Eleonore Nicolas
1) How did you first get into storytelling? Do you remember your first experience of storytelling?
Oh yes, I remember my first experience of storytelling. I was having lunch with 4 of my friends at home. I was 14 or 15 years old. We started to talk about the film ‘The hand that rocks the cradle’. I was the only one who had seen it and I started to tell them about it. I only wanted to tell them a little bit about the beginning but as I was explaining it, they wanted me to carry on. There is so much suspense and tension in that film that I eventually couldn’t stop. I was talking so much that I was forgetting to eat. Every now and again, I would stop to take a spoon of yogurt and they’d go mad. They couldn’t believe that I would stop even for a second and keep them waiting. I had discovered the enjoyment & the effect of storytelling at once, without thinking about it.
2) What do you think is special about storytelling?
As the storyteller’s tool are his/her words, the audience has a lot of space to imagine what is being told, which is very important as it’s always better in one’s own imagination. It keeps the audience’s brain active. Basically, storytelling is healthy!!
3) What is it that attracts you to storytelling rather than any other form of art or performance?
There a relationship being created between the storyteller and the audience, we go on journeys together. It’s a little bit magic to be able to make entire audience travel with you with an aircraft made out of words!
4) What place do you believe storytelling holds in contemporary society?
I think that storytelling is undervalued in our contemporary society. It is still too often seen as something for children and that us adults are above it, which is strange as we tell stories to each other all the time. Conversations are always more interesting when someone is telling us a good story.
5) What future do you envision for Irish storytelling?
I think it is slowly coming back to life. People are looking for things to enjoy together, for time to spend together. Parents want their children to watch less TV and storytelling is definitely an answer to these needs. In addition to that, I must say that places such as milk & cookies, along with storytelling festivals, are making storytelling attractive to audiences again, which is definitely helping its’ renewal!
Fiona Dowling
1) How did you first get into storytelling? Do you remember your first experience of storytelling?
My first experience of storytelling was in May 1999, I was studying Classics in Paris at the time, and lingering on the campus grounds after a lecture I came upon an event organised for ´La semaine de la Poesie´ (Poetry week). A company called ´Complete Mandingue´ devoted to promoting stories, dance and music from Mali was about to start a performance. I sat down along with a small bunch of students, there might have been 15 of us in total, and a tall African man in his 40´s or 50´s sat among us. He started telling a story, about a young boy who befriends a young Lion and about the choices he has to make when further in life he is asked to kill that lion to be accepted as a man in his community. The story was absolutely gripping, and talking about things we all experience: friendship, duty to one´s community, betrayal… in very very simple words and images. What´s more, the storyteller was using a tiny thumb piano to punctuate the strong points in his story and let the story sink into the listener.
For the whole duration of the performance, I had an irrepressible smile on my face, and if tears were not falling they were certainly very close. In my heart there was an overwhelming sense of love, hope and excitement. If in the world there were things like this story, like this storyteller, things of such overwhelming beauty and simplicity that could touch on essential aspects of being human and provide comfort, reassurance and understanding about the darkest and most mysterious aspects of our lives, then the world was indeed an amazing magical place, and storytellers were so damn fabulous. It then became obvious to me that the best thing I could ever aspire to become in this lifetime was a storyteller, even better, a storyteller with a thumb piano.
The following year I moved to Ireland and one of the first thing I did there was to go to the internet café that used to be under Lazer video store on Georges Street and research ´Storytelling + Ireland´, and that´s how I found the Dublin Yarnspinners, which I started to attend regularly, and it´s also how I found the fabulous yearly 3 day storytelling workshop on Cape Clear Island which I would warmly recommend to any aspiring tellers.
2) What do you think is special about storytelling?
It´s simple, gentle and yet so powerful! As a form of entertainment it provides maximum effect with minimum means: the storyteller only has his voice and his body, no costumes, no sets are necessary. And with their voice and body only, they can put you in a listening trance and make you feel strongly, laugh strongly, rejoice or empathise. And the best thing for me is when it gets a tiny bit deeper than the pure entertainment, when a story seems to resonate with your own life, when it tells you something you so needed to hear, when it makes you look at you life in a new, hopeful way, when it talks about something in your life that you wouldn’t have been able to put into words, let alone share with any one else. For me stories can make us feel less alone in the struggles we face through life.
3) What is it that attracts you to storytelling rather than any other form of art or performance?
It´s intimate, you can look at people in the eyes, you can be up there as yourself, you make people travel, you make them laugh, sometimes you might even make them feel, of leave them with a gift if that story has touched them.
It´s very satisfying as an artist to be able to communicate directly something that is important for you, that is close to your heart, that little nugget of truth or that particular message (however small and subtle) that each artist I believe is here to convey. As an artist you can really give 100 percent of yourself and of your gifts through storytelling: if you like to dance or sing or do voices or play a particular instrument, you can integrate all that into your storytelling. If you have a particular accent like me you can also make that a feature! There is room for all of you in storytelling.
On a practical level, you don´t need a whole load of materials and a van to transport them, you just turn up!
4) What place do you believe storytelling holds in contemporary society?
I feel Storytelling is incredibly relevant in that it can provide a sense of community, a sense of belonging, as well as laughter, warmth, comfort. Unfortunately only few organisations are aware of the power and relevance of storytelling at this moment but I feel all of us tellers are working on raising the awareness of storytelling and bringing it into new places.
5) What future do you envision for Irish storytelling?
Storytelling at school, storytelling at home, storytelling with friends, storytelling at Christmas, storytelling in the zoo, storytelling in the park, LOTS of Storytelling!
