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Immigrant Stories   

WORKSHOPS

1. “Telling Original Stories from Your Own Culture”

for adults and Senior Students

3 hours

2. Telling Stories

Speaking skills for Intermediate Age students

2 hours

photo by Margaret Dockrill

Every human being belongs to a culture.

Every culture has stories.

New Zealanders, for example, have a rich and diverse cultural heritage full of told and untold stories.

This workshop is about exploring our individual cultural experience in order to find the untold stories

and beginning the process of shaping such stories into performance stories.

No one can do that in three hours but we can explore the process together.

We start by

Getting in touch with our own cultural background

Finding the story

Using research to give it time and space

Expanding and deepening the story

Then we look at

Shaping

The story line

The storyteller

The target audience

Beginnings ... Endings ... Themes

Discovering new perspectives and exploring characters.

And sometimes there is time to mention

Presenting

Getting attention

Relating to an audience

Humour

Possibilities and techniques

Do's, Don’ts and Maybes.

Participants have the opportunity:

to discover and develop their own stories through workshopping

to experience a variety of original performance stories

                 

 

  Handout illustrates the process of developing an historical story to performance level from the original 20 word anecdote.  

The workshop is suitable for senior and adult students. It can be adapted for work with younger students

2. Telling Stories to an audience

 

Speaking skills for Intermediate Age students

A two hour workshop for class size groups (25 or less).

"The students were highly motivated and focused throughout the workshop and enjoyed the opportunity to tell their own stories. It was fabulous to see their confidence and skills grow." Catherine Dalley, Year 7 and 8, Classroom Teacher

The storyteller enters as a storyteller and models the skills that the students are learning.

The students are drawn into the story in the course of which they find themselves becoming aware of, and doing excercises to enhance the use of the voice:

Breathing - warming up, speaking clearly - articulation

Emphasis - pause, pace, pitch

Gesture

Relating to an audience

Beginning - making an entrance

Shaping a story - making it their own

Telling - not remembering or reading

When they are ready students get to practice skills by small group tellings of simple stories to the whole class. Every student tells.  About Margaret   Schools   Tour Groups   Immigrant Stories   Women & Politics   Dissent & Disaster   Te Puna Ora   Audio   Contact