Fairytale Storytelling with Storyteller Robert Rodriquez
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009################################################################
TALL TALE – TURTLE SOUP
A Tall Tale of (maybe) the Old West.
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When Robert was a child about five or six there was a radio program on in New York called High Imagination hosted by Paul Tripp. They used to play recordings of folktales from different countries which were produced by Folkways Smithsonian and were collected by a music historian named Harold Carlander.
Robert fell in love with all these stories than in 1969 he went to a folk festival in upstate New York. On the Children Day a performer named Jerry Cushing’s told stories from Richard Chase. He fell in love with them and was off and running.
In the 70s he received a call by a friend who said that the local storyteller had disappeared and could he come and tell about an hours worth of stories. He went and everybody loved it included him so now he was off and running as professional storyteller.
Telling has taken him to many places including Northern Canada in the Yukon and Northwest Territory, to all over the United States. He also does storytelling through singing ballads which has taken him to the Southwest, Arizona and Texas, over to the West Coast from California to Vancouver and across the big pond to the United Kingdom, England, Scotland and Wales.
His current Favorite Storyteller is Fran Stallings from Oklahoma who tells wonderful nature stories, science stories, Native American stories and stories from the rural Japan.
Roberts preparations for storytelling starts with finding as many versions of the story as he can find in different places. He will often combine different versions while telling like the most original source when he find. He will then research as much of the cultures as he can. Then simply reads or has read to him a number of stories, then goes to work and memorizes the important parts. Not entire stories. Although he does have some that he can tell Word for Word even in his sleep, but he tells the stories the best he can with verbal variations.
To prepare for a formal performance like in his program “Music Of Story, Magic Of Music”, he will sit for at lest two sessions equally in the time he has, usually about 45 minutes, going over the time sequences to make sure that he fits the time parameter. Then he waits until he is a home alone and then does it out loud to make sure his timing is right.
The wisdom he has for new storytellers is to Read, Read, and then when you are done with that Read it all again. Go to library’s children folklore section and just devour every folktale, fairytale you can. Anything in the general folklore.
On a different subject, the draw that brought him to the River and Prairie Storyweavers, Chicken Festival was Fran Stallings. He thought the Chicken Festival was an urban legend. Fran confirmed the fact that it was for real and that tellers do get together, sing chicken songs and tell chicken jokes.
Robert describe myself as teller of and does traditional tales. 99.9% are traditional tells, with an occasional original story. But the original story has to be very special for him and they are told in the old style.
Enjoy,
Brother Beno
Taking Your Mind On Adventures
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