The Storyteller and The Story

The Storyteller and The Story

The story comes alive through the body of the storyteller. We attune to the body through movement meditation practice and vocal warm-ups that expand our expressive range. We each describe a memory, like a movie—location, time, cultural detail, action, character. As witnesses, we listen for the striking images in each tale, sketch the images, note the key phrases, reflect the imaginative power of the story back to the storyteller. We take our sensory “data” from this experience and write short scenes, experimenting with different ways to shape a narrative and tell a story.

No prep or experience necessary!

Susan Banyas

is a multi-media choreographer and writer whose Soul Stories and Everyday Dancing forms integrate movement, image, and language into physical poetry. She has created numerous dance/theatre works and performance monologues, including The Hillsboro Story and No Strangers Here Today,multi-voiced investigations that illuminate the role her Ohio hometown played in American civil rights history and the journey to encounter that history directly. Both pieces toured nationally and are expanded into a non-fiction book, The Hillsboro Story, a kaleidoscope history of an integration battle in my hometown. She is currently working with a curriculum designer to pilot an activist teaching model that trains students to be embodied storytellers, investigators, and documentary artists.  www.susanbanyas.com