At the festival; Day 2

 

 A Pot-Pouri of distorted images. Sorry that's all my Nokia cell camera could do.But the main players of the second day are all here.
Geeta, Ola and Ulaf ( I hope I got that right).
Geeta needs no introduction, she is a master storyteller, and barely uses props. Her voice is her greatest prop! She modulates and mimics with no inhibition and carries us all through one and half hours of stories. The ease with which she moves from story to story, stands for her deep involvement in the field and I can say she lives and breathes the stories. Each one narrated differently; each one with a quirk of its own!

Ola Henrikson is a story educator at Sweden and uses stories to work with immigrant children in 10 schools, in and around his district.He uses folktales and traditional stories for team building and to integrate kids into their groups. He says that language is not much of a barrier, if you try and connect to the child's imagination! I liked the way he narrates, its gentle, simple and very clear. I can imagine how kids will be drawn to this gentle giant!

Ulaf, aah! He was a surprise to us. He runs the Burattino Puppet theatre in Sweden ( Burratino, itself means Puppet in Italian;... hmmm I thought Ulaf was Swedish!!).His daughter and he gave a small performance with their lion and ringmaster puppets. The puppets came alive in their expert hands. A treat!     
For me it was a refresher. Performance Storytelling as against Storytelling in the Classroom.The two are vastly different and though I love performance stories,  the interaction during and after the performance is what adds value to the telling. 

Another surprise element was a gentleman who enacted a shadow story for us. The story was of Punyakoti,a cow that holds truth above all else. Love, sacrifice and truth is the basis of this story, so check it out when you get time as it is a very popular story from Karnataka. That is the third image you can see on the blog.

Again I am reminded of Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours insight ( thanks to a friend for pointing it out!). If you do something with interest/ passion and repeatedly, you will surely gain mastery. 10,000 hours of story telling awaits me and I have just started!

Comments

  1. Simply me!August 5, 2011 at 10:31 AM

    Briliant again! Can't wait to be in at least one of your 10,000 passion filled hours of storytelling! Awesome to see how much you have enjoyed the last few days!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AshaAugust 6, 2011 at 5:13 AM

    punyakoti's poem is very popular amongst students of kannada. A lovely and touching story and that you had a whale of time is evident from your post. enjoy!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anuradha ShankarAugust 7, 2011 at 12:35 AM

    fantastic!! am now really envying you!! all the best too :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousAugust 8, 2011 at 2:05 AM

    Read both the posts and its the same feeling yet again- wish i was in B'lore:) I did my primary schooling in B'lore and I can still recall at least 10 lines from Punyakoti and often sing it to my little one- Dharani Mandala Madhyadholage.. Thanks for bringing back those memories..

    ReplyDelete

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