restructure society so that we can finally achieve home. Dreaming which stands still bodes no good. But if it becomes a dreaming ahead, then its cause appears quite differently and excitingly alive. The dim and weakening features, which may be characteristic of mere yearning, disappear; and then yearning can show what it really is able to accomplish. It is the way of the world to counsel men to adjust to the world’s pressures, and they have learned this lesson; only their wishes and dreams will not hearken to it. In this respect virtually all human beings are futuristic; they transcend their past life, and to the degree that they are satisfied, they think they deserve a better life (even though this may be pictured in a banal and egotistic way), and regard the inadequacy of their lot as a barrier, and not just as the way of the world. To this extent, the most private and ignorant wishful thinking is to be preferred to any mindless goose-stepping; for wishful thinking is capable of revolutionary awareness, and can enter the chariot of history without necessarily abandoning in the process the good content of dreams.

What Bloch means by the good content of dreams is often the projected fantasy and action of fairy tales with a forward and liberating look: human beings in an upright posture who strive for an autonomous existence and non-alienating setting which allows for democratic cooperation and humane consideration. Real history which involves independent human self-determination cannot begin as long as there is exploitation and enslavement of humans by other humans. The active struggle against unjust and barbaric conditions in the world leads to home, or utopia, a place nobody has known but which represents humankind coming into its own: The true genesis is not at the beginning, but at the end, and it starts to begin only when society and existence become radical: that is, comprehend their own roots. But the root of history is the working, creating man, who rebuilds and transforms the given circumstances of the world. Once man has comprehended himself and has established his own domain in real democracy, without depersonalization and alienation, something arises in the world which all men have glimpsed in childhood: a place and a state in which no one has yet been. And the name of this something is home or homeland.[x] Philosophically speaking, then, the real return home or recurrence of the uncanny is a move forward to what has been repressed and never fulfilled. The pattern in most fairy tales involves the reconstitution of home on a new plane, and this accounts for the power of its appeal to both children and adults.

In Bloch’s two major essays on fairy tales, “Das Märchen geht selber in Zeit” (“The Fairy Tale Moves on its Own in Time”) and Bessere Luftschlösser in Jahrmarkt und Zirkus, in Märchen und Kolportage” (“Better Castles in the Air in Fair and Circus, in the Fairy Tale and Popular Books”), Bloch is concerned with the manner in which the hero and the aesthetic constructs of the tale illuminate the way to overcome oppression. He focuses on the way the underdog, the small person, uses his or her wits not only to survive but to live a better life. Bloch insists that there is good reason for the timelessness of traditional fairy tales, “Not only does the fairy tale remain as fresh as longing and love, but the demonically evil, which is abundant in the fairy tale, is still seen at work here in the present, and the happiness of ‘once upon a time,’ which is even more abundant, still affects our visions of the future.”

It is not only the timeless aspect of traditional fairy tales that interests Bloch, but also the way they are modernized and appeal to all classes and age groups in society. Instead of demeaning popular culture and common appeal, Bloch endeavors to explore the adventure novels, modern romances, comics, circuses, country fairs, and the like. He refuses to make simplistic qualitative judgments of high and low art forms, rather he seeks to grasp the driving utopian impulse in the production and reception of art-works for mass audiences. Time and again he focuses on fairy tales as indications of paths to be taken in reality. What is significant about such kinds of “modern fairy tales” is that it is reason itself which leads to the wish projections of the old fairy tale and serves them. Again what proves itself is a harmony with courage and cunning, as that earliest kind of enlightenment which already characterizes “Hansel and Gretel”: consider yourself as born free and entitled to be totally happy, dare to make use of your power of reasoning, look upon the outcome of things as friendly. These are the genuine maxims of fairy tales, and fortunately for us they not only appear in the past but in the now.

Bloch and Freud set the general parameters for helping us understand how our longing for home, which is discomforting and comforting, draws us to folk and fairy tales. They provide clues and reveal why we continue to be attracted to the uncanny.

By David B. Epley talks on the conference call tonight at 8pm about storytelling with comedy.

Comedy is one of the most effective tools for imparting any information:

• It actively involves the audience; laughter is not passive.
• It encourages the audience to focus on the process; you must pay attention to the setup in order to get the punch line.
• It makes the process fun.

All of these aspects conspire to make an event, an individual, or a particular subject matter, more memorable. Think of your favorite Teacher, Storyteller, Pastor, Politician, Actor, Choreographer, et cetera, and you will see the truth of what I’m saying. Comedy can be used to educate, to alleviate tension, to ease stress, to help in almost any situation.

Unfortunately, comedy can also be used for ill. It is a powerful tool, and like any tool, its effects, and the responsibility for those effects, are in the hands of the user. It is used daily to hurt, to degrade, to destroy. Sometimes with intent, often without. This places a great moral responsibility on the comedian.

When using Comedy, one must make a conscious effort to gauge its consequences, and take corrective action when necessary. Not all laughter is positive, or even acceptable.

Years ago the US Military enacted its infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding homosexuality in the Armed Services. My partners in Theatre in the Ground and I wrote a short bit designed to mock it. The bit was about 30 seconds long, highly interactive, and generated 3 very solid laughs. (That’s a laugh every 10 seconds, each one building in effect, and that’s great. Vaudevillians used to shoot for a minimum of one laugh every 23 seconds.) Unfortunately, after performing the bit a few times, we realized that the audience wasn’t laughing at Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Most were actually responding to our comedy by laughing at homosexuals as a whole. This was far from our intent, and was generating laughter that we felt was actually bad for the world. We cut the piece immediately. It is a lesson I will never forget.

Enjoy the gift of laughter. Use it. Revel in it. Share it.
Just remember its power, and respect it.

Plums in the hedgerow ready to pick



Plums for a woodland breakfast



Plums for snacking




Plums for jam




- with homemade bread




Plums to store for cold winter days when summer is gone.