TALE-MYSELF – Seminar for the oral narration and the art of speech ROUND B

Narration has always been a popular amusement. As all the folk arts, narration comes under the hammer of several rules and norms that were not always followed consciously by the traditional story-tellers, however, they indeed existed and determined the quality of narration. The skilled story-teller used to possess very well his original material, and knew how to adapt it to every occasion, how to make it even more fascinating in order to attract everybody’s interest, so as everybody hangs on the lips of the story-teller.

Furthermore, there were various arration “styles” according to the story-teller’s personality, the place of his/her origin, the occasion or each audience, as well as various genres of narrative texts: tales and funny stories, lyric ballads and epic stories, traditions and legends, instructional and informative stories, tales for consolation at the difficult times, and so on and so forth. There was the private narration at home, among the members of a family, but around the globe, there were also professional ways of narration in public with a lot and various forms.

This specific seminar suggests a research within the magic of oral narration, as well as an introduction to the method, the techniques and its secrets. It consists of three rounds; each of these includes 10 three-hour sessions. Someone can attend each round independently, regardless to the one that comes before. Each round refers to a new and different thematic unit.

A few of the subjects:
•    Breaths, pauses and silence
•    The “music-score” of the text
•    The music soundtrack of narration
•    Use of music instruments by the story-teller
•    Rhythmic narratives, songs and lyrical articulation of speech
•    Traditional forms of rhythmic speech: incantations, lullabies, enigmas
•    Poetic speech, prosody and prose

A few of the subjects:
•    Simple techniques and everyday life occasions in order to make your own stories
•    Spontaneous stories as well as stories with “specs” and “goals”
•    The basic elements of a story
•    The way of process according to story’s genre text’s morphology
•    The structure of the tale: the approach “map”
•    Myth-creation techniques from global oral narration genres
•    The co-ordination of the words: how we shape criteria for what we have written

PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS
•    It is not required any special ability or preparation for the seminar attendance
•    It is a group and experiential seminar, so faithfulness to the attendance of all sessions is demanded
•    Someone can participate in a round without having as prerequisite the participation in the previous one
•   There is intention, a relevant to the subject presentation to follow the end of each round, according to the participants desire

THE STORY-TELLER SASA VOULGARI
The story-teller Sasa Voulgari is self-educated and belongs to the prime movers of neo-narration (for adult as well as children audience) in Greece, with a constant professional activity since 1993. She is a psycho educator with specialization in the fields of alternative teaching and experienced in educational and creative programs as well as the special education. Her prolific as well as of high quality artistic production proves that she is one of the most prominent artists in the sector of professional narration, with a significant
influence on the upcoming generations of story-tellers. Having their shows frequently, she has created stable “posts for tales” and since 1996 she has been cooperating regularly with Museums, creating specialized and interdisciplinary programs. Having shaped her own method, she teaches at seminars and she participates in conferences and symposiums for the story-telling art since 1995. In 1998 she narrated 13 Greek fairytales for the public television ET1. She frequently writes articles for Kathimerini newspaper.