Academy of Storytelling Workshop

We are happy to announce the Academy of Storytelling Workshop to be held at the Kathalaya Resource Centre,
from 24th to 28th of August 2010.

The workshop will cover –
 Listening skills, Voice and language development.
 Intrinsic and extrinsic Qualities of a teller.
 Body language-Role Play, The 4 Rs of telling
 Creativity and Innovative ways of creating your own stories.
 Use of puppetry and making of 10 different types of puppets,
 Chitrakathas and different Kinds of picture stories- How to make use them.
 Storycards-Integrating stories with lesson plans and worksheets.
 Cultural and indigenous story telling forms
 Exploring Personal stories- strengths and weaknesses of a teller.
 Group and individual presentations
 Evaluation and Certificate.

The Academy faculty comprises subject specialists, artists and counselors
The timings are: 9.30 am to 1.30 pm.
Service charges – Rs. 6000/-. Includes materials, snacks tea, certificate and
a “resource book for Story Educators’.
Contact us:kathalaya@gmail.com,
Ph: 9845207073, 9886244808, 26689856
Visit us : www.kathalaya.org

Teaching philosophy through stories

Yogic philosophy teaches us that consciousness can indeed be disengaged from existence and be freed of every thinkable conditioning. Several Puranic tales serve to illustrate this. Ved Vyasa, the narrator of the Mahabharata, is traditionally believed to be the compiler of the Puranas. Brhadaranyaka Upanishad refers to Puranas along with the Epics as the "fifth Veda" - itihasapuranam panchamam vedam. The word Veda is derived from the root vid which means to know. So a veda is book of knowledge. Of the many Puranas, eighteen are considered critical texts and these are known as the Mahapuranas. They are - Agni, Bhagavata, Bhavishya, Brahma, Brahmanda, Brahmavaivarta, Garuda, Harivamsa, Kurma, Linga, Markandeya, Matsya, Narada, Padma, Shiva, Skanda, Vamana, Vayu and Vishnu.

- Swetha Prakash

What is a tall tale?

'What is a tall tale? And what is tall talk? A tall tale is a folk tale seized by the activity of tall talk and construed as a lie. Anyone who memorizes Vladimir Propp's thirty-one episodes can tell a folk tale, recite the legend of a hunt, but only a thinker who has contemplated the bloody hurt of that hunt, considered the pains of Time, Distance, and Dimension, and examined critically the way myth resolves them, can properly stretch a tale, derange its structural features, and expose its absurdity. Tall talk is thus at once a narrative skill and a philosophical stance. The teller unerringly bombards us with pertinent hyperbole, artfully digresses, takes us in, draws us into the field of deception, and makes us at last complicit. Whether in folklore or literature, the tall tale is never innocent, mythically immediate, but instead always begins as a subversion of the story.'

- Neil Schmitz
From Tall Tale, Tall Talk: Pursuing the Lie in Jacksonian Literature

The creation hymn from the Rig Veda

There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?

There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.

Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.

Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.

Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.

Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps even He does not know.

Translation by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. From the Book "The Rig Veda - Anthology"

The wisdom of the traditional tale

While traditional tales often have flat characters without any interior landscaping and seemingly simple narrative lines they are full of timetested wisdom. They are reliable guides which tell us how it act in any situation, any crisis. In India, traditional tales were used for the political education of princes. The Panchatantra, one of India's best known tale collections is full of stories which teach people how to survive in a world where contradictory forces like violence and tranquillity continuously act on each other, in an energy field where impetuses are rarely straightforward. By helping us understand and accept primordial human energy currents (envy, fear, greed, lust etc.) these traditional stories keep us from getting disenchanted with existence.

- Swetha Prakash

Stories and sympathetic magic

Sympathetic magic or imitative magic involves any belief or ritual which attempts to influence an environment through imitation or correspondence. In correspondence it is believed that one can influence something based on its relationship or resemblance to another thing. In Myth = Mitya, Dr Devadutt Pattnaik extends the concept to using narratives such as the Ramayana and the Puranas for influencing events in the household. He says that this is the logic that 'prescribes the reading of stories from the Bhagavata.' The Bhagavata Purana describes the joyous events in the life of Krishna and thus becomes a perfect candidate for sympathetic magic.

- Swetha Prakash

References: Myth=Mitya: A handbook of Hindu Mythology - Dr Devdutt Pattanaik, Penguin Books India, 2006.

Storytelling Course