WORKSHOPS ON THE ART OF STORYTELLING
IMPROVS: THE BODY TELLS STORIES
In a playful workshop, Jo guides participants in physical improvisations through which they will discover and invent new characters and stories or deepen and enrich those already in process. Some exercises will lead to fanciful or fictional tales; others will draw on personal or family history. The body leads; the mind and voice follow. Suitable not only for storytellers, but also for creative writers seeking new tools of discovery.
FINDING AND TELLING YOUR PERSONAL STORIES
Do you want to discover pieces of your past that can blossom into compelling stories? tell personal stories that will be meaningful for listeners? shape your life stories into an engaging memoir? Through a series of exploratory exercises, participants in this workshop will find stories they have never before thought of telling and shape life stories into presentations that will delight, move, and inspire audiences.
TELLING STORIES TO CHILDREN
Participants release their imaginations through physical and voice improvisations, practice techniques for learning stories and adapting them to personal style and to different audiences, and develop effective storytelling skills. In a series of workshops on this theme, Jo also covers selecting (and inventing) stories for different age groups and creating interactive storytelling events that will engage younger children. By the end of even a two-hour workshop, participants will have at least one story ready to tell; given longer time, everyone will leave with tools for building a repertoire.
“I thought the workshop was brilliant, and I say this as one for whom the storytelling process has always been deeply bound to the image of words on a page.... The graduate students thought it was extremely helpful and in very new and concrete ways – not only helping them to see a character more clearly but giving them techniques for evoking characters in the future. They were particularly excited about the methods of engaging the imagination via kinetic memory that you introduced.”
Workshops for Historical Societies, Community Groups, and Family Historians
Workshops for School Audiences