Descriptions / Definitions

“Story slam.” “Traditional storytelling.” What do these even mean?!

[Theme for this month: “Story Slams & Traditional Storytelling – Bridging the Distance”]

Story Slam – Description

Yesterday we noted how a story slam is a competition. And while some details may differ at particular slams, these are the elements that make a storytelling event a story slam:

• There is a theme
• There is a time limit (usually short; 5 minutes is common)
• People do not know ahead of time if they will actually be selected to tell
• People interested in telling “put their name in the hat,” and names are drawn randomly
• It is nearly always to be a first-person, true story; something that happened to the teller
• There is some kind of signal to indicate the end of the time (and there may be a grace period of perhaps 1 minute)
• Judges are selected ahead of time in some manner
• After each story, the judges come up with scores (usually a 1-10 scale) that are announced
• At the end of the slam, the teller with the highest score is declared the winner
• Prizes may or may not be awarded

“Traditional storytelling” – Description

I confess I am using “traditional storytelling” as a rather catch-all term to mean storytelling that, well, isn’t a slam-!

The term “traditional storytelling” can more specifically mean storytelling done in a certain passed-on manner within a cultural community or with certain cultural content – as opposed to kinds of performance-oriented storytelling that may be more contemporary in form or content, or traditional material (such as folktales or legends) re-fashioned for contemporary audiences outside of the culturally-traditional community, or storytelling based on literary or original works, etc.

But for our purposes here, I mean: Storytelling which is not not slotted into the forms and requirements of a slam (like I said…catch-all)!  

Non-slam storytelling (“traditional storytelling”) events:

• sometimes-but-not-always have a theme
• time limits are encountered but almost always only to divide available time equally between multiple tellers
• there may be one storyteller or there may be many
• they run the gamut format-wise: there are festivals, conferences, library programs, school assemblies, birthday parties, brown-bag workshops, house concerts, teacher in-services, conference keynotes, sermon-stories, informal story swaps, structured story-skill workshops, and much more…!
• are not competitions

And: “Traditional storytelling” in this sense is definitely not limited to first-person account of something that happened to the storyteller.

Legends, myths, folk tales, ghost stories, fairy tales, history, sacred stories, and yes, personal narratives – Stories from the vast array of human experience and community and culture!

 

And finally: “Storytelling” – Definition

…Not a good book, a fine movie, a great play, a creative choreography or an engaging country-western song (all of which may “tell a story”)…

“Storytelling is the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination.”  – definition offered by the National Storytelling Network.

I also like storyteller Mark Goldman’s definition (influenced by his work with hearing-impaired storytellers, who may use sign instead of words):  “Storytelling is the live art of narrative performance, dynamically shaped by audience response.”

Key elements being (drawing from both above-offered definitions):

• It is a unique art form
• It happens live, in real time (you can watch a video or listen to a recording of storytelling – but that’s what it is: a recording or a video, not the act of storytelling itself – something like listening to a recording of someone’s phone conversation)
• A story/narrative is communicated (not stand-up comedy; not “therapy”)
• It’s interactive with an audience

So, so much more could be parsed here, but that’s more than enough for today’s short look at descriptions and definitions of “story slams” and “traditional storytelling”…

Would you add something to this? Subtract?!

Thanks for reading! – Pam