Storytelling was invented by my ancestor Og Shield after he (although sometimes it is ‘she’ depending on who is telling the story) was chased by a sabre toothed tiger and escaped. When Og returned to the cave, s/he couldn’t wait to tell the rest of the gang of the adventure. I suspect that with each retelling the story and Og’s bravery grew.
When Og died the story did not. Other members of the family who had heard the story kept telling it. Some put themselves into the story. All of them embellished it in some way. Eventually there were so many versions of the story that some of them hardly resembled the original that Og told. In one version the sabre toothed tiger was a wolf and Og wore a red cape.
Each family member who told the story had their own way of telling it. There were those who used their voice in very clever ways. Some would act out the story and wrestle with an invisible tiger in front of their audience. Some would rely on timing to hold the audience in suspense. The silence before the tiger appeared always had the audience on the edge of their rocks. And the sudden roar of the tiger would cause them to leap into the air even though they had heard the story a hundred times before.
The one thing that all the best storytellers used was imagination. No – not their own – but that of their audience. They would give just enough information to start the pictures in the listeners’ heads and the listeners did the rest. That way each person would have their own version of the story. Some times there were arguments about the length of the tiger’s claws or whether the tiger was perhaps a lion but none of this mattered. The important thing is that the story lived in the minds of each of the listeners.
Over the years some of my ancestors tried different ways of telling the story. Some cut out pieces of animal skin in the shape of animals or figures. One wore a sabre tooth tiger skin as a costume. Some would get together with others and act out the story as a little play. One of the most successful of these was my ancestor William Shieldspeare.
As the years passed and technology advanced the stories were recorded in print and the telling of the stories became more and more sophisticated. Two of the most successful of these storytellers were my distant cousins George Lucashield and Steven Shieldsberg.
Now I would never question the success of my storytelling cousins in getting their stories to the masses. Nor would I question the extent to which they have used their imaginations to present their stories. What I do question, however, is the extent to which they use the imagination of the their audience.
Without taking anything away from these storytellers and the many others involved in the huge and sophisticated storytelling industry, I would like to do something different.
My goal is to take storytelling back, not quite to the beginning, but to the time when storytelling was simple with very few props, no costumes but relying on the skills of the storyteller: the way he uses his voice, his body, his timing. With these skills I hope to stimulate my audience to use their own imaginations and create their own wonderful stories in their heads.
I believe that the ability to visualise is an important factor in meaning making that contributes to literacy. Children who are immersed in the sophisticated storytelling of my cousins George and Steven need some basic storytelling to stimulate their imaginations.
To experience storytelling in your school you could hire a video of a movie made by one of my storytelling cousins. Your students will be impressed by the imagination of George or Steven. Or you could have a traditional storyteller visit your school and your students can be impressed by the stories created using their own imagination.
Photos on this page show students of Mackay Central State School enjoying one of my performances at the Mackay City Library, August 2001.
This article first appeared on the John Shield storytelling website, © copyright John Shield 2000 and 2003.
John Shield travels Australia and the world telling stories to children and telling parents the secrets of raising good readers and writers. The results of his approach can be seen on the faces of his audience. Story by Colin Pearce.
It was the last night of the course. Before we got started someone presented me with this book. I took a glance. It looked good. I wasn’t going to give it a full endorsement without reading it, so I said to the group, ‘If this book lives up to the headings on the contents page it is everything a beginning storyteller needs.’ Headings are: Stories for Easy Telling, Stories That Involve the Audience, Stories to Act Out and Stories for All Occasions. I passed the book around the group and suggested they glance at it while their fellow students were telling their stories. One of the students had not done his homework. He had not learned a story. He said nothing and when it was his turn to tell he told a wonderful story – the best he had done. I complemented him on the story and asked where he had found it.
This interview appeared in Swag of Yarns, Australia’s National Storytelling Magazine, Vol 2, No 1, Autumn 1999.
How is it that you achieve absolute delight as well as success from working with children?
To me it’s almost immoral to do something you dislike just to earn money. And yet most people spend what is half their waking hours earning money. If you hate it and you spend your whole life doing that, then you’re wasting your life. When I was young I tended to change jobs a lot and I also owned a bookshop. I was trying to do work that I loved and also where I could operate on principles that I believed in. When I started at Ashton they had principles which were much the same as mine. They believed in what they were doing. Back in those days I was employed on their Sydney high school rounds. I went to schools selling books and promoting Ashton services and the main service was the book club.
Then when I was chatting in other schools they also suggested I come to their schools and do the same. I did more and more of this. There was so much demand, I had to make it more professional. In time, I became very good at enthusing teenagers about books. I would find THE passage in each novel I was reading that would grab them. And kids would be clamoring to get those books. Perhaps they borrowed them from the library. Perhaps they bought them from the book club. The important thing, as far as I was concerned, was that they wanted to read them. At this point I was reading (not telling), but I was learning a lot about how to hold an audience. In many Sydney high schools the kids will probably give you about five minutes and if they think you’re boring, you’re dead! In four years of doing that I had one riot, one almost riot and the rest of them I won!
And at about the same time the Storytelling Guild had just started in Brisbane. So I went along and was encouraged and started telling stories. I started incorporating storytelling in my school visits and over the years I became well known around Brisbane schools as a storyteller. More and more schools were saying to me. ‘John, forget about the book promotion we just want you to come and tell stories’, and it got to the point where I couldn’t do justice to that and to Ashton and I had to make a decision. It’s almost five years ago that I made that choice and I haven’t looked back.
How do you communicate with the schools and set up your bookings?
How do you research your stories?
John lives in Brisbane, Queensland with two computers and several other machines. He has three adult children, Melanie who lives in England, Linda who lives with her mother in Sydney and David who lives in Brisbane and who has recently presented John with his first grandchild, Ben.
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