dperrotta: storytelling

Storytelling has been around for centuries and the oldest surviving tale is the epic, Gilgamesh, which related the deeds of a famous Sumerian king. The earliest known record of storytelling can be found in the Westcar Papyrus of the Egyptians. The sons of Cheops (the pyramid builder) reportedly entertained their father with stories. Stories through history came in all shapes and sizes, myths, legends of all kinds, tall tales, fairy tales, fables, trickster stories, hero stories, ghost tales, teaching stories, oral histories and epic adventures. These stories were told, retold and passed down from father to son, mother to daughter and one generation to another. The stories increasing came to convey the accumulative wisdom and knowledge of early people, often used to explain significant and often confusing events and disasters in nature such as storms, tidal waves, lightening, and fire. Stories of gods and heroes bound groups of people to a common heritage and beliefs. Tales with a moral help develop the laws and customs that help control the destructive impulses in humans and develop civilization and societies we know today. In fact, many historians, anthropologists and psychologists suggest that storytelling is one of the many things that define our humanity. Humans are perhaps the only animals that invent and tell stories.

A modern day example of storytelling is the SASS (Sunday Adult Storytelling Series).

The SASS is a critically acclaimed series, featuring the country’s best storytellers and produced by Found Theatre company member Laura Bosworth. Bosworth who was honored in November 2009 by the Los Angeles Storytelling Festival with the prestigious Spirit of Storytelling Award.

Fun Facts:

Storytelling is the ancient art of conveying events in words, images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment.
A storyteller does not memorize a set text, but learns a series of script-like incidents with a distinct beginning, middle and end.
A storyteller visualizes characters and settings, and then improvises the actual wording. For this reason, no two tellings of an oral story are exactly alike.
Elements of the storytelling art form include visualization (the seeing of images in the mind's eye), and vocal and bodily gestures.
Folklorists sometimes divide oral tales into two main groups: "Märchen" and "Sagen". These are German terms for which there are no exact English equivalents; the first one is both singular and plural.

This video is a modern but funny way to look at storytelling and its involvement in video games.