The thing about traditional stories is that if you take away the cultural references, they’re the same world over,” says UK-based storytelling expert Jo Blake Cave.Adding that she’s fallen in love with Hindu mythological stories, including the Ramayana and Mahabharata, she goes on, “Now that I’ve been here in India, I’ll be even more likely to want to tell them. The thing about stories is that you need to know a bit about the culture that they come from, in order to be able to be true to them, faithful to them.” The storyteller, who was in the city to conduct a storytelling workshop at the British Council recently, explains that her experience in India, will help her provide a sense of vibrancy to Indian stories when she’s telling them. before a performance of traditional stories from around the world at the Oxford Bookstore, “It’s because I’ve been here for a while, I’ve seen things, I’ve tasted things,” she elaborates.
At the workshop, she taught the participants the basic skills for storytelling. “How you find a story, how you break it down, how you put your own slant at it, and look at some kind of performance skills that’s about the body and gestures,” Cave lists with enthusiasm. Each participant of the workshop came with the aim of learning to integrate the art of storytelling into different facets of their lives. Some wanted to engage their business clients through storytelling, some were from the world of advertising and few wanted to use it as a therapeutic measure. “I think storytelling fits into any facet of life, depending on how you use it,” she says and goes on, “Of course, one way to bring it to everyday culture is to bring it to schools. Because, if teachers tell stories and children tell stories, it will become normal to them and they’ll do it throughout their lives. Schools are a great way of getting the art of storytelling back to prominence.”
But storytelling is a part of our lives in more ways than we are aware of, according to her. “That’s basically because we, as human beings, are hardwired to listening to stories,” she says. “That’s one way for us to make sense of our lives. We narrate our lives all the time.”
On the other hand, everyday use of storytelling will also benefit us in more ways than we can imagine, Cave insists. “The more you get used to storytelling, the more effective is your communication. You have to become a good reader of human behavior, in a way. Because when you’re telling a story and you find that people are beginning to get bored, you’ll have to change things around,” she explains.
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