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Talking Storytelling

TALKING STORYTELLING
Alastair K Daniel

Alastair K Daniel is a storyteller and academic living in London. His passion for oral narration informs his practice as a teacher-educator and his writing on the subject of storytelling.

This site is Alastair K Daniel's blog. Click here to go to the Story Tent's website

And here is a link to Alastair's 2011 book, Storytelling Across the Primary Curriculum

Our Recent Posts

Storying the Past: Part 5 - History and The Tales That We Tell

Storying the Past: Part 4 - Artefact-Focused Storying

Storying the Past: Part 3 - Event-Focused Storying

Storytelling Performance Part 4b: ‘I am what I am’ – role in storytelling

Oct 26, 2019

Storytelling Performance Part 4b: ‘I am what I am’ – role in storytelling

In the first part of this blog (CLICK HERE) , I introduced a layered model of storytelling (see figure 1: Storytelling Roles) and explored how a storyteller shifts between the roles of narrating from outside the story and enacting, or behaving as if they are within the story. In this second part, I will go on into more detail what evaluating means in the storytelling context, and why narrating and enacting are layered within it. Finally, I will unpick some of the complexity i

Storytelling Performance Part 4a: ‘I am what I am’ – role in storytelling

Storytelling Performance Part 3a:
Engagement strategies in
performance storytelling - Introduction

Mar 16, 2019

Storytelling Performance Part 3a: Engagement strategies in performance storytelling - Introduction

This blog is the third in an occasional series of entries exploring storytelling and performance and is linked to the conceptual model of storytelling that I developed in the second of these blogs, Storytelling Performance Part 2 – A Framework, which can be found by clicking HERE. Realising that this topic is very rich and there is a lot to be covered, I have split this blog into three sections a) Introduction b) Verbal engagement strategies and c) non-verbal strategies and c

Storytelling Performance
Part 2: A Framework

Feb 26, 2019

Storytelling Performance Part 2: A Framework

The framework for storytelling performance that is outlined in this blog is an evolving model. As of the end of February 2019 this is (I think) the fourth version of the framework, and I am grateful to the storytellers and academics with whom I have chatted to, or corresponded with, as I have been working it through. As someone who is interested in the ‘how’ of storytelling as much as the ‘what’, I have been trying to analyse what makes storytelling distinctive from other ver

Storytelling Performance
Part 1: Storytelling and theatre - an introductory discussion

Aug 21, 2018

Storytelling Performance Part 1: Storytelling and theatre - an introductory discussion

[This blog was first written in August 2018, and was updated at the end of February 2019.] In the 1990’s I took time out of teaching and toured schools in Germany with theatre productions of ‘Macbeth’ and Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Canterville Ghost’. The company was travelling in two vehicles and, on one occasion, the minibus in which four of the cast were travelling (along with all of the sets and costumes) got stuck in a traffic jam on the autobahn. This left just two of us stand

Storytelling presence and performance energy

Story memorisation – to learn or not to learn word-for-word

Apr 10, 2018

Story memorisation – to learn or not to learn word-for-word

Although I rarely work with pre-school children, I have been hugely influenced by the early childhood expert, Vivian Gussin Paley, who has described storytelling as ‘the social art of language’ (1990: 23). For me, this phrase is a reminder that storytelling is something that is we created between teller and audience. Jane Yolen says: Told and retold or read and reread, the story exists neither in the mouth nor on the page, neither in the ear nor the eye. It is created between

Storytelling spaces: teller and audience

Mar 30, 2018

Storytelling spaces: teller and audience

Storytelling takes place between people and happens somewhere. When we watch a You Tube video of someone telling a story, we are not taking part in a storytelling event, but are watching a recording of such an event. On my own You Tube channel (Alastair Daniel) you will find some examples where I have recorded stories to a microphone, but this is something with which I am very uncomfortable as, for me, storytelling is a social activity in which there is real two-way communica