Why I Love Storytelling

I was first captivated by storytelling somewhere in the south of England. Half way through a folk gig, a local story-teller was introduced. He unfolded a tale of Wessex childhood, snow-bound and sparkling, glistening with incidential detail and told in a languid blur of country vowels. The punchline was hardly the point: there was a sensuous pleasure in the telling, making me feel like a happy child.I've never entirely trusted stand-up comedy, not since that time a comedian at The Fringe psycho-analysed me over a beer, or another used me for the butt of his lame audience interaction. So I am hoping that the comedians involved in Electric Tales can pick up something of the storytellers grace.

Electric Tales is a collaborative project between the Scottish Storytelling Centre and The Stand Comedy Club. Both traditions will be represented at the event: whether the choice of date was deliberate might be revealed within the performances.

The Scottish Storytelling centre is working hard to break the stereotypes around its form. Too often associated with a rugged folk aesthetic, stuck in the eighteenth century, modern storytelling does offer much to children, but there is plenty of scope for a more adult approach. Marina Warner, serious anthropologist and sometime Guardian reviewer, has studied myths and fairy-tales to bring out their archetypal richness, and the Scottish ceilidh heritage inspired both 7:84's radical theatre in the 1970s and the National Theatre's recent Long Gone Lonesome.

Electric Moves meshes comedy and storytelling in an attempt to find the common ground between aggressive laughter and rambling shaggy dog tales. As Lindsay Corr of the Scottish Storytelling Centre points out, “Storytelling is oldest art form and represents the backbone of performance, with the importance of story integral to any art-form you can think of." Indeed, even the National Review of Live Art boasts performers who could easily share the bill with classic storytellers.

Corr goes on to explain. "The pedigree of contemporary theatre, dance, stand-up and cabaret owes a lot to the storytelling tradition, as there is no greater skill than that of a storyteller standing in front of an audience, and reciting without prop or costume or high-tech settings, a story that can broach any topic and lead to anywhere, often affecting the audience in a very personal and compelling way."

This personal engagement, a point of emotional contact between performer and audience is, in many ways, the essence of performance. It certainly forms the foundation of my own aesthetic response to drama and dance, and the intimacy generated by capable storytellers is often startling and dynamic.