Storytelling | Writing | Language

Earlier this month, I wrote a blog post for Just Children's Books, a local blog that focuses on reviewing imaginative children's books, promoting literacy in children, and promoting reading and books, particularly for fundraising. 

Since working with my roster artists, I've a new found appreaciation for cultural stories, particularly ones rooted in folktales and oral storytelling.  My guest post highlighted the Treehouse Shakers' inspiration in worldy folk tales as the platform for their dance-plays.  Their three touring dance-plays -- Animal Rhythms, Coyote's Dance, and Desert Travels - are based on ancient folklore and tie in very nicely with the Gerald McDermott "trickster" tales - whether for curricula tie-ins or a means for families to continue the dialogue started with the performance. 

For Just Children's Books, I talked a bit about my favorite trickster tale - the one of Coyote - and the role of the trickster.  Click through to read the entire post.  Below is an excert from The Treehouse Shakers' production of Coyote's Dance. 

I've had a lot going on in recent weeks.  I'm finally getting up to speed in making some announcements:

Sebastienne Mundheim/White Box Theatre

I've known Sebastienne since my days at PennPAT.  I will never forget sitting in on a panel review of artists' work and being positively mesmerized by both her craft and the raw beauty of the productions she creates.  At the time Piccadilly Arts was still on the back burner.  Fast forward a few years and I have the amazing opportunity to work with this talented interdisciplinary artist.  Moreover, Sebastienne creates with all audiences in mind --- all of her productions delight young and old.  I feel like we are a good match and I'm super excited to be providing marketing consulting for her newest piece (it debuted in April at PIFA) being remounted for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Here's a blurb about it with a link to the full release (also on here).

I'm excited to announce that Philadelphia interdisciplinary artist Sebastienne Mundheim of White Box Theatre remounts her production of Paris Wheels and the Ready Maids present: Not the Henri Rousseau that Some of You Know for the 2011 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. This production was originally commissioned by the Kimmel Center for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts in April 2011. The positive audience responses suggest it will be a winner at this year's Fringe Festival. Highlights include it being one of just a few family friendly performances at the otherwise avant-garde festival, targeting the youngest of audiences members. Additionally, the Fringe performances feature a new cast of professional dancers. Finally, Sebastienne's artistry cannot be matched -- her attention to detail, simplicity and beauty shines in the eloquently handcrafted puppetry. Told through movement, music, storytelling and puppetry, Paris Wheels and the Ready Maids can not be missed.

Full release here.

  
Photos: Top to Bottom: White Box Theatre performs at the Kimmel during PIFA 2011; Bike shot; Henri Rousseau

M I S Captial

I met the fellas of M I S Captial at IPAY back in January.  They are a Philadelphia based real estate consulting and development firm specializing in helping nonprofits (typically schools) navigate the capital campaign process. They are working with other colleagues of mine on aquiring an old space in Center City that will be used as a venue for performing arts for young audiences.  We've been diligently working since mid-late Spring on marketing messages and a new website for them.  My design partner Beth has been awesome and the guys have been such great to work with.  The project is winding down and I will spotlighting the website soon.
 

Back in June I attended a workshop sponsored by Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance on storytelling, particularly focused on using the power of story to tell an organization's story.  You know - THE powerful story, whatever it is, that moves someone to act in some positive, favorable way.

Andy Goodman from The Goodman Center (Chicago, LA, NYC) presented the 90 minute workshop and even I - someone pretty skilled in communicating messages and who has the privledge to work with/for amazing storytellers - walked away with a few new ideas.  I did want to share the components of a wonderful take-away worksheet.  This is useful to anyone who wears any sort of communications hat, and in theory, the story, while delivered differently by every single person, should still paint the same consistent picture and deliver the same consistent message(s). Full credit to The Goodman Center for the following points (some paraphrased by me for length).

Storytelling: Tapping the Power of Narrative
A story structure worksheet

Consider a point about your organization or program that you typically make to someone and choose a story that will illustrate the point. It needs to be something that actually happened.

Answer all of the following questions relating to the incident - You'll need to be able to answer them all for the incident to rise to the level of a true story.

1. What is the point you want this target group of people to take away upon hearing the story?

2. To what audience do you want to tell this story (Public, legislators, a combo? The language you use - as well as the desired result - will be shaped by this choice).

3. Who is the main character/protagonist of your story? It needs to be a PERSON.  An organization itself cannot be a protagonist.

4. What is the back story of the protagonist?  What does the audience need to know about the character and his/her/their situation to understand the context of the story?

5.What is the "inciting incident" that upsets the balance of the story?

6.What is the protagonist's goal?

7. What is the first barrier standing in the way of the protagonist (internal and external barriers)?

8. How does the protagonist pursue the goal? (What happens as the character encounters subsequent barriers, and if there are no barriers, what is keeping the narrative interesting for the audience)?

9. What is the moment of truth in this story? (What happens, what is the changing moment, and what does it shou us about the human condition)?

10. What is the resolution of the story?  (Does the main character achieve his/her/their goal?  Is there a different outcome)?

11. What is the meaning of the story? What do you want the audience to take away?

12. How does the story relate to your organization's work? (Is it emblamatic of your mission?  Does it show what a single program does? Does it explain why your organization does what it does? What should the audience see when you widen the lens)?

I encourage you to think of some of your favorite stories and apply the above guidelines to the story for some examples, especially if you need a little direction in thinking of your own for your organization.  I love stories and especially love great storytellers - whether it's a mundane story, a crazy "this only happens to me" story, or an emotionally charged one - the actual story itself always needs a beginning, middle and end; a set of characters, a plot, a conflict, and certainly a resolution or some "message" or "moral" at the end.  A great storyteller has a way with language, pronunciation and annunciation.  They can bring a theatrical quality to the telling of the tale that will get you the desired result. 

Your organization's story is wonderful for both brand awareness, internal communications, external marketing, and fundraising. 

I'm so excited to have the wonderful educators and teaching artists at Philly Young Playwrights contribute a blog post on the great work they do with Philadelphia youth. This organization illustrates daily the power of art in affecting social change.

 
PHILADELPHIA
YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS

“I would recommend Young Playwrights to another student because the experience of it is really fun and you learn new things every time.” – Grover Washington Middle School student playwright

Philadelphia Young Playwrights believes that every student has a voice worth hearing. When the average class size of a Philadelphia public school classroom is upwards of thirty students, such can be a challenge. This is the size of classes at Grover Washington Middle School, for example, where Young Playwrights (through a partnership with Arts Rising –www.myartsrising.org) recently finished a year long program with the entire sixth grade. To ensure that every student received the attention they needed, three Teaching Artists partnered with the three literacy Teachers to approach three major benchmarks of crafting a play – brainstorming, writing, and revising. Through the use of multi-layered approaches, the teaching teams ensured that students of varying learning styles had an equal opportunity to explore and understand playwriting, as well as the literacy skills it requires.

For the students at Grover Washington this year, some of the modes of exploration and brainstorming included reading and discussing excerpts of published and student plays, using music as a means to spark the imagination, and passing objects around a circle to generate lists of possible characters, conflicts and settings. While writing their plays, students participated in activities which featured an element of writing, such as character, by looking at a strong example of that element as used by one of their fellow students in the class. One such student playwright, after looking at the list of over ten details about his character Duke that his classmates had identified in his one and a half page play in progress, asked the Teaching Artist if he could take the typed up copy of his play home with him to show his mother. By the end of the year, his play was over twelve pages long and it was celebrated by all his classmates.

In April, at a point when students had completed at least the first draft of their plays, Young Playwrights brought a touring production of A Bully Problem to Grover Washington, with a cast of professional actors from the Philadelphia area. A play written by a fifth grader at William Penn Charter School, A Bully Problem provided the students with multiple layers of discovery: they explored what the play looked like on the page in their classrooms before seeing it presented on the stage, they experienced a full production of a play that was written by a student their own age, and they also had the opportunity to discuss the topic of bullying by brainstorming and sharing what they each would do should they ever be faced with a bully like the protagonist was in the play.

To connect the performance of A Bully Problem back to their own individual playwriting, each Grover Washington classroom had two visits from professional actors from the Philadelphia area, including two of the actors featured in A Bully Problem. During these workshops, the professional actors helped the Teaching Artist, Teacher and students to read every students’ play in progress. Not only did this give every student an opportunity to see how the words they had written on the page were interpreted by an actor, but after his or her work was read aloud, each student had an opportunity to hear positive feedback and questions about their first draft from the audience of their peers. Just one of the many ways Young Playwrights encourages Teaching Artists to introduce revision to the classroom, this method allows every student one of many opportunities to be the spotlight to be celebrated and treated as a true artist.

Finally, as students worked independently on their revisions, each playwright received multiple one-on-one conferencing opportunities as well as written feedback from their Teaching Artist. A student playwright was awed to receive a copy of their play back from her Teaching Artist with an entire page of written compliments and feedback, saying with awe, “You wrote all of that about my play?” In another classroom, after a Teaching Artist finished a conference with a student playwright, the Teacher articulated her amazement that he had completed a play and was working on revisions, because the student had rarely turned in writing assignments in the past.

The Grover Washington students have taken ownership of their voice and their ideas to wear both with pride – one student playwright even called finishing their play their proudest achievement. This confidence has already spread to the students’ approach to their schoolwork. One student found that, “It helped me because revising this helped me want to revise my school work, because my school work is just as important as my play.” Another student playwright indentified a similar experience, “Writing and revising my play helped me with constructed responses and essays.”

Through such partnerships with schools and Teachers, Philadelphia Young Playwrights promotes literacy, creativity, problem solving, academic skills, motivation and self-empowerment for students with varying backgrounds and abilities in grades K-12. Students care about their stories, grow excited about the playwriting process and assume ownership of their writing. When students write about their lives, they are empowered to change them.

 
Photos compliments of Canary Promo & Design

About Philadelphia Young Playwrights
Every young person has a voice worth hearing. Philadelphia Young Playwrights is an arts education organization that taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting. This is their 23rd year of creating intensive playwriting workshops for 1,700 students in up to 50 classrooms throughout the region. More than 1,000 student playwrights each year submit their original plays to their Annual Playwriting Festival. If you would like to learn more about Young Playwrights, about how to bring Young Playwrights to your school, or about how you can give your support, please visit the website: www.phillyyoungplaywrights.org.

Treehouse Shakers is part of the Piccadilly Arts' family artist roster. I'm happy to repost and share this blog entry from the company's artistic director, Mara McEwin. This is taken from her blog, Mara's Treehouse.

Sharing the Stories

I have always been drawn to Coyote stories. I have always been drawn to the first people of our land. I grew up in a place where being close to nature was part of my every day. As a child I hunted arrow heads in the red desert cliffs near my home. I climbed the rocks when I needed an escape, solitude, a place to imagine. Both of my parents, taught me a deep appreciation for the Earth, her beauty and what she offers. The Wyoming landscape became our church. We spent our free time hiking, picnicking, riding, camping, and enjoying her beauty. My favorite hide out was in the cliffs above our town. I used that place to imagine myself living among the first people. My grandmother always reminded me that one of my great Irish grandfathers had wed into the Ojibway. She has these lineage lines written into the Family Bible, marking the marriage and the children, and eventually these lines lead to my birth. Where I grew up, the reservations were all around us, the unjust stories of the land being taken away from the people, still fresh in the collective conscious. I feel connected to this community.

Coyote's Dance in 2006 at The Ailey Citigroup Theater

When I first started storytelling in New York City, I pulled from my collection of stories from my childhood, and Coyote stories. I found that Coyote was a great teacher, and I could relate to his antics. He is a risk taker, a dream maker. Something I can only hope to be.

When we premiered Coyote's Dance in 2006, we had a wonderful response both from the Wyoming community and from the New York City community. The New York Times even wrote a compelling review. As we have toured the piece over the years (Virginia, New Mexico, Ohio, Illinois, New York, and Wyoming) we are often told we can't tell these stories. We can't dance in this way. Emily choreographed the piece with such sensitivity to the first people. And Treehouse Shakers makes it clear in our study guides and press we aren't trying to be Native Americans. We want to share these powerful and moving stories. We have chosen ways that are artful, tasteful, and respectful. Sometimes, all non-Native Americans mind you, have told us we can't do what we are doing. And to these people I want to say, these stories must be shared. These stories are as valuable to every living person as they are to the people who live by these stories.

2008 Performance of Coyote's Dance "The Stars"

For the original program, and every program since, I have included this note "Having grown up in Wyoming, and eventually living in New Mexico, I observed coyote countless times. Coyote is often viewed as a feared menace amongst ranchers and as often, revered in Native stories as a shape shifting sacred trickster. Coyote is the only animal in North America who continues to adjust to the ever-growing human population. Coyote reaches new territories using an intelligent mind; surviving on meals from all links on the food chain. Coyote, the animal, is not that different than his story depiction. Tale after tale, Coyote adjusts to circumstances with uncanny response and his wiles. In Native cultures Coyote is a great teacher, a clown, and notorious trickster. His adventures instruct, inform and warn us human beings about our foibles and brilliance. The tales of Coyote are profound and sometimes wildly funny.

The tales in Coyote's Dance are retellings of adapted versions still shared by the Pima, Cheyenne, Okanogan and Shuswap tribes. Some of the sources I found were in American Indian Myths and Legends by Richard Erdoes and Alfanso Ortiz. They were carefully crafted and retold for all audiences, native and non-native. Inspired, I went on to discover as much about Coyote, the animal and the mythic creatures, that I could feast upon. I crafted the essence of four stories into theatrical pieces. I chose what felt universal and also redolent with Native knowledge. I hope that their spirit, wisdom and compassion remain true to the oral flow of shared language that has kept them alive and significant for a very long time. After working on Coyote's Dance, I have become a great believer in the mischief and magic of Coyote. Children everywhere love these tales."

Coyote, Fox and the Eagle Feathered Robe. Photo by Mercedes McAndrew

I am so thrilled that Coyote's Dance is returning to New York City this May. We started the year touring this piece in New Mexico and then onto Wyoming (its third tour to Wyoming). As we have been performing, I have been reminded that these are very wonderful and rich stories. The best way to keep them alive is to continue to bring them to our children and their families. I love what Laura Simms my mentor, the amazing storyteller, humanitarian, and author wrote of this piece, "Our children need nurturing good stories. Awareness of the existence of indigenous cultures of the American West, rich with oral tradition based on respect for our interdependence with the natural world, is extremely helpful to our children who often live removed from direct knowledge of ancestors and nature and diversity. In the traditional world, stories such as these tales would have more specific cultural, and often secret meanings shared among a People. However, their inherent wisdom, humor, compassion and fundamental teachings are relevant to everyone; because wisdom is based on insight and appreciation. I am so moved by the gathering of these tales, adapted respectfully from four native sources that make up Coyote's Dance. I am so moved by the generosity of traditional peoples who share what they can of their culture for the benefit of all children. My hope is that as many children as possible experience the joy and meaning of this wonderful theater event. In these deeply troubling times we need to expose our children to dynamic experiences of happiness, diversity and hope."

I hope you too will come and bring your families to appreciate the stories, to experience the dance, to hear the music. It is a performance that is dear to Treehouse Shakers, and is one, we feel, of deep importance. We hope you will join us!

*********************************************
Treehouse Shakers Presents Coyote’s Dance
Written By Mara McEwin
Choreographed By Emily Bunning
Original By Music Roderick L. Jackson & Ulali

Join Treehouse Shakers with their original dance-play, Coyote’s Dance, written by Mara McEwin, choreographed by Emily Bunning and music by award winning musicians Roderick Jackson and the First Women’s Nation a cappella group, Ulali. Coyote’s Dance leads audiences into the remarkable world of Coyote, the infamous mischief-maker from Native American cultures. Follow Coyote as he humorously tries to turn himself blue with the help of a songbird, outwit a sly and handsome Fox for his eagle feathered-robe and dances with the mesmerizing stars in the universe. The set, compiled of several trampolines, keeps audiences thoroughly awe-struck as Coyote and friends fly, jump and dance through the air. The engaging contemporary dance, live music and beautiful costumes will have even the youngest of audience members dancing and laughing in their seats.

Coyote’s Dance is geared to be immediately digestible by younger children, but has enough cleverness and wit to win over audiences of all ages. This May, don’t miss the return of Coyote’s Dance, it will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before!

Date/Time: May 4, 5, & 6 @ 11 am (School Performances)
May 7 @ 1:30 pm (Public Performances)
Where: The Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th St. (Corner of 9th Ave.)
Tickets: $15 General Public,
Call for Student Discounts and Group Rates
Box Office & Info: 212.715.1914
treehouseshakers.com
To Buy Tickets Online: Go to Tickets

Subway: A, C, 1, B, D to Columbus Circle or Q, N, R to 57th St./7th Ave.

Performers: Ashley McGill, Malinda Crump, Roderick Jackson, Mara McEwin, Sarah Milosevich, and Miranda Wilson
Original Music: Roderick Jackson & Ulali
Costumes: Patti Gilstrap
Lighting Design: Dan Ozminkowski
Treehouse Shakers Info: www.treehouseshakers.com

Coyote’s Dance is made possible in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by the New York State Council on the Arts

Mara McEwin, Co-Artistic Director of Treehouse Shakers will perform on Radio Bloomsday this Wednesday, June 16th from 9pm-10pm. Mara joins a stellar line up of performers including Jerry Stiller, Alec Baldwin and many others. Check it out - WBAI 99.5FM in NYC and online at wbai.org. Artists interpret James Joyce's Uly...sses and related literature through radio performance and song. 

Piccadilly Arts recently added Treehouse Shakers to its roster of family and young audience artists. The company offers several programs aimed at elementary, middle, and high school students including the newest piece to their repertory, Let's Talk About It.

Visit the Artists section for more information.