About Storytelling

Experience and tell stories with all your senses

Storytelling is the art of oral narration without a textbook.

Stories are told through words, facial expressions, gestures and movement - in direct communication with the audience.

Storytelling is „Cinema in your Head“

Images are conjured up in the minds of the audience.  the memory and imagination are stimulated into action, the audience is moved to another place and time.

Storytelling is participation

Storytelling takes place as an exchange between the narrator and the audience, and a storyteller who is flexible and open, never tells a story the same way twice.

Storytelling is reflection on today

Stories can allow us to reflect on the important themes of our times and create common ground for discussion. Weave your insights and knowledge into your thematic story, and allow your audience to delight in discovering them together with your main characters.

The difference between storytelling and theatre or readings

Unlike at a theatre performance, the storyteller seeks at every performance to communicate directly with the audience, with eye contact.  According to the Scottish saying, a storyteller tells her story

“eye to eye, mind to mind, heart to heart” – with the audience.

Unlike at a reading, any paper or written text on stage is taboo.  Oral literature may never have been written down or only as a storyboard of pictures or a list of titles.  The storyteller makes eye contact with the audience and uses gestures and movement to tell the story.  Ideally a storytelling performance is analogue 3D. 

Stories know no borders

How big is your story?

Good stories have at least one main character who is presented with new challenges and grows as a person solving them. As spectators or listeners, we identify with the character(s) and soon his or her behaviour stands for the behaviour of humankind – at least for the duration of the story.  

We see how this man or woman engages in conflict with friends and enemies, makes decisions, acts and overcomes the conflict. We experience the same process as if we had been there and share the same emotions.

The storyteller can decide to take a stance – and include philosophical, social and political perspectives and thus make the story multi-dimensional. Or he or she delves into the depths of the human psyche. However, he or she does it, the storyteller should be a researcher and not a parrot, just repeating a story as he or she once heard it.  It helps to ask yourself:  “Why am I telling this story – why today?  Why here?  Why to this audience?

Stories know no borders – unless, you decide to create them.