In The Beginning, There Was Nothing But a Moose: Teaching Kids to Tell Tales

Willy Claflin (co-taught by Maynard)

This hands-on workshop will give elementary school teachers (K-6) a wide variety of exciting, practical, time-tested storytelling projects, games and exercises for use in the classroom. Teachers will learn how to set up a storytelling unit, make up stories out of thin air, utilize puppets in storytelling, and use traditional folk tales to enrich social studies curriculum.

Willy Claflin has been teaching children (and teachers) to tell stories in the classroom for the past 30 years. This workshop is designed to pass along the most useful curriculum he’s run across during that period of time. www.willyclaflin.com

Taming Technology: Using the Internet for Story Biz Success

Dianne de Las Casas

Google Calendar, Billing Manager, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ping, Toodle-Do, Twitter, Blogs, Podcasting, Smartphones, Professional Storyteller, Wikipedia, YouTube… It’s a jungle out there! Technology can be so overwhelming but have no fear; your tour guide is here! Go on a safari with tech-savvy storyteller Dianne de Las Casas. Tame technology and harness its power to streamline your story biz. You’ll find out how technology’s tools can catapult your career. You’ll be swinging in no time!

Participants should have a more than cursory knowledge of the Internet and have an established storytelling business. You are encouraged to bring a wireless laptop if you have one.

*This class will require a fee beyond the $100 registration to cover on-site technology access costs.

Dianne de Las Casas is the author of several storytelling resource books including The Story Biz Handbook: How to Manage Your Storytelling Career from the Desk to the Stage, which includes a large chapter on Internet marketing. She also is the founder of Professional Storyteller, a social networking site for storytellers worldwide http://www.professionalstoryteller.ning.com www.storyconnection.net

Seeing the Big Picture: Artistic Vision for Both Performers and Producers

Nancy Donoval

For producers AND individual storytellers: Establishing a distinct identity sharpens your marketing and impacts who you book, who books you, how you program, what you tell. Come dig to the heart of why you do the work you do and clarify your unique contribution to the art form. Built on Nancy’s experience as a story coach, festival director and storyteller, the 90-minute version presented at the 2006 National Storytelling Conference in Pittsburgh received 5-star rave reviews such as:

"Perhaps the most valuable workshop I have ever attended … had a deep impact on me personally and I know it will have a deep impact on my work"

"Great! Inspiring, thought provoking, passionate"

"Addresses the very core of the work of storytelling"

"Delightful! Needs to be longer. Worth the price of the conference!!!!"

You asked for a longer version and here it is -- chock full of activities, discussion, controversy, chocolate! Participants will work individually, in small groups and in the large group to respond to questions designed to draw out and clarify vision. It is important that this workshop combine both producers and tellers because conversation between the two about vision is needed and rarely, if ever, happens in our community. Each of us clarifying a personal artistic vision – and sharing them -- is a powerful act of advocacy for storytelling as a whole.

Nancy Donoval specializes in finding humor in the hard stuff. Her work has been heard on Minnesota and Chicago Public Radio, at the National Storytelling Festival and her shows Dancing Rats & Vampire Moms and Monster Movies with My Undead Dad played to sold out houses at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. A storyteller, story coach and communication consultant, Nancy’s favorite quote (from a menopausal audience member) is, “I laughed so hard my cramps went away.” Currently she is pursuing any and all leads to book her show Date Rape for Beginners: A Seriously Funny Tale of Trauma and Healing at as many universities, colleges and high schools as she can. www.nancydonoval.com

Emcee and Microphone Skills

Susan Klein

And Now, Would You Please Welcome...
Learn how to effectively serve your sponsors, producers, audience and tellers as an emcee and allow the audience to love the performers before their feet hit the stage! Also learn how to use a microphone properly and troubleshoot some frequent problems.

Susan Klein has authored a guide to emceeing storytelling events and a 20,000 word article on the courtesies and ethics of the storytelling profession. She is internationally acclaimed and highly sought after for teacher training in the Uses of Storytelling in the Curriculum. Her CD’s have won awards including the Publisher’s Weekly Listen Up Award, NAPPA, STORYTELLING WORLD GOLD, and Parents’ Guide Award. She has been a featured performer at more than 80 storytelling festivals, including the National Storytelling Festival, and is a 2001 NSN Circle of Excellence Award recipient. www.susanklein.net.

Writing for Storytellers

Rafe Martin

As storytellers we know that telling a story requires the presence (or the memory of the presence) of live listeners. The feedback of body language, eyes, laughter, and the collective intake of breath coming from our listeners shapes our told tales, the rhythms of speech and silence, as well as the particular gestural elegance of the moment. But the blank page gives us no live feedback at all. Worse, our destined audience may not appear for weeks or months or even years down the road. The blank page or computer screen is a ravenous beast at which we may desperately toss words and sentences like pieces of meat hoping that it will devour them and not us. How to change this? How to enjoy the process and make it actually work for us? How, in short, can our told tales and our written ones inform each other? At the same time how can we recognize and work successfully with their vast differences. Told stories are not written ones. Not even close. We cannot simply put down on paper the words with which we tell a story, and expect that we’ll then have a book. This workshop will address the issue of how we as storytellers can learn to tell stories in those horribly unfeeling, squiggly words on paper so that our written stories will have all the life of our told ones – without using voice, eyes, facial expressions, hands, feet, and bodies to make them come alive!

Rafe Martin is the author of over 20 books ranging from almost wordless picture books and collections, through complex novels. Rafe is the 2008 recipient of the prestigious Empire State Award, as well as 3 American Library Notable Book awards, 4 Parent’s Choice Gold Awards, 2 Anne Izzard Storyteller’s Choice Awards, an Aesop’s Accolade from the Society of American Folklore and several Storytelling World Awards. These books have been featured in Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and USA Today. The good news for storytellers is that he has also been twice featured at the National Storytelling Festival as well as at many national and regional events, so he knows the issues of both worlds. The summer of 2009 he was a Teller-In Residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough TN. He has two forthcoming books for 2010, both dealing with the importance of story and the storytelling imagination within Buddhist tradition. www.rafemartin.com.

Beyond the Voice

Antonio Rocha

This class is for you to explore different body language techniques that will help you take your work to the next level no matter where you are at the moment. Body language is effective and accounts for more than 70% of how we communicate. Tone of voice is the next highest, and what we say has little to do with what we mean. You will learn mime techniques (crafted especially for storytellers) which focus on individual creativity, creating atmosphere, character and intention. This is a participatory session, filled with fun and movement. Learn how to explore these tools in a safe environment and your stories will never be the same.

Antonio Rocha is an award winning performer whose work has been featured at Storytelling Festivals, Museums, schools, libraries and Performing Arts Centers across the USA and in over ten countries on five continents. For more information please visit www.storyinmotion.com.