Some of you will remember when German storyteller Dorte
Hentschel visited Melbourne and NSW (2013-14). Several of us had the pleasure
of hosting her and hearing her stories. Well.. Dorte has sent us a message.
Dear Storytellers,
The time passes. Still I do not have a blog or a web-page.
But I would like to let you know a little about what
happened in my professional life in 2015. I will write most of the time about
storytelling events but as well I mention some of my work as a theatre
educator.
Storytellingtime
Every year since 2010 I have told stories as part of Storytellingtime, a project
bringing storytellers into schools. In this project we are about 20
storytellers, national and international from Greece, Italy, Korea and
Great-Britain. All storytellers in the project tell mostly in primary schools
and kindergartens with a high rate of children who speak German as their second
language.
The stories we tell for the children aged 3 up to 12 years
old vary between chainstories, small legends, fairy tales and wonder tales –
depending on the age and the length of the relationship between storyteller and
group.
The German school term starts at September and ends in July.
Storytellingtime is financed by Berlin Senate for Education, so the
storytellers have the possibility to go every week into the schools and meet
three different classes regularly.
All in all the Storytellingtime storytellers meet their
audience over 30 times. On top of it we invite the children of 'our'
storytelling-classes as well as their parents to the library closest to the
school. Depending on time and possibilities we rehearse a small storytelling presentation
for the parents in the library as well as telling a story for the families in
the library.
Theatre educator
As you can see I still work a lot in Berlin.
I work there as a storyteller as well as a theatre educator.
On behalf of Storytellingtime I worked the third time
together with Lilian Matzke,
a great artist in the field of object theater. This year we created a play for
the fairy tale 'Sleeping Beauty'. Other projects Lilian and I made in schools are named 'The Wild
Goose' (2013) and 'The Brave Little Tailor' (2014).
My work as a theatre educator led me to move back to my
hometown Cottbus.
There I work in the children and youth theatre Piccolo.
With children aged 6 to 8 we created two plays inspired by
two fairytales. One is called 'The Carrot', in German 'Das Rübchen', and the
other one is called 'The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats', in German 'Der Wolf
und die sieben Geißlein'.
With teenagers aged 13 to 16 we created a play called
'Schnipselgestrüpp', English 'Scrub out of Snippets'. The play is based on a
children's book with the name 'Schnipselgestrüpp'. The calm play was telling
the story of a poor boy who was overcoming his limited environment by his fantasy.
Very special for all of us was that we could show pictures
made by one of our actors via an old slide projector. As you can see in the
pictures we used pink banana boxes for the play. Two white large boxes we used
as a screen for the pictures of the slide projector.
I feel very lucky that I continue to work with this group of
teenagers. The school term 2015/2016, we work on a play with the working title
'Being a Bird in a Fish Pond'.
Next to my work as theatre educator in Cottbus I tell
stories and give workshops in Cottbus.
Workshops
In June I was very excited as I gave my first story-telling
seminar at the TU (Technical University) in Cottbus. The storytelling-course
was integrated in the schedule for students in the second term of social
science.
A funny coincidence occurred at the time of the Seminar with
a visitor from Australia. Angela Brynn hosted me for about two weeks on Dangar
Island, Sydney. It was especially nice because Angela herself gives workshops
in communication for social workers.
In autumn I was invited to tell stories in all 13 classes of
Carl-Blechen-PrimarySchool
in Cottbus. It was very nice to challenge myself to tell 13 different stories
in one week to children aged between 6 years and 12 years.
Background and growth of the storytelling
revival in Berlin and Cottbus
Theatre Work and Storytelling in Berlin and in Cottbus keeps
me very busy. But all that kind of work would not be possible without all the
other people working in that field, bringing in new ideas, bringing new
connections, trying out, sharing their experiences and working on a network.
Since about 10 years the storytelling network grows stronger
every year.
Here comes a short historical overview about how the
storytelling grew in and around Berlin – from my point of view.
Kristin Wardetzky, a former professor at the University of
arts brought the art of storytelling into the course of theatre education. (Kristine left)
Kristin Wardetzky invented the idea of Storytellingtime. The
project leader is now is Sabine Kolbe.
(Sabine)
Furthermore Kristin Wardetzky and a group of storytellers
founded the association Erzählkunst ('the
art of storytelling').
These days the association is very busy raising money to enable
storytellers to work for refugees. Other projects the association is busy with
are organising storytelling events as 'Offene
ErzählBühne', means 'Open TellingStage', every month and 'Berlin erzählt',
means 'Berlin tells' ones every year in March.
The association 'Erzählkunst' ('the art of storytelling') is
part of the association of all German speaking storytellers from Germany,
Austria and Switzerland called 'VEE – Verband der Erzählerinnen und Erzäler e.V.'
This year the aim of 'VEE' is to become member of 'FEST –
Federation for European storytelling'.
In 2015 I was part of the meeting of 'VEE' in Hamburg as
well as part of the meeting of 'FEST' in Greece for the very first time.
'VEE' was overwhelming with connections to very nice, very
open poeple and I was busy with getting how the association is organised who
knows whom through whom and who belongs to which city, region, country.The most interesting fact I can share from this meeting is
the contact to Paul Daniel, a storyteller from Austria.
Paul Daniel organised the 'Raunachts-Telling'.The 'Rauhnächte' are known as the 'Twelve Nights' in English
speaking countries. The time between Christmas and the 6th of January are famous for being magic
and mystic and the Austrian storytellers in and around Vienna started to meet during this time to
tell stories. I was invited to tell stories, too, but anyhow my wayled me to
Bremen, far far north in the opposite direction.
Writing about Austrian storytellers brings 'Frau Wolle' in
my mind. I very much appreciate Karin Tscholls work which you can find here in
English language: HERE
Last but not least I want to mention 'FEST' in Greece.
The Hungarian storyteller Zalka Csenge wrote a nice article
about this meeting: HERE
For me it was great to meet so very many storytellers from
all over Europe. Again I was overwhelmed by all these nice people.
The seven young Turkish storytellers impressed all with
their dynamic and open appearance. Nazly Cevik is the founder of Seiba.
And in the end I want to mention that impressive idea from
the Canadian storytellers to go on a walk and tell storyies every night at
every station you reach in eight days.
I play with that idea every now and then ;-).
Dorte
Thank you Dorte for sharing your news for Europe and keeping in touch with your storytelling friends in Australia
