Festival 2008
Sponsored by Ann & Doug Manly, the 2008 Fredonia Storytelling Festival will be held on Oct. 17-18, with several great events.
Story Soup is a show presented twice during the day time primarily for school groups, but also open to the public.
Willy Claflin & Friends is a family-focused FREE afternoon event sponsored by the D.R. Barker Library Community Series and by the Fredonia Teachers Association.
A Storytelling Cabaret is an adult-themed evening of storytelling, humor and ribald fun!
For those interested in honing their own storytelling abilities, acclaimed storyteller Willy Claflin will offer a morning master class.
Out of Thin Air: Making Up Your Own Stories
Oct 18 2008 - 9:00am
A Master Class with Willy Claflin
$25 Workshop Fee
Fredonia Storytelling Festival
"Mother Moose, Mother Moose, where have you been?
-- I've been to the kitchen and back again
"Mother Moose, Mother Moose, what did you do there?
-- I made the whole universe out of thin air!"
As Maynard Moose says, "It's one thing to make a universe out of thick air. But to make a universe out of thin air, you have to stir and stir and stir!" Here is a fool-proof recipe for cooking up your own original stories. We'll make lists of problems and characters (human and animal), cut them up and shuffle them, pick random combinations and set our protagonists out to seek their fortunes! Our main characters will find that their first two attempts to solve their problems both fail, and success won't come until the third final attempt. (This way our tales will have a good middle, as well as beginning and end.)
Once we have our unexpected plots in hand, we'll turn to a series of games and exercises designed to add detail. What did our main character hear, see and smell? What was she/he thinking about during the unfolding adventure?
Finally, we'll move to the telling itself: how can we learn to tell the tale in a confident fashion, without having to memorize every word?
Students are guaranteed to come away with a new tale to tell.
