Below are articles written and web sites recommended by members of the storytelling community. For recently published articles about storytelling festivals, see Storytelling – It’s News!
House Concerts Guide
Recommended by Loren Niemi, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
This 24 page article is full of details about music house concerts, not that different from storytelling ones.
Story Sundays: A Storytelling Dinner Series for Adults
By Kate Dudding, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
This 11 page handout is full of details about a series that started its 17th season, with its 115th performance, in Oct. 2015.
Story Slam Protocols
By Loren Niemi, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
This article lists just about everything you need to know to create and run a story slam series.
Amy Saidman and Speakeasy DC
By Ellouise Schoettler, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
In this video interview, Ellouise and Amy discuss the evolution of Speakeasy to its current dynamic position on the storytelling scene (typical audience size 150-300) – and explore the rise of the true-story Moth movement.
Table-hopping
By Richard Martin
This article describes how to make storytelling work when you are table-hopping at a sit down dinner.
Workbook for Theater and Storytelling Collaborations
By Nancy Donoval and Loren Nieme, Members, Producers & Organizers SIG
This pdf file (94 KBytes) is a handout from the NSN Producers & Organizers SIG Pre-Conference Workshop at the July 2007 NSN Conference in St. Louis, published with the authors’ permission. As a preparation for Theater and Storytelling collaborations, this workbook contains a set of questions and considerations that are worth asking before undertaking such a collaboration.
Collaborations with Theatres March 2007
By Kate Dudding, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
This article describes various ways storytelling groups have collaborated with theatre companies across the US. The goal of the article is to provide storytelling producers with successful models to follow when approching their local theatre companies. There will be a preconference workshop at the July 2007 NSN Conference in St. Louis on storytelling theatre collaborations.
Small Talk
by Ellen H. Munds, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
In Indianapolis in 2006, Storytelling Arts of Indiana hosted a new series called “Small Talk” to introduce new audiences to the art of storytelling and to Storytelling Arts of Indiana.
Girls Night Out
by Kate Dudding, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG, and Carolyn Martino
Since 1985, “Girls Night Out” has been a multi art form tradition each March in Providence, Rhode Island. It was started, and continues to be organized, by the women in the Spellbinders Storytelling Collective to celebrate Women’s History Month with stories and songs by, for and about women.
Turning a Town onto Storytelling: the Story of the First Annual St. Marys Storytelling Festival
By Nancy Vermond, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
This article describes how the first annual “Once Upon a Thames” festival came to be in St. Marys, a pretty Southwestern Ontario town surrounded by farmland. Hundreds of people in St. Marys are now enthusiastic about storytelling and looking forward to the next festival. They had thought that storytelling was just for preschoolers in the library. Now they know!
Building Adult Venues: Creating a Storytelling Dinner Series for Adults
A pdf file (452 KB).
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By Kate Dudding, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
This article describes of the process and success in expanding venues for storytelling to adults; building profitable storytelling opportunities regionally; expanding listener base; and sharing lessons learned during seven seasons of a dinner storytelling series: “Story Sundays at the Glen Sanders Mansion.” It includes how-to ideas about promotion, marketing, logistics and expansion, as well as example postcards, flyers, press releases, etc.
I Want To Have a Storytelling Event Within a Park System – Now What?
by Bev Twillmann, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
- Finding the Correct Site
- Convincing the Park (Whether National, State or Local)
- WHO to contact
An Example of a Proposal to a Park System
by Bev Twillmann, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
Things to Note in Discussing a First Time Storytelling Event within a Park System
by Bev Twillmann, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
WOW Weekend (Working on Our Work Storytelling Weekend)
by Cynthia Changaris and Mary Hamilton, Members, Producers & Organizers SIG
A WOW Weekend provides an opportunity for storytellers of all experience levels to gather as peers and work on their storytelling art. While most participants choose to work on the development of specific stories, participants have also worked on workshop revisions, promotional pieces, course curriculum, showcase presentations, and other related topics.
House Concerts in Kansas
By Priscilla Howe
I have been producing house concerts for adults for approximately 3 years. I was frustrated with trying to produce concerts of my own work for adults, so I decided to offer house concerts to friends and family. The host invites the guests, provides refreshments and passes the hat. I don’t have to do any publicity, just have to arrive on time and tell my favorite stories for adults. Passing the hat is optional. This has helped build audiences for public events.
Success Stories in Building Adult Audiences
By Kate Dudding, Member, Producers & Organizers SIG
At the National Storytelling Network’s 2003 Conference in Chicago, I moderated a panel discussion on this topic. Other panel members were Gerald Fierst, Ellen Munds and Robert Revere. Based on the panelists’ presentations and information shared by attendees, there seems to be three things in common with all successful storytelling events for adults
Poems, Pints, and More!
By Gregory Leifel
I run a tri-monthly program for my local Arts Council, in Barrington Illinois. We feature poets, storytellers, musicians, comedians, and other types of performance artists in an evening performance held in an art gallery in a bistro setting (the Pints in the title stand for the drinks — beer and wine and soda– that we serve).
Short Subjects
By Andrew Mungo
At my theater, I’ve been featuring storytellers as “short subjects” before the movie on occasion for about a year now. It’s a mostly popular program and my regular customers seem to enjoy it. So why do I offer storytelling as an “extra” attraction? In my theater, I get to expose an existing audience to storytelling, an audience that might not be exposed otherwise.