You are invited on an 8-week journey with Professional Storyteller/Mythteller Brian Rohr. This class is open to beginner and experienced performers! Come with an open mind, heart and a spirit of play. For dates and location, please contact: [email protected].
From events like The Moth and Storytelling Festivals to storytelling seminars for businesses to sell more products, there is evidence of the resurgence of storytelling, both locally and globally. But how does one find their authentic voice if they want to tell the old stories? How does the ancient tradition of performative storytelling come into play in this new resurgence?
In this 8-week journey, Brian will teach the art and skill of performative storytelling, exploring the ancient stories, personal narrative and techniques on how to discover your own unique storytelling voice.
This class will include:
- What are stories and why storytelling is important
- Story based improv games
- Stories in our lives as forms of self-expression
- Allowing vs. Memorization
- Beginning, Middle and Ends
- How to pick a story to tell
- How to tell a good story with tricks and techniques of the trade
- Stage presence for Storytellers (Including what to do with no fourth wall)
- The different kinds of stories that can be told (old stories, folktales, fairy tales, religious stories, personal stories, made-up stories, etc.)
- Performance for family and friends on last day of class
Each student will also receive a free gift of Eating Baba Yaga Storytelling DVD.
Week 1 – Improv
The first week will be devoted to exploring storytelling using the art of improvisation. We will have activities, play games and other ways of exploring self-expression and ones relationship with the stories in their lives, both real and imaginative.
Weeks 2-5 – Oral Storytelling
The next four weeks will be devoted to exploring and learning about the oral tradition of storytelling, including: what are different kinds of stories that can be told (old stories, folktales, fairy tales, personal stories, made-up stories, etc.), how to pick a story, allowing vs. memorization, beginning middle and ends, how to tell a good story with some tricks of the trade. This will be the time of really honing in the skills of storytelling.
Weeks 6-8 – Performance Prep & Concert
The following two weeks will be all about preparing for a performance, how to put a quality show together, picking your story and how you want to perform your story, how to deal with nerves and anything else related to the performance. The last class will be a performance for your fellow classmates and any family and friends you wish to invite.
About Brian Rohr:
Brian Rohr is a Storyteller, Poet and Healing Arts Practitioner who resides here in the Pacific Northwest. Rohr has toured as a featured teller for national audiences, taught and performed at major conferences, festivals, high schools, universities, synagogues and libraries.
The list includes: the 14th International Jewish Renewal Aleph Kallah; Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle; Illinois State University; Trickster Tales Storytelling Festival in Washington State; Tapestry of Jewish Learning in Austin, TX, the Puget Sound Mankind Project and more.
Rohr was named by JT News as a “10 Under 40” recipient – Honored as one of ten notable Jewish people in Washington under 40 years old who are doing important and inspirational works within the community, specifically honored as a storyteller.
As a storyteller, Brian focuses on the old stories – the myths, folktales and fairy tales – from many different cultures, knowing that these old stories are alive, vital and can inform us on how to live our lives as authentic human beings, helping to make sense and meaning of the living world we are a part of.
Rohr is a member of the National Storytelling Network, the Healing Story Alliance, the Portland Storytellers Guild and the Jewish Storytelling Coalition.