While the Rondebosch United Church have been remarking on the fact that it took a storyteller from Australia to tell them they had a storytelling course around the corner, I have discovered that one of the stories told here exists in a book that has been on my shelves for 20 years. Mama Rhino discovers a red dress in a shop window and it proves irresistible to her. Well, guess what happened to me last Friday?! My friend Maria told me she had found a shop with great African dresses. The outfits didn’t fit us but on the way home we happened past a window with a red dress in it... 

Here are some samples of the African designs, my Mama Rhino red dress is yet to be revealed but the story can be found in Arnold Lobel’s collection  Fables.

I did not expect my own take home knowing from the first Keys to Re-enchantment workshop would be about clarity, but my decisiveness is now called forth by yellow! Julia Reid suggested that colour can assist in reminding you of a chakra you want to pay attention to so you can see the results on my little desk here at Rondebosch.

Two notes re workshops:

The forthcoming Keys to Re-enchantment workshop in Melbourne March 16 -  18 has an early bird that is about to close, so if you missed the flyer, scroll down to the archive below and contact Julia Reid asap. She is at juliareid@beyondsuccess.com.au

And the Rondebosch United Church workshop was a delight, 25 people showed up at one week’s notice, and then several of them came to the storytelling concert at Erin Hall last night ­– story is alive and well in Africa!

Here are our feet – the course participants for The Storyteller in the Community in Cape Town. Below are cups laid out at a place I only visited once…
 

This weekend I visited the township of Kayamandi on the outskirts of the university town of Stellenbosch in the wine country outside of Cape Town. I joined an environmental education program and told stories to 40 children – a smaller gathering than the 300 children at the Reading Club at Philippi township last Saturday. The young woman who translated into Xhosa was fantastic. After the program I got tacked onto a house-to-house survey checking on enrolments for the Playgroup and also asking Pet owners about having their dogs spayed! I felt fairly extraneous to the process as I accompanied one of the local teachers, but it was an education for me.

 Looking forward to this workshop I will be offering at Rondebosch United Church in Cape Town on Wednesday Feb 15, 6- 8pm.

I love teaching people how to remember a story by gesture as well as walking forwards and backwards through it until they really know their way around. We’ll also do the ring model – engagement through story –  which is a lovely shorthand way of remembering how to hold the jewel of  your story up to the light. I never get tired the way these practices and ways of seeing can free people into their own story making.

Here I am all set to go!

Cape Town can serve a good coffee, but ask for an iced coffee on a hot afternoon and you are likely to be served something approximating an icecream thickshake – to be avoided at all costs. I managed yesterday to explain my preference for an iced coffee with discernible ingredients. Just to wind it up one more notch, in the storytelling course we have been working on separating out ingredients in the task of telling a story – examining the kinds of relationship between teller tale and audience. Sue and Ashley remind us that there are no rules except that you need to know what choices you are making, – otherwise you get the thickshake version. If you imagine three concentric circles - close in the teller is enacting pieces of the story, the next layer is reacting to the story and inviting the audience to respond with you. The third and outermost layer is the neutral narrator. There is no privileging of one zone over another, the truth is you need to go between them. And the trick is in not blending them all into a smoothie or worse still a thickshake. Suffice to say it is very much a work in progress. At least I got the iced coffee I wanted yesterday!

Sue Hollingsworth and Ashley Ramsden are skilled, experienced and amazingly fresh in their teaching. Today they unpacked some of their process with us, examining the work of story and the unanswered questions that sit inside it.  Aligning the metaphors and themes of a story with questions related to the community context is a fine art. Here they are at work with our group and the butcher’s paper! 

drink it eat it wear it… Africa does it best

here is a taste of the concert series and the delightful Erin Hall surrounds