Equilateral Triangle

THAT’S what storytelling is:  the equilateral triangle of Audience + Teller + Story

Without any one of those, you just don’t have storytelling!  (Another nifty metaphor: a 3-legged stool – “If you don’t have all 3, it doesn’t stand.”)

Storytelling just doesn’t happen without an audience.

I’ve had occasions when I was hired to perform at an event, a festival for example, where I was one of a variety of performers (including magicians, jugglers, musicians, etc.).  Picture this:

• When it was time for one’s performance to begin, there often wasn’t already an audience gathered;
• They weren’t turning away from the corn dogs, dart-throwing games and/or giant costumed characters;
• (How do you compete with a roaming, bigger-than-life Cat in the Hat, or the Denver Nuggets’ mascot, anyway?!)
• The jugglers, musicians, etc., could begin their acts, and their ongoing music and/or antics would start to draw a curious audience that would then grow for the balance of the act…

With storytelling…you can’t do that! You cannot tell a story, if there’s no one to tell it TO!

This is a manifestation of both the power and fragility of the storytelling experience!

( – More about that in future blogs, I promise!)

A storyteller who happens to also be a musician as I am can begin with music – in those situations I could begin strumming my guitar and start that audience-gathering with a song. Or you could develop some other audience-gathering shtick – I mean tactic.  But the storytelling itself does not happen without an audience.

True confession: Years ago I was hired to tell wolf stories at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the day they dedicated beautiful new bronze wolf sculptures. I had my assigned location, and the performance times were posted on a placard.  But wouldn’t you know…the museum-going folks didn’t just turn themselves away from the dioramas and exhibits because a woman was standing by a stuffed antelope, telling them that “Soon we’ll begin a story!”…Hmmmm…

So I told my two young sons, who were with me, that I’d pay them each a dollar to sit in the audience area and act as “seeds.”  Ahhh, paid audience plants!  – It worked!

Once people saw them there and joined them, ready to engage, the storytelling happened – and wonderfully so!

Equilateral triangle!

Story + Teller + Audience.

Thanks for reading – Pam