Oral storytelling – An introduction to bilingual co-telling

Bilingual co-telling at its best is a jigsaw of imagery, languages, improvisation and a shared narrative line. In this course, we will dive into a variety of techniques employable by two oral storytellers who jointly tell one story to their audience.

Every oral storyteller who has co-told a story knows how exciting the sharing of story, space and audience can be. Yet co-telling can be taken a step further: Both tellers speak different languages whilst they steer clear of one-to-one direct translation. But how can that work? Which techniques can be used to knit a story together so that an audience - which might only understand one of the two languages – still gets the whole story? What are the cornerstones of this jigsaw-like bilingual telling and what are its main pitfalls? How do we work dramaturgically to capture content and languages in equal measures?

In this workshop we will explore different methods of bilingual co-telling from having chosen a tale to its performance. The practical work consists of hands-on exercises, demonstration, exploration of personal positioning and teller perspective, presentation, sharing stories and constructive (peer-)feedback.

The course is open to experienced oral storytellers who wish to experiment with bilingual co-telling. The main course language is English.

Application process:

Please send in a short video of one of your storytelling sessions with an audience. Please state in your application your years of experience as an oral storyteller and which language(s) you use when you tell stories.

The participants will be chosen based on their experience as tellers and the languages they tell in. Participants who speak English only, can apply but their successful participation will depend on a sufficient number of participants who secure a variety of languages.

Co-tellers who already work together are welcome to apply – please state this in your application. 

Knowledge requirements

Extensive experience in oral storytelling
Good spoken English* as a joint language
 

*if the applicant only speaks English, a successful participation will depend on the group consisting of a sufficient number of various language

Ragnhild A. Mørch trained in storytelling, physical theatre and directing and has worked in live arts since 1996. Since 2005, she is a full-time storyteller and focuses on storytelling as performance art both as a performer, coach and lecturer. She is artistic manager of the training course Storytelling in Art and Education at the Berlin University of the Arts and co-curator of the bilingual storytelling series at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Her current focus lies on understanding the effects of personal positioning and hierarchic perspective with regards to performance material. She has performed at international festivals around Europe and North America and tells her stories in German, Norwegian and English.

www.ramorch.com

Suse Weisse works as a storyteller, director, drama teacher and lecturer. She is frequently invited to international storytelling festivals and has as well produced international festivals in Potsdam.  Since 2005 she has been developing special skills of bi- and multilingual storytelling. In 2013 she became part of the multilingual Storytelling Ensemble “A Window to the World”. Stories are told in Turkish, Farsi, Greek, Italian, English, German, Arabic. She lives and works in Potsdam, Berlin and around the world and is mother of two boys. She has been a Storytelling teacher since many years also for University of Arts Berlin (UdK) as FHCH Potsdam. Her heart goes for the merely rough and edgy stories of the north.

www.suseweisse.de