subject: Innovative Storytelling Challenging Cinema For A Mainstream Audience [print this page] Ever since moving pictures managed to achieve wide acclaim at our cinemas and, a short while later, on our television screens, the performed arts have been incline to be seen as a slightly elitist genre of entertainment. Going to the theatre, for most, is something of an occasional treat rather than a regular outing. Without there being any need for the artist to be present at the performance the cinema does have the obvious advantage of convenience and portability, and as such is in all honesty a cheaper day out.
However the recent explosive growth of video streaming and catch-up television has inevitably made an impact upon cinema attendance, and that is notwithstanding the trend towards multi-screen which has created a lot more variety, and economy, in the moving picture world.
Although the stage does sometimes like to bask in its perceived elitist aura, there are those who are not prepared to accept the marginalisation of their art. Given a level playing field, they would argue, there is indeed capacity for a popular revival of the live arts.
Whilst one might ordinarily associate stage art with theatre and with acting, one alternative with an equal potential to entertain a live audience is storytelling. The storyteller is a trained and skilled performer with a special talent for evoking powerful human responses from the audience from tears to laughter, from fear to empathy, from suspense to sympathy.
The storyteller narrates the story in every bit the same way as the actor portrays it. He or she is a trained and talented performer with an intrinsic ability to hold on to the attention of the listener and to incite the motivated response that is called for by the storyline.
Live-performance storytelling is every bit as much a skill and an art as film acting or indeed theatre. Its magic rests in the unique combination of the tale and the delivery. It is the new bardic collaboration of the artists involved in bringing together the storyline in such a way that excites others which is the key to its success and which harvests its hitherto untapped potential.
If storytelling evokes a vision of a group of small children sitting attentively on the floor around the teacher, who reads from a book or recites a tale from recollection, it doesnt require much of an imaginative excursion to progress from this vision to one in which it is adults themselves who are being entertained, with inspired tales from history and tradition being subtly infused from time to time with conspicuous adult themes.
Innovative storytelling activates old stories, and entertains in a way that holds interest even in themes and topics that might not ordinarily inspire us.
