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C. F. F Center of Folktales and Folklore |
Professional storytellers in Israel
Dr. Yoel Perez
Ben Gurion
University, Israel Doctorate
Synopsis 2005 The subject of this research is
“Professional storytellers in Israel”. The concept "teller" or
“storyteller” in this work refers to its limited significance: A
professional storyteller who performs in front of audience for money and
earns his living from this work partially or wholly. In the western world, including Israel,
professional storytelling as a modern performing art, is relatively a new
phenomenon. Some researches had been done in the
United States and in Canada, but to the best of my knowledge, in Israel there
was no ordered attempt to investigate the scope of this phenomenon and its social and
cultural significance. In this work: (a) I map, classify and
describe the phenomenon in its generality. (b) I describe the formal and
informal training processes of professional storytellers in Israel. (c) I
check their narrative repertoire, its sources and the ways of its shaping,
and their linkage to traditional storytellers and traditional narrative
materials. (d) I propose a typological model of the storytelling art. (e) I
examine a small number of selected storytellers according to the proposed
model and I make a profound analysis that includes defining of personal profile
of each one of them, giving qualitative evaluation to their capabilities as
storytellers, analyzing of their professional development processes and
checking their place in the community of professional storytellers. The typological
model that is proposed in this work: (a) Defines and
describes the storytelling art with all its components: narrative sources,
repertoire, audiences, and narrative techniques. (b) Gives
tools and criterions for qualitative evaluation of professional storytellers
(c) Enables building of unique profile for every teller, profiles that can be
a basis for comparison with other tellers. (d) Enables to understand
the building, preparation and shaping processes of the show that precede to its performing on the stage (e) Enables to
characterize the artistic development processes of tellers. In the first
chapter, the research questions are presented in
3 domains: (a) General mapping of the phenomenon and its characteristics. (b)
Describing and analyzing of the workshop for training of storytellers in “Bet
Ariela” in 2002. (c) Detailed
analyzing of 4 storytellers that represent different orientations in modern
art of storytelling. In the sequel of
this chapter, I discussed the research background and I review the professional
literature of this domain. First I review briefly
the research of folktales and I deal with different approaches. Then I
discuss the research of storytelling as traditional verbal performing art in
Asia and Africa. Later I review guiding books and
handbooks that deal with the new art of professional storytelling. In this part I deal with non-academic publications, mainly in the
Unites States, that were written by professional storytellers. I also discuss
briefly the history of the storytelling renaissance in the United States,
Canada, and some other countries Then I discuss the scientific research
of the new storytelling art. I review in particular the books of the American
researcher Josef Sobol and the Canadian researcher
Kay Stone. In the end of this part I discuss the
phenomenon of the new storytelling art in Israel and review books and essays
that deal with this domain, in particular the books of Tamar Alexander, Galit Hazan-Rokem and Eli Yasif. Later I describe the research populations
that I checked: (a) The group of professional storytellers in Israel (b) The
graduates of the workshops of 'Bet Ariela' (c)
Three teachers in these workshops. (d) A group of students
in the workshop of 'Bet Ariela'. (e) Four professional storytellers that represent different
orientations according to the model that I built. In the end of this chapter
I discuss briefly the innovations of my research: (a) The first attempt to
check the phenomenon of professional storytellers in Israel. (b) A new perspective
for the understanding of the phenomenon of the stage performer, a perspective
that includes the processes of selection, shaping and performing of narrative
material that precede to the performance itself. (c) Presenting of the training system in a central workshop of
storytelling training in Israel. (d) Proposing of a
typological model of the professional storytelling art. (e) Describing of the repertoire and the training techniques of 4
storytellers in Israel. (f) Characterizing of the
linkage of professional storytellers in Israel to traditional materials and
techniques of traditional storytelling. The second chapter deals with the
general population of storytellers in Israel. The information source is 47
questionnaires that were sent to Jewish storytellers
all over Israel. The responders to the questionnaire can be considered as a representative statistical specimen
of all Jewish storytellers in Israel that according to my estimation their
number is about 200. From the analysis of these questionnaires one can sketch a characteristic profile of
a professional storyteller in Israel: Born in Israel to Ashkenazi parents,
has academic degree, age 45-55 that defines himself as secular. The
proportion of women in the storytelling population is 74% women and 26% men.
Checking of the professional occupations of the tellers in past and present
shows that a great part of the storytellers have
strong tendencies to the domains of teaching, education, artistic and theatre
occupations. 71% of them passed through the workshops
of ‘Bet-Ariela’. Additional formal trainings of the
participants in the survey were voice training, theatre studies of different
kinds, biblio-therapy studies and workshops of
creative writing. 13% from the participants in the survey did not pass any
formal training as storytellers. 27% from the participants in the survey
defined their occupation in storytelling as their main profession. Most of
the tellers occupy with storytelling as a secondary profession or as
completion to other activities, like theatre and bibliotherapy.
The scope of activity changes a lot from one teller to another and moves
between 2-20 performances per month. The main performing places are
home-circles, libraries, pensioners clubs, schools and kindergartens. More
than 60% perform for all ages. The professional storytelling in Israel is
more and more relevant to adult populations. 75% perform also as volunteers to audiences
of senior populations and patients in hospitals and are involved in social
activities. Most of the storytellers perform alone
on the stage. 28% of them use special costumes. 38% of them combine singing
in their performances. 55% use games, story-games, or other forms of audience
activation. According to the data I
collected storytelling clearly differs from the theater art. The main tools
they use are the voice and the intonation. The visual side is limited mainly
to body language. Checking of the repertoire show that 81%
of the stories are folktales from all over the world, but only 17% of them
take stories from their own tradition. Most of the storytellers in Israel take
their repertoire from written sources. Only few of them are
connected to a living tradition and traditional storytellers, but the
percentage of Jewish folktales in their repertoire is 55%. The popular traditional material is 81%
in comparison to literary material (64%). This fact is very interesting:
Storytellers feet old written traditional materials to m,odern audiences. The length of the performance is between
45 minutes to 1.5 hour. Many storytellers intertwine connecting
segments between their stories. 47% of them use verbal connecting segments —
short anecdotes, explanations and dialogue with the audience. 26% of the
storytellers integrate as connecting segments music or singing. In the
absence of an established institution where storytellers can perfect their
art, their artistic development is done primarily by experimentation and
gaining experience in throughout their performances. The third chapter deals with
graduates of the workshops in ‘Bet-Ariela’. The
source of the information is 35 questionnaires that were
filled out by the workshop graduates. The survey asked for personal
information, family and ethnic background, employment and education, previous
training in storytelling, the scope of activity as a storyteller and an
evaluation of the workshops. The ratio between men and women in the workshop
was 1:3. The average age of the graduates, at the time they were admitted to the workshops was 46. Although the
professed goal of the workshops was to train students to become active
storytellers after their studies, the percentage of young people that were admitted (ages 23-35) was very low: only 25.7%. It
seems that in spite of the increase in demand for
storytellers in Israel, the profession is not considered desirable
enough for young people. The profile that emerges, over 19 years, of the
students of the workshops in storytelling training at Bet Ariela
is very similar to the one that exists in the group of storytellers: Israeli
born, born to Ashkenazi parents, has college level education, is between the
ages of 31 and 49 and defines himself as secular. An investigation into the
employment of the storytellers in the past and at present shows a strong
tendency in the direction of employment in the areas of education, arts and
theater. 71.4% of the storytellers define themselves as secular. 63% of the workshop graduates who
answered the survey serve today as professional storytellers. 54% of the
graduates who are not active today as storytellers reported that the
workshops improved their storytelling very very
much, while of the graduates who are active today as
storytellers 50% reported that the workshops improved they storytelling very
much. This finding can be due to the fact that
those graduates who put into practice what they learned in the workshops have
less regard to the benefit they drew from the workshops, as opposed to those
graduates who did not experience in practice professional storytelling.
Likewise, it is possible to point towards an increase throughout the years
(especially in the last few years 1998-2002) in the benefit the graduates
have assessed the workshops to provide them with. 39% of the graduate who are not active
today as storytellers say that the workshops increased greatly their
ability to locate storytelling material and prepare it for telling from memory.
15% of this group said that there was little benefit. In the group of
active storytellers the situation is opposite: only
23% thought the workshops increased a great deal their ability to
locate storytelling material while 43% said that the workshops only helped
them very little in this regard. As with the previous question, one
can witness a difference between those graduates who became active
storytellers and those who did not implement what they learned
professionally. The graduates who became professional storytellers have less
regard to the impact and benefit the workshops had on their ability to locate
stories and prepare them for storytelling from memory. 46% of the
graduates who are not currently active as storytellers, believe that the
workshops improved their understanding of the art of storytelling greatly,
while only 27% of the active graduates believe so. From an analysis of the answers to the
question “In which areas do you think the workshops gave you new abilities or
deepened and made broader previous abilities?” it seems that active graduates
benefited from the workshops, generally, more than inactive graduates. The
average difference between the two groups was almost 12%. In particular there was a big difference between the groups in
areas that involve the use of voice, dramatic ability, emotional
expressiveness and communication with the audience. In these areas the disparity between the two groups was more than
18%. When one reviews the difference between the
groups in different years, one can see that there is an upward trend in the
benefit that active graduate got from the workshops while there is a decrease
in the benefit drawn from the workshops for the inactive graduates. It seems
that there is, with time, an increasing heterogeneity among the students who are admitted to the workshops. It seems plausible that
those students who became active storytellers once the workshops ended made
better use of the tools their acquired, and in any case
because of the work in practice as story tellers, they tend to appreciate
more the tools they received in the workshops. The sample upon which this chapter is based is of 6.1% of the workshop graduates. (35 out of 568 graduates). Statistically, this is a good
and reliable and sample for the first five parts of the survey (personal
information, family and ethnic background, employment and education, previous
training in storytelling and scope of activity as a storyteller). However,
one must treat with some caution the conclusions that result from the sixth question which dealt with the evaluation of the workshops,
for two reasons: (1) Those who were
interviewed did not all answer the survey within the same period of time from
having completed the workshops. (2) Some of those interviewed completed the
survey immediately upon finishing the workshop or very closely thereafter.
These interviewees did not have enough time to solidify their assessment of
the workshops and their benefit as storytellers or future storytellers. These workshops were
given throughout a period of about 20 years during which there were
many changes in the content of the workshops and their leaders. Nonetheless,
one can point towards a general trend of improvement in the assessment of the
benefit of the workshops by the graduates throughout the years. This upward
trend can be attributed to the improvement in the
teaching strategies and the content of the workshops. Another trend that can
be pointed out, and which is supported by material I gathered from interviews
with the workshop leaders, is that in the workshops there was greater
emphasis on providing practical storytelling techniques rather than an in
depth study of theoretical material that had to do with the art of
storytelling — sources for stories, relation to the past, the cultural and
social significance of the art of storytelling and its place in the cultural
activity in Israel. The fourth chapter
deals with the teaching techniques in the workshops for storytelling training
in Bet-Ariela. In order to learn about the
character of the teaching in the workshops and its guiding world
view, I interviewed in depth the three senior leaders of the
workshops: Michal Porat, Bilhaa
Feldman and Naomi Yoeli. Likewise, I documented one
lesson given by Bilhaa Feldman to first-year
students. The guiding philosophy that
characterizes the cultural center of Bet-Ariela is
that storytelling is a profession that needs to be cultivated and developed, similar to theater, by careful study. All the
teachers on the faculty of the workshop came to the discipline of
storytelling by way of the theater. This fact had a great impact on the
design of the workshop. None of the teachers that I interviewed had real past
experience in professional storytelling and none of them performs as a
professional storyteller apart from their work in the workshop. Some of the
terms and techniques that are taught in the workshop
are taken from the theater. Nonetheless, all the teachers are well aware that
the art of storytelling is a separate art from that of the theater, and they
integrate techniques which they have borrowed from
the theater with techniques which are unique to storytelling. This workshop
had a very competitive character. The students were under constant pressure
of performing in front of an audience, and competed amongst themselves for
opportunities to perform as much as possible. During the interviews
the teaching pointed to a variety of techniques which they employ in order to
achieve the goals they have set for themselves. The main techniques are: (1)
“Grounding” — that is an awareness to one’s body and
posture during the storytelling and the sense of connection with the ground.
(2) Cleansing and emptiness — an awareness of the body and neutralizing
disturbances. (3) Work on the content of the story. (4) Work on short texts
and understanding the viewpoint of the original author of the text. (5) Choreographing of movement and body control. (6)
Becoming free of “stage freight”. (7) Facial expression
with voices and identification of an action (tonal design of the sentences
and movements from rest to motion). (8) Group work. The general feeling of the teachers that
came to light in the interviews is that the
workshops do in fact achieve their goals and provide students, upon
completion of the workshop, with a good starting point for their professional
work, but that the time constrains are too severe. Economical reasons make it
so that the number of students in a group (between 20 and 25) is far greater
than optimal. It was emphasized
in the interviews that not enough time is given to the topics of locating
sources for stories, and cultural background. For this reason, many students
prefer to tell modern works of fiction which are less
suitable for oral storytelling than folk-tales and material that has
been passed down orally. My impression as a bystander, is that
the workshop centers on the basic and important elements in the art of
storytelling; such as self-awareness while storytelling,
a deeper understanding of the content of the story and its recreation as a
story which is told orally with emphasis on the dramatic characterization of
the characters. On the other hand, from listening to the
students during the course and later from watching performances of students
who completed the courses and began to perform professionally, there is a
feeling of a “unified product”. A great number of the course graduates
perform with a dramatic style with a declamatory character. Not enough
emphasis is put in the workshops on locating storytelling material and
acquaintance with folk storytellers and folk material as they
are recorded by folklore researchers. There is some effort made to
give the students some background in folklore and folk-tales separate from
the workshops themselves. However, the emphasis is on a theoretical
acquaintance with story genres and schools of research in the field. My investigation shows the status of the
workshops at a given moment (in 2002). There is a constant effort on behalf
of Bet-Ariela and the workshop leaders to change
and update the content of the courses and teaching methods from year to year.
The fifth chapter presents a
typological model for storytelling which I
developed. The model is primarily for use as a research tool in the analysis
of the new art of storytelling in Israel and treats the characteristics of
the new art of storytelling. Nonetheless, it is also applicable to similar
phenomena around the western world and for the study of the art of
traditional storytellers both professionals and amateurs.
The model does not only relate to the performance of the
story in front of an audience. It deals also with many of the preliminary
processes that have to do with choosing the story material and its
manipulation and to a variety of other processes that have to do with the
personal development of the storyteller and the development of his world. The
goals of the model are: (1) a definition and description of the techniques
and processes that characterize the art of storytelling and set it apart
from other performing arts. (2) A definition and
description of different types of storytellers, and a comparison
between their working methods. (3) Providing tools
for a qualitative assessment of the art of storytelling. (4) Presentation of the artistic development of the storyteller
as a process in time and a characterization of the connection between
this process and the more general biography of the storyteller.
(5) An assessment of the place of the art of
storytelling within the new Israeli culture and art. The structure of the
model. The art of the storyteller is presented as a temporal process, a process that lasts
durably. The storyteller gathers his stories from different sources,
refashions them and presents them to his audience. In light of this, the
model centers on three areas: (1) the sources of the story repertoire
and its creation. (2) The design of narrative
material. (3) The presentation techniques and
the connection with the target audience. This tri-part process, of locating the
stories, their re-fashioning and their performance in front of an audience,
occurs on four different levels: (1) the biography of the storyteller. (2) The artistic activity of the storyteller taken generally.
(3) The performance of the stories. (4) A single story. The difference among the levels goes
beyond the difference in their temporal duration. In each level
there are processes of feedback, learning and change. In what follows is a
general scheme of the model: 1. First Field - Spotting the
sources of the narrative repertoire and its construction. 1.1 Biographical
scale of the teller. 1.1.1
Familial, social and cultural background. 1.1.2
Active process of looking for roots. 1.2 The general
artistic activity scale of the teller. 1.2.1
Formal ways of training – workshops and courses. 1.2.2
Informal ways of training. 1.2.3
Teaching and guidance. 1.2.4 Boundaries of the
repertoire. 1.3 The show scale. 1.3.1
Spotting a group of stories that have inner connections. 1.4 The single story
scale. 1.4.1
Written sources. 1.4.2 Oral
sources. 1.4.3
Personal sources. 2.
Second Field - Shaping of the narrative materials. 2.1 Biographical scale
of the teller. 2.2 The general
artistic activity scale of the teller. 2.3 The show scale. 2.3.1Combining stories to an
entire show. 2.3.2
Constructing the show map. 2.3.3
Integration of musical elements. 2.3.4
Integration of visual elements and elements of senses of taste, smell and
touch. 2.3.5
Integration of additional tellers and integration of an instructor. 2.3.6
Integration of additional artists. 2.4 The single story
scale. 2.4.1 The
passage from written text to oral text. 2.4.2 Re-shaping of the
story and memorizing it. 3.
Third Field - Performing techniques and relationship with the audience. 3.1 The audience. 3.1.1 Age. 3.1.2 The
communal element. 3.1.3 The
gender element. 3.1.4 The
Socio-economic element. 3.1.5
Special elements. 3.2 Size of audience. 3.3 Place of show. 3.4 Time and duration of show. 3.5 Performing techniques. 3.5.1 Vocal and visual techniques. 3.5.2
Techniques that activate the senses of smell, taste and touch. 3.5.3 Lingual,
structural and substantial techniques. 3.5.4
Combination of channels. 3.6 The interaction
between the teller and his audience. 3.6.1 Creating contact with
the audience in the opening and ending of the show. 3.6.2 Fitting stories to capability
of audience. 3.6.3 Verbal dialogues. 3.6.4
Non-verbal dialogues and literary dialogues. 3.6.5 Creating a common secret between teller and
audience. 3.6.6
Using the technique of story within story. 3.6.7
The presence and attention state of the teller. In the successive part of this chapter the different parts of the model are discussed in
details. In the ending of the chapter I discuss the
possibilities of practical applications of the model and its contribution to
research. The model can be used in several forms:
(a) building of personal profile of a storyteller and making comparisons
between different tellers. (b) Building of group profile of
tellers with common denominator. (c) Analyzing the storytelling art of
traditional storytellers and comparing it to the art of modern storytellers. In spite of the fact that the described
model was built mainly in order to characterize the
professional modern tellers, it can be used as a methodic tool for analyzing
of traditional storytellers, either amateurs or professional. Such use
demands of course many changes on the detailed level
in order to feet it to other techniques and other processes, but it will keep
the basic division to fields and scales. In the successive 4 chapters of my work I analyze according to the typological model that I
built, 4 experienced storytellers that represent 4 different orientations in
the professional storytelling in Israel: (a) Generic orientation. (b) Ideological orientation. (c)
Orientation of transmission of tradition. (d)
Therapeutic orientation. The sixth chapter discusses the
storyteller Limor Shipponi.
Limor came to the domain of professional
storytelling from the domain of music. She is occupied by
both: She is a player and conductor of orchestra and a professional
storyteller. Limor is a diverse storyteller with a
very rich repertoire which includes: folk-tales,
Arthurian legends, personal stories, wine stories and stories about women.
Since 1997 she has performed in many places in
Israel and takes part in festivals locally and abroad. Likewise, she performs
in home circles and in schools. In the past few years
she is also involved in leading a variety of workshops for storytellers. With
respect to her development as an artist, Limor
represents the group of storytellers that, throughout the years, have gone
through structured training and studying due to which they have become
professional storytellers. In her storytelling
art women have a prominent place. Her stories have feminist themes and
through them she presents her audience the world of
women. In the chapter dedicated to her, I center on one of her performances,
called “the valley of vision” which presents the stories of the women of the
first Aliah. In my analysis
I deal with her sources and the way she designs them and emphasizes the
feminine element. The analysis is not only of the content of the text, but
also treats the other elements of her storytelling art: the use of voice and
body language, building of the tension in the story, language and style, the
involvement of the audience and other elements. Limor, as
someone with a musical background, spends a lot of time in a meticulous
planning of her performances. In the chapter I
discuss in depth the methodological tools she has developed in order to
create an entire, complete, performance from diverse elements. Another topic
that is dealt with at length in this chapter is the
passage from a written text to a spoken, or told, text. In the art of modern
storytellers, which relies primarily on written sources, these processes are
of great significance. By making a detailed comparison between the written
sources and the spoken text, I characterize these processes and show how Limor designs the material she gathers and makes it suit
a heterogenic audience. Likewise, in this chapter I discuss the
parallels between the vocal and visual aspects during the storytelling and
show how these two aspects are intertwined. In the biographical section of this chapter
it is emphasized how the art of storytelling is not only a profession for Limor but a way of life. Limor considers the art of storytelling as a high art which contains cultural and social messages. Her
connection to her sources is strong and visible in all areas, ranging from
her personal biography to her choice of material she wishes to include in her
performances. In addition to her work as a
storyteller, Limor does much to
further develop professional storytelling in Israel. She meets with other
storytellers, she conducts an active correspondence
with colleagues around the world, gives lecture about her art, leads
workshops for storytellers and leads a forum for storytellers on the
internet. The seventh chapter
is dedicated to the storyteller Moshe Kharmatz.
Moshe is a tour guide for sites having to do with the Holocaust and the
revival (tkuma – the establishment of the state of
Israel), such as “Yad Va’Shem”
in Jerusalem and the Hagana museum in Tel Aviv.
Moshe represents an entire group of guide who function as storytellers in
open areas. Moshe has
been involved in guiding tours for over fifteen year. In his tours he is not satisfied with presenting merely the
historical facts. The site or artifact he talks about provides him with a starting
point for presenting a very wide historical picture.
Underlying his captivating descriptions is a clear ideology
which tries to show the connection between the Holocaust in the Second
World War and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. His repertoire centers around four topics:
(1) Historical events from the early settlement in Israel (during the end of
the nineteenth century) until today. (2) Stories and
anecdotes of people who lived during that period. (3)
The Holocaust heritage. (4) Battle stories. In addition,
Moshe weaves into his performances historical knowledge of other periods and stories which are drawn from the Jewish heritage more
generally — biblical stories, Talmudic stories and legends, etc. In this chapter I concentrate on a
guiding performance that Moshe gave to an audience of members of the Moshavim movement, of Giva't Ha’Tachmoshet, of Mount Scopus, and of the Scroll of Fire
memorial (of the sculptor Nathan Rapoport) in the
Jerusalem hills. I analyze the different storytelling techniques that Moshe
uses in order to connect the different sites to the way in which he presents
to his audience his ideology. As in the previous chapter, I also show and
analyze the process of going from a written text to a told, or spoken, text.
Likewise, special emphasis is place on the continuing dialogue Moshe conducts
during his performances with his audience and the different techniques he
uses to create this dialogue: rhetorical questions,
relating to comments and questions, relating to political and ideological
subjects, actual conversation with his listeners, etc. Another important topic that is
discussed at length is the theatrical techniques Moshe uses while using the
actual sites as scenery (for example, a demonstration of the fighting
sequence in Givat HaTachmoshet
by a reconstruction of the combatants movements in the existing trenches). The eighth chapter
treats the storyteller Tzila Zan-bar
Tzur. Tzila is a
storyteller and lecturer on magical texts from central Asia and her
Judeo-Afghani tradition. Her repertoire include stories, anecdotes, poems and
saying she heard from her family, stories and other folkloric material she
gathered for Jewish, Afghani, and Persian
informants, and stories and folkloric material that she gathered from
written scholarly sources. Tzila’s ethnic
background serves as an important element in her activity as a storyteller.
In this respect she can be seen as representing a
group of storytellers that gather their stories from a living tradition. As to Tzila’s
development as an artist she can be classified as a member of “natural
storytellers” who did not go through a structured studies and training, but
rather arrived to the discipline as a result of their interest in their
heritage and ethnography. Tzila
considers herself as one who is at the junction of traditional and modern
society. She treats her art as a therapeutic tool as well as a tool for
female empowerment. Her activity as a storyteller has three goals: (1) The
preservation of a unique heritage of a small Jewish community with its
tradition and stories. (2) An encouragement of the members of that community
to change their low self-esteem and be proud of their
tradition and pass it on to other members of that community. (3) The presentation of this unique tradition to the rest of the
Israeli public and its integration into the more general cultural heritage of
the Jewish people in their renewing homeland. In this chapter
I concentrate on two similar performances that Tzila
did in front of two different types of audiences. In the chapter
the question of the affect of the audience on the design and structure of the
performance and its comparison to similar phenomena in the traditional art of
storytelling is dealt with at length. Other elements that were treated in this
chapter on Tzila are the integration of musical
elements into her performances, the use of puppets and other visual elements
and the use of techniques which stimulated the
senses of smell and touch of the listeners. The ninth chapter
deals with the storyteller Tully Flint. In this chapter emphasis was given to
the place storytelling has in all the areas of activity and life of a
professional storyteller (and not only in his artistic performances). Tully Flint is a storyteller in addition
to being a social worker and treating people who have suffered a trauma. His
activity as a storyteller is very diverse, ranging from giving classes in
"home circles" and workshops to theatrical performances on stage.
He stands out as a storyteller because of the use he makes of the art of
storytelling for therapeutic purposes. In this respect
he represents a growing number of psychologists and social workers who use
storytelling as a way of communicating with their patients. In 1991 Tully
studied at the workshop for the training of storytellers in Bet-Ariela. Today he is a professional storyteller who
performs widely. In addition he works as a group
therapist at the Tel Ha’Shomer Hospital, and as a
therapeutic social worker as well as consultant for organization and leader
of communication workshops. He began his career as a storyteller
prior to arriving at Bet-Ariela, while guiding
tours and different social function. However with
the completion of the workshop he became a professional storyteller and sees
himself primarily as such. Tully’s repertoire is
primarily based on folk-tales he has gathered from different sources,
both Jewish and other. Even when he uses literary works
he re-fashions them as folk-tales. Tully uses to a great
extent stories that are taken from Greek Mythology. He believes that a
great number of these stories provide deep psychological insights that are
applicable to our times. Tully is not only a professional
storyteller but is also employed as a social worker
in hospitals where he treats trauma patients individually and in groups. In
his work he utilizes to a great extent the art of
storytelling to communicate with his patients and make them arrive at new
insights. In this chapter on Tully I present
different storytelling techniques which he uses during his therapeutic work:
(1) The establishments of the first contact with the patients. (2) Building a
story that is specifically tailored as a therapeutic
method. (3) Building a new story for those who have
suffered a trauma. In addition to his
performances as a professional storyteller, whether alone or with a musician,
Tully has participated in the last few years in two performances by a
Jewish-Arab theater group, in the yearly theater festival in Akko (Acre).
In the chapter I discuss his social involvement in
areas that have to do with relation between Jews and Arabs in Israel. In the last chapter of my work,
the summering chapter, I discuss the innovations of my work and the
conclusions that result from it, and I compare my work to previous research
in this domain. In this chapter I present also my
personal linkage to this field as one who is occupied for many years with
professional storytelling. The subjects that are
emphasized in this chapter are the direction of an over-al lookout,
the importance of understanding the artistic development processes of
storytellers in time, and the analysis of the linkage between these processes
to the biographies of the tellers as a key point for research of modern
professional storytelling. One of the subjects that are
emphasized in the summery is the concept of the integral show that has
a special meaning in the case of professional storytelling. One more idea
that is discussed here is the proposed model as a
research tool for the understanding of storytelling processes from the point
of view of the storytellers themselves. In this chapter
I compare also in detail the personal profiles of the four tellers that were
discussed in the previous chapters. This comparison is
presented from point of view of: (a) General orientation. (b) Generic division. (c) Linkage to
therapeutic massages. (d) Overlapping areas in the
activity of the four tellers. In the comparison I emphasize the necessity of an over-al
analysis that is based on all three fields of the proposed model: (a) Sources
of the narrative repertoire and its construction. (B)
Shaping of the narrative materials. (c) Performing
techniques and relationship with the audience. In comparison tables
that I bring in this chapter, the tellers are compared according to the
different features of the typological model: familial, social and cultural
background, active process of looking for roots, formal and informal ways of
training, teaching and guidance, boundaries of the repertoire, basis of linkage
between the parts of the show, written, oral and personal
sources, constructing of the show map, integration of musical elements,
integration of visual elements and elements of senses of taste, smell and
touch, integration of additional tellers, integration of personal stories,
lingual shaping, categories of audiences, place of show and its duration,
vocal and visual techniques, lingual, structural and substantial techniques,
creating contact with the audience in the opening of the show, verbal
dialogues and using the technique of story within story. Then I discuss briefly storytelling in
the Arabic sector and orthodox sector, and the cooperation of Israeli
storytellers with their colleagues in other countries. In the end of the chapter
I emphasize the necessity that is a consequence being of my research, to
formulate the art of storytelling with terms that are not borrowed from other
arts, but with are unique to this art. |
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