In the movie The Apostle, Robert Duvall plays a self-righteous preacher. He travels life’s path with evangelical zeal to enlighten his fellow man about the word. He fervently pleads for people to repent. Likewise Mr Bryce Courtenay comes across as a man with a mission. 

It was evident that he enjoys his role as public speaker when he performed to a large crowd of authors, illustrators, teachers, librarians and storytellers at Dromkeen on Friday, 4 December 1998. Just north of Melbourne at Riddell’s Creek, Dromkeen is a museum devoted to showcasing the talents of some of the finest Australian and overseas children’s authors and illustrators. 

His humorous stories were laced with passionate political pleas. Pleas for our stolen generation, pleas for an apology from our Prime Minister and pleas to teach our children a somewhat old-fashioned approach to the reading and writing process—the need to feed their minds and souls. The audacity of the man—telling a room full of people devoted to children’s literature to pull up our socks. He preached to us about poor literacy rates in Australia. Courtenay then told us of his company—Kids Core—that is developing ‘new’ literacy programs. 

He did seem to get a little hot under the collar as he went on. First a joke that depicted Australians as a nation looking for a good time and handouts. And he urged John Howard to take the first step towards reconciliation. ‘We are a polyglot nation that has experienced four major migrations and we are at a milestone in our development as a nation…Economic rationalisation will lead to our downfall…Our country is where our soul is.’ 

All very passionate stuff but just off the mark when talking to this room full of creative people. A group dedicated to feeding the minds and souls of Australia’s children with inspirational artwork, literature and its promotion. Standard platitudes handed down to us from his platform—nothing to inspire or stir our souls.

One on one he seems smaller and quieter but still a focus on his own bandwagon.

During our interview I related my love for strong female characters in the stories I tell, but (now with a son) I wondered what he considered were some of the great male literary heroes? Was it because he’s running hot with his latest book Jessica, ‘the story of a remarkable young Australian woman’ that his response was that males need to look to these great female characters? These great female characters have been largely ignored in Australia. That’s why it is important to tell their stories, like the story of Jessica.  An old marketing adage—it pays to promote—was evident in the weeks leading up to Christmas because bookshelves groaned under the weight of so many Jessicas.  When pressed—but what about the great literary heroes like Beowulf and Robin Hood and Cuchulain? ‘Yes but they had to be nursed and feed and nurtured. Maid Marion probably played an important part in Robin’s life.’ 

This was followed with a matter of fact report that he was rejected by his poor, slightly neurotic mother and suckled by a large African woman with enveloping mammaries and a welcoming lap. A woman of the Zulu nation who suckled him, nurtured him with stories for the first five years of his life, and introduced him to the importance of the way tales are related. It is no surprise then, that women and stories became inextricably linked in his early formative years. 

It is evident that he has a great respect for women’s role as the matriarchs of family life and their assumed responsibility for the continuity of the tribe. He quotes facts and figures about the age range of our convict settlers and explains that this country has a strong Irish flavour, because it was the Irish women who lived longer than all their counterparts and that they had such a strong oral tradition. Courtenay employs full time researchers to help him with his work and collect data such as this.

He finds feminism exciting and believes our next emerging wave of leading lights in the community will be women.

He fervently believes that people are born with genetic encoding and all the myths and legends of their people are already stored inside. For Courtenay this is the Celtic people. He likened ‘encoding’ to a vast desert land at night, where oil refineries covered with lights tower against the star speckled heavens. He believes that people, like the refinery, tap down to a source of pools, into different areas of learning and understanding and mythologies.

He believes with his own writing that he is like an ‘intellectual stenographer’ that doesn’t invent the stories but merely translates them from this great pool of inherited knowledge. He hears the voices and he experiences the landscape through the blood flow of his family.

This lead to another question, this time about our relationship to the land.  He believes that the Celts haven’t yet made this essential connection to the land because up until now they have largely ignored the indigenous culture. We need to accept their lore as part of our ethos and until we do we will not reach our full potential. The Celts jealously hold on to their inherited mythology and keep looking back, instead of trying to understand the rich cultural heritage of our land.

Courtenay is the patron of the Australian Storytelling Guild (NSW) Inc. and proud to be but had a ‘ little bit of criticism’ of some professional storytellers.  He believes that ‘some of them learn their stories verbatim, so they actually know every minute of the story and they leave no ability to surprise themselves. The whole thing about a story is that you build on it. Some seem to tell the story without listening to it, and without adding new material, without seeing new observations, any new angles or nuances.’ 

He encouraged storytellers to live with their stories and allow them to evolve. I understand his point, my stories always evolve with each telling, and it is only because of subsequent tellings that you come to feel them and breathe with them. 

Bryce Courtenay is a man of strong convictions—he readily acknowledges the power of myths and storytelling. He creates his stories by calling on his genetic and environmental inheritance, listening to the voices of his people and mixing it with the contemporary times and forces he lives with, ‘like a bowl of muesli with many ingredients thrown in’. 

It is easy to look to his marketing background and wonder how many tricks of the trade he employs with his literary blockbusters. But the man’s best-seller record is remarkable, not to mention his prolific output. 

He can seem a little smug with some of his pronouncements but this is a man who is firm about his beliefs and whose position and acumen make him a man of great power. It is good to have people in high places that are fervent about reconciliation, understanding the stories of our land and the importance of literary traditions.

Courtenay is a man with considerable marketing skills and you wonder if he will sell you just the sizzle and not the steak.  But he comes across as genuinely and passionately interested in the importance of storytelling in people’s lives.  He knows that a person fired with conviction makes a great storyteller, while he demonstrates that a lot of time and hard work goes into perfecting the art form.  He believes in the continuum of storytellers in all cultures and the genetic linking of people from the earliest of time.

His business skills are legendary so I asked him for some clues on how storytellers could promote themselves to a wider audience. Alas, he stated that storytelling as an art form is at a distinct disadvantage. Because it is not on radio and television or in the newspapers it is not seen as valid. However, once you get an audience—any audience—it immediately becomes valid if you know your craft.  So there is only one way—go looking for your audience, the audience won’t come to you.

Finally, to quote from Courtenay’s A Recipe for Dreaming.

‘Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, either as storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love and dreaming. When we cease to listen, then we longer exist as people. Dead men tell no tales.’

While one could bristle at Courtenay’s righteousness, one also has to accept that the above adage is true. If we claim to belong to the immortal realm of storytellers, we also need to accept the responsibilities. It is evident after talking to Courtenay that we must work hard with passionate vigour to tell the grand stories of life’s experiences.

Anne E Stewart
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“I entered the storytelling world through Lady Hortense,” says Dennis. “She was invited to open the storytelling conference in Lorne (Victoria) one year.”

“She is one of my puppets and is based on several people that I knew—male and female—looking at their particular traits. She is one of those people who is put into a situation and adopts the ‘correct’ tone of voice for that situation. She is very forgetful and does things she doesn’t realise she is doing. She might complain about someone name dropping for instance and then in the next sentence do the same thing herself. So she’s guilty of subconscious hypocrisy.
Lady Hortense started out as a storyteller who couldn’t remember all the words. The kids in the audience help her out by supplying the words and phrases and ideas. The story then develops with their input.

She has a very forgetful act. She thanks the audience but it becomes clear she has absolutely no idea what it is she is opening. She goes through her purse, pulls out her false teeth, her Bex and tries to find her notes etc.

One time at the Sydney storytelling conference we had a Melbourne based author as a guest. She thought the act had been based on her, thought perhaps we had rung her mother to find out her idiosyncrasies. She found it very funny.

Lady Hortense opened Australia’s first national storytelling conference in Albury and she opened the Brisbane one when the Brisbane guild started. I kept hearing all these stories until eventually I did something about it.
I did a workshop with Patricia Scott who came up from Tasmania. She did a thing on tall tales and I remembered a book I had read in high school (in America). It was a book of tall tales of the Ozarks. So I just did a little thing about acrobatic chickens—you had to say something about where you came from and it had to be a tall tale. I remembered this old thing that the soil was so fertile that it caused the chickens to be acrobatic because when you throw them the corn they knew that if they didn’t catch the corn before it fell to the ground it sprung up a foot before they could get to it. So they learned to catch it in the air.

Then in Sydney we had a storytelling party a woman organized in Kirribilli once a month. It was just for ‘grown ups’ so I started doing some of these Ozark stories which I found in this book.  I had this flea circus hanging around for quite a few years, which I didn’t know what to do with, but I knew it would come in handy someday. I got this idea. I went on my first tour with the puppets—a school tour to country areas. I thought it would be really good to have something to offer the libraries. I contacted the State Library and they thought it would be good as part of librarians’ storytelling training. The deal was that I would come up with this programme that would be storytelling with the flea circus at the end. I put together different styles of stories and Jan (Dennis’ wife) really worked out which stories would be best.  We advertised it as The Flea Circus Coming To Town and it would be at the library. People came but they just sat through the stories to get to the flea circus. But it exposed people and the librarians to storytelling and it got people into the library. And I had something to do in a small country town after my puppet performances and picked up a little extra money. 

I tend to do dialect storytelling.  The Ozark ones—this fellow has written several books. They are collections of folktales but he had the ability to write it down the way it was spoken. Like with the Irish stories where you can read the lilt into it.

I put together a whole hour of Ozarks Tall Tales and I took it to one of the Adelaide Festivals (1992 I think). It was called Rough As A Cow’s Tongue. Unfortunately I didn’t do enough research on the Adelaide Fringe Festival. I thought being a fringe festival it would be open to anything but in fact it wasn’t. Adelaide is a very conservative town. The only fringe things I saw got a terrible review in the Adelaide Advertiser and it got called the Hippie Production. What I found was that the comedy there was either ‘stand up in your face’ comedy or it was lesbian humour and anything else is just not comedy. The only people who made any money were people who had been on television. It wasn’t really a fringe festival.

But when I did some of that same show at the Springwood Storytelling Festival (in Sydney) it went over beautifully. It was the audience in Adelaide; they just weren’t ready for that sort of thing. It was my fault that I didn’t do the research to find out about the festival more fully.

Eventually storytelling was one of the things I had to cut when other interests were taking up too much of my time. Now I focus on puppetry.

I was lucky that when I came into puppetry it was the last year the Clovelly Puppet Theatre was still going. Once a month they would have a performance there. They’d been doing it for forty years or so. It was just a building and a little old lady in her 80s who ran it. I’d go along and do something every month for about a year just to get an audience to try things out, particular with pre-schoolers because they live in such a different world to us. I’d never work out a whole pre-school show and then try it out. I’d get about three minutes worth of stuff and then go to a friendly pre-3school and try it. For pre-schoolers I do a variety show with the puppets—monkeys and that sort of thing. After sixteen years it is really honed to their sense of humour. Pre-schoolers are my favourite audience. You can’t get into their minds from a distance—you have to try things out and see how it works, see where they are going to take it. You can’t predict how they might react.

I’m coming to it puppetry from a verbal angle really and the Commedia dell’Arte—the Italian 16th century mask and puppet theatre tradition—was very verbal. I do love doing that sort of thing although I have non-verbal puppets too.

I am a puppeteer first and last. When I was a kid I slept with a ventriloquist dummy while the other kids were sleeping with a teddy bear. We had a basement and on Saturday afternoons we had a puppet show which cost the neighbourhood kids two cents to attend. Unfortunately most of the neighbourhood kids were already in the show so we never made much money.

In Australia there is no school for puppetry. Thank God! In countries where there are schools—such as Hungary— you can tell who trained at the State Puppet Theatre for instance because he has the State Puppet Theatre style. Just as in some parts of Queensland for instance you see people still doing the Tintookie thing because that is what they see as puppetry. 

If you want to be a puppeteer the first thing you need to do is find an audience—perhaps go busking.

In Sydney there is the Rocks Puppet Cottage in Kendall Lane a regular venue for puppetry. I have been a guest puppeteer there since 1992. The shows are free. They put on three a day at weekends and during school holidays.

 It is hard to encourage new puppeteers. All too often I meet people who are interested in doing puppetry—if they can get a grant. But you need to have a passion for doing it and simply do it—no matter what. I worked in an office full time for ten years and did puppetry extra to that. During that time I developed the skills and reputation to get started. You’ve got to have the patience to spend the time developing your skills—whether a puppeteer or a storyteller. The more you do it the better you get. Focusing immediately on getting out there to make a lot of money is the wrong focus. You’ve probably got the wrong profession!”
Although puppetry is visual storytelling there are similiarities with oral storytelling. For instance the relationship with the audience. Would you comment on that, please Dennis?

“There is a very fine balance between telling the story and delivering the story. In Vaudeville there is a concept called ‘playing to the gallery’ where you give them what they want. It’s a balance between playing to the audience and as well you’ve got this intellectual exercise where you’re having a really good time going through this story. Somewhere between you’ve got to get it together to take the audience into account. For instance with puppetry you might have this wonderful technique and all the puppeteers in the audience think it is wonderful. They see the technique and they know how hard it is to achieve what is being done. But the audience doesn’t know this and they are perhaps not so impressed.

Where is the story taking place? Is it being acted out on the stage or is it taking place in the mind of the listener?

Everybody takes a different thing from a story. For instance Yuri, the Russian storyteller in Sydney, told a story at a summer school and at the end of it I said, “It’s really nice wording the way you got that flat, empty, plain. I could really see it.” 

He said, “What flat, empty, plain?” 

He ran through the beginning of the story again. He didn’t say anything like that but I remembered what I saw.”
jb

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A childhood story that Pauline McLeod instantly recalls is the tale of Peter and the Wolf.  You all know it.  Peter is told he must remain in the garden or the wolf will get him.  But does he listen to his grandfather? Oh no! The young boy has no fear of the wolf.

But how does an Aboriginal woman whose ancestors come from the south coast of New South Wales and the Adelaide area come to have this story prominently in her psyche?   Sad to say, Pauline was one of the stolen generation and she heard the story from her adoptive German parents.

Becoming a storyteller set Pauline on the road home to find her Aboriginality.

While a teenager her German parents instigated involvement with some Aboriginal peoples and their mythology but it was only a small taste.  It wasn’t until Pauline was 26 that she meet her birth parents and the long hard road home began.

On this road home she was to make many discoveries, learn many things and receive advice from a ‘Board of Elders’ that continue to offer feedback and support on her chosen career.
Pauline remembers the circuitous route to her chosen path.  As a young child she was a good little storyteller, “sometimes getting myself into a lot of trouble and also, getting myself out of a lot of trouble with my stories.  I had inherited a love of story from my adoptive parents; they steeped me in story and encouraged me to be a reader.” 

She recalls being a bit of a loner at school and one of her main ambitions then was to read the entire collection of the Raymond Terrace School Library. 

As a child she loved to entertain people. And as the years went by Pauline began to dabble—singing, writing, and performing. When she met her natural family in 1986 these creative outlets were a way to tell people about what had happened to her.  But Australia wasn’t ready to listen.  She continued to be a dabbler, all the time learning about her culture, about how to entertain people, how to stand up in front of audiences and modulate her voice.  But Pauline was angry and impatient and wanted to be able to reach people and change attitudes. Then one day her mother told her a Dreamtime story and Pauline knew that this was the way to educate people.

This story and subsequent stories she heard told her of a people that had lived for thousands and thousands of years in peace and harmony. This choice of career would allow her to reclaim and then proclaim Aboriginal culture—teach people the important lessons that her people already knew about living in this great southern land.

Pauline had not heard any Dreamtime stories in her days at school and she wanted to change that. She wants all Australian children to have an opportunity to hear the stories. Pauline wants the Aboriginal stories to become a part of popular culture, as well known as Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. 

“To make the stories and our culture popular, we had to make sure it wasn’t a fad—but a long term change within the culture of Australia as a whole—so we began some intensive research to find the right stories—beautiful, magical stories that people would never forget. Stories that were an encapsulation of our cultural beliefs.”

Once the stories were located permission was sought from the elders to use them in as many formats as possible and then the telling began in earnest. With passion and respect Pauline took her stories to the people, through television shows such as the ABC’s Playschool, at the Sydney Opera House, at schools, festivals—wherever she got the opportunity. They called the whole scene Mallawilli (sit down), a Sydney, New South Wales word, and she has been telling ever since.

Pauline McLeod has learnt much about herself, her people and the art of storytelling since those early days and when asked about her tricks of the trade she laughs and pauses, momentarily at a loss for words. 

“Believe what you are saying,” she replies when pressed.

“Tell strong stories,” she adds. “Find the natural rhythm of the story, it’s like knowing the music, it helps you find the structure of the story. Look at everyone, make sure they all know they’re on a shared adventure. Live the story so everyone can share the adventure with you.”

Another point Pauline emphasises is the need to research and understand the background of your stories.  She sees storytelling as a very powerful medium for teaching lessons and passing on cultural values. Without the knowledge behind the stories she believes a storyteller is merely “a reciter of stories, an entertainer or performer—not a true storyteller.”

Pauline is passionate and eloquent when talking of the storyteller’s role.  Having a chance later in life to reclaim her birthright has fired her soul with strong convictions. She would like to bring back the  “power, the honour and the role of the storyteller in society.” She sets high standards for herself and fellow storytellers. “We have a duty to adhere to an age-old custom where we pass on the stories and lessons from the beginning of time.”

Talking to Pauline I found myself continually questioning my own beliefs, my role and motivation behind telling the stories that I do. We both agreed though that one very important aspect of our work was to give children a sense of place, of belonging to the land. This led me to ask Pauline about non-indigenous people telling Aboriginal stories.  It’s a question that has circulated around the Guilds of Australia since their inception twenty years ago.

Pauline explains in an article for Telling Tales—Newsletter of the Australian Storytelling Guild (NSW) Inc.

“Within our culture there are a number of categories of stories: public stories, sacred stories, sacred secret stories, and men’s and women’s stories.  A woman cannot tell a man’s story to a group of men and men cannot tell women’s stories. I don’t know the men’s stories. I only know the public, the women’s and sacred stories and stories just for women.” 

With this element explained Pauline went on to say that she is in the process of writing some of her stories down but only the public stories.

“These are the ones that the Board of Elders and I are happy to share. We have no problems with oral storytelling but the artistic property of them belongs   to us. Our people will make them into popular culture through books, animations, recordings but only our people know the legends that go back to the Dreamtime. We are happy for you to tell some of our Dreamtime stories—all we ask is for respect in the telling. 

We believe that it is important to acknowledge where the story is from. Look to your local area for stories of place, find the history and culture that has gone before.”

This led to talk of anthropologist A.W. Reed’s books on Aboriginal culture and how outdated they are. Rather than anger at his misappropriation of stories Pauline laughs that he could get things so wrong.  He had no perception of the intricacies of the culture and he borrowed place names and stories from all over Australia. He didn’t understand that there were many distinct tribes all around Australia.  Now Pauline is going to set the story straight, so to speak, because it is her job to collect and classify the New South Wales stories.

It may seem a long way from Peter and the Wolf, to collecting Aboriginal stories of New South Wales but then again Pauline has come a long way.  And even though it is perhaps a strange analogy I can’t help but think of Pauline as that brave little Peter standing at the gate, friend to the animals, looking to the outside world. Grandfather warned her but she couldn’t rest until she’d gone out into the world and caught that wolf by the tail.

We walked along the Brisbane River and lunched at one of the delightful outdoor cafes along the riverbank. The relaxed atmosphere and balmy air made me want to jump into the water and splash around and throw water at the passers by. Perhaps it is Brisbane’s seductive power that draws out our childlike qualities because the storyteller I was interviewing, John Shield, certainly seems to have retained the fresh enthusiasm of childhood.

“I love stories and I wanted my kids to love stories as much as I did so whenever I read to them I made it a fun time so that they would always come back for more,” said John.

“I have a fantastic time with kids. I like working with kids of all ages. There is not one age group I dislike.

Sometimes when I talk to kids they ask me if I have a job or, observing me having such a good time with my storytelling, they ask me if I enjoy storytelling.

 ‘No it’s really boring’ I say just for fun and then I say  ‘What do you think? Do you think I’m enjoying myself?’ They say  ‘Yeah!’ and I say to them, ‘you know how your mum and dad have to work for a living?  I don’t! I get paid for having fun. Aren’t I lucky!’”

How is that you achieve absolute delight as well as success from working with children?

“Perhaps I’ve never grown up.”

How do you not grow up? 

“How do you grow up?”

Despite the Peter Pan qualities that make John Shield such a hit with children of all ages there is a maturity in the way he handles the business of storytelling which possibly stems from a ‘previous’ life as a bookseller for Ashton Scholastic.

“I guess one of the things I learned through Ashtons is that if you want to do what you really believe in, you’ve got make it pay otherwise you can’t continue. 
Someone once said to me—‘For every hour you spend storytelling you’ll spend eight hours doing other stuff.’

That’s pretty close to the truth. I do around 12 performances per week. A 60-hour week is not unusual.

In the early 1980s I started working for Ashton Scholastic and I think that was one of the best things that happened to me. I have always had a belief that we should earn our living by doing something we love. To me it’s almost immoral to do something you dislike just to earn money. And yet most people spend what is half their waking hours earning money. If you hate it and you spend your whole life doing that, then you’re wasting your life.

When I was young I tended to change jobs a lot and I also owned a bookshop. I was trying to do work that I loved and also where I could operate on principles that I believed in. When I started at Ashtons they had principles which were much the same as mine. They believed in what they were doing. Back in those days I was employed on their Sydney high school rounds. I went to schools selling books and promoting Ashtons’ services and the main service was the book club. 

I loved the work because a lot of my customers over the years prior to working for Ashtons had become friends. Basically what I was doing was travelling around visiting friends, talking to them about books I had read and loved. I didn’t have to sell. I loved reading, loved talking about books and they paid me to do it. 

Then at one school they got this idea of ‘sticking me in front of the kids’. They asked me if Ashtons had anyone who talks to the kids about the books. I said ‘No, not unless I do it.” They said, “All right you’ll do.”

So for that year I was their Book Week guest and I sort of fumbled through it. Afterwards I asked if it was okay and they said, “Well, you were better than the author we had last year.” And I still don’t know if that’s a compliment or not!

Then when I was talking to other schools they also suggested I go to their schools and do the same. So I did more and more of them. Because there was so much demand I had to try to make it a bit more professional and I became very good at enthusing teenagers about books. I would find THE passage in each novel I was reading that would just grab them and kids would be clamouring to get those books, perhaps borrowed them from the library perhaps bought them from the book club. The important thing as far as I was concerned was that they wanted to read them. At this point I was reading (not telling), but I was learning a lot about how to hold an audience. In many Sydney high schools the kids will probably give you about five minutes and if they think you’re boring—you’re dead! In four years of doing that I had one riot, one almost riot and the rest of them I won!

So when I moved up to Brisbane I tried to set up the same sort of thing in the high schools. Generally they weren’t all that interested (mid 1980s). Basically the philosophy was “If it’s too much fun, they don’t learn”. But I believe the opposite. It may have changed but that seemed to be the prevailing attitude at the time. 

I was the State Manager of Ashton Scholastic in Queensland and so I organised for myself to go to primary schools. My personal motivation was not to boost book sales but to get those kids reading so the good thing was that it was also boosting book club sales. I started doing primary schools in Queensland and they took to it. 

And at about the same time the Storytelling Guild had just started in Brisbane. So I went along and was encouraged and started telling stories. I started incorporating storytelling in my school visits and over the years I became well known around Brisbane schools as a storyteller. More and more schools were saying to me. “John, forget about the book promotion. We just want you to come and tell stories. It got to the point where I couldn’t do justice to that and to Ashtons and I had to make a decision. It’s almost five years ago that I made that choice and I haven’t looked back.”
How do you communicate with the schools and set up your bookings?

“You must stipulate what you are prepared to do. I always stipulate what I do for the fee. If the client wants me to do more that’s another fee. I make that very clear and it’s all set out on paper and it is signed. Most of my bookings are done early in the year for the whole year so two weeks before my visit I send another letter and give them all my requirements down to the smallest detail such as having a glass of water available for me.

On the back of that piece of paper it lists the time I will arrive, the time of the sessions and contact details There’s a sentence at the bottom asking them to let me know if there are any errors.

I get a lot of follow up bookings and my clients become my friends. For me it’s a case of—love what you do, do it well the rest will follow. Doing it well is important! 

Preparation and communication is important too and it takes a long time to build all that up. You can’t just say ‘Okay I am going to be a professional storyteller’ and overnight that’s what you are.

All that time I had with Ashtons, that was an apprenticeship for me. I had ten years in the schools in Brisbane before I went full time, so my clients were built up over a long period of time during which I established client loyalty and my credibility. These things are important for establishing a good business but most of all love what you do.”

How do you research your stories?

“Most of the reading I do is stories. When I read a story and I think ‘wow I wish I’d written that one’ that’s the story for me to learn. If I don’t get that reaction I am never going to tell that as well. In my constant reading I am looking for that reaction and when I find it I add the story to my repertoire, the idea being that if the school asks me for something specific the broader my repertoire the more chance I have of being able to meet it. For example, a school I did recently came up with the topic ‘The Sea’ and I didn’t have a story that fitted for the age level and then I thought about the Grimms story of The Magic Fish. I like what it is saying but I am also wary of the portrayal of the stereotypical nagging wife and that’s one of the reasons I’ve never really told it. So I thought I’d give it a go. I discussed it with the teachers and they thought it would be a good story. Well, the kids were fidgeting all through that story. There was something about the story—it wasn’t working. What I’m getting at is that when you choose a story because it fits in with the theme rather than because you really love the story, it doesn’t work as well. 

When I am choosing a story that might be suitable for say eight year olds, I am eight when I read it so the part of me that thinks ‘wow what a great story’ is my inner eight year old. I can be eight! I give teachers an evaluation form for each performance. They usually put in quotes from the kids. A quote on one form from grades two and three was ‘He was the same age as us.’ I just couldn’t ask for more than that.”

What interests do you have apart from storytelling?

“I own a small catamaran which I love to sail and I love to go bushwalking. I don’t need so many interests because I am already doing the thing I love.”

John lives in Brisbane, Queensland with two computers and several other machines. He has three adult children—Melanie who lives in England, Linda who lives with her mother in Sydney and David who lives in Brisbane and who has recently presented John with his first grandchild, Ben.

Some would say that becoming a grandfather is sure to enhance one’s maturity but for John Shield, the boy who never grew up, I suspect it will have the opposite effect!
jb

How did you become involved in storytelling?

“When I think about it, I’ve got to go back to my childhood in the west of Ireland. I was just reading the other night that Sligo, where I come from, has more storytellers per head of population than the rest of Ireland. So I met quite a few storytellers as a child. But the one who interested me when I learned about him, was Pat McDonagh a traveller and a storyteller. He was a man without any legs. Pat could really project a lot into his stories. I think mostly what he did—which I try to imitate today—he painted pictures with words rather than focusing on giving a performance. His stories were brilliantly coloured pictures painted from his palette of words. Pat just sat there and told stories.

I suppose I was greatly influenced as a child because time didn’t mean very much when I was a kid. When people met on the road (we walked a lot in those days) they’d often just stand for an hour or so and just gossip. The Irish have a certain musicality in the way they speak. As a child I was fascinated to hear two people gossiping in the street. 

When I grew up I forgot about all that. I didn’t have time any more as a result of modern living. I was married, moved to the other side of the world and got involved in raising a family. You know there’s a lot of things that take up too much time in your life and you are inclined to forget or ignore the creative things. Like everything else it all gets pushed to the back of your mind and at some stage you bring it to the fore.
Some years ago I became involved in creative writing. That’s when I met you and Ken. Really you are to blame for getting me into storytelling! I remember you rang one night and said “Ken and I are going down to the Sydney storytellers’ meeting at Burwood. Would you like to come with us?” So I thought, why the hell not. Let’s go down and see what it’s all about. From there on it really took off for me.

The old Sydney storytellers’ guild folded and you started the Storytellers at the Writers Centre. I turned up to the first meeting at the Writers’ Centre at Rozelle and was surprised to see how many people went along. But even then I wasn’t convinced I had what it takes. I suppose that’s because I am a shy person and could not see myself standing up in front of people telling stories. At that stage storytelling wasn’t part of my personality but you and Ken and some others kept on at me. You said, “John you write your stories, you should be able to tell your own stories.”

I weakened. My first foray into storytelling was where I stood holding tightly to a piece of paper—the story— and told it. In that short time I discovered something interesting. At some point during that telling I discovered if I relaxed a little I could really enjoy what I was doing and the audience seemed to respond more to my words. I’ve tried to tell other people’s stories but could not remember them. I have a terrible memory. The stuff I write I should be able to remember. That’s basically how it all started in 1994.”

When did you start storytelling as a confident teller in the public arena?

“Is a storyteller ever confident? I don’t know. That would be five years ago at the library cafes.”

So you believe the library cafes were a help in getting started as a storyteller?

“Oh, they were terrific grounding, a marvellous place to start off. The people that attend go there to hear stories. They’re also very forgiving if you have any lapses, make any mistakes or whatever. I’ve a great belief that modern day communications—radio, television, the Internet—has killed the art of communication on a one to one basis. The people in the cafe audiences are out searching for the old forms of personal communication today.

We’ve actually gone back to our roots of sitting around a campfire telling each other stories. This is where these cafe and library based storytelling events are marvellous because they give both young and older people the opportunity to hear good stories from living people. They also give the teller the opportunity to share his story with a live audience.”

John, when you tell your stories do you do anything particular to set up a connection with your audience?

“With children I like to sit down very close to their level. I don’t like to sit above and look down at them—that can be a bit overpowering. I dress down in black. To me the words are important not what I look like. Someone once called me storytelling’s Johnny Cash. I’m not sure if that was a compliment. With an adult audience I suppose I do a bit of a Dave Allen presentation. I like to sit on a high stool. I don’t move around, just sit very still and let the words do the work.”

Do you prefer to sit among the audience rather than on the stage?

“Oh, among the audience. I feel that being closer to my audience I can get a certain rapport. I like eye contact—to be able to look at each person in the audience. I think that up on a stage there’s a certain distance between the audience and me. It interferes with the connection. I suppose that goes back to my childhood as well because then, on a winter’s night, everybody gathered around the fire—huddled very closely together, as was the storyteller. So you had this close circle of friends with one particular aim and that was to enjoy the story.”

Do you feel that people’s closeness helps intensify people’s feelings and reaction to a story?

“I think people become more involved in the story by being closer to the teller. You can convey the urgency, the sadness, and the happiness because when we invade someone else’s personal space—that unknown area of personal space—feelings can be transmitted. If you are in amongst people your feelings about a story are transmitted to the people in that circle.

When I go camping at the Basin I tell stories at night in my tent. There are a lot of teenage boys and girls there. A response from one particular girl at the end of a tale was “That’s a terribly sad story.” The rest of the girls reacted in very much the same way. I think they picked those feelings up from each other rather than the story. The emotional feel about it started to sweep through the audience.

Even the boys remained silent. They didn’t say it was a stupid story—there was no reaction of that kind—they just remained quiet and thoughtful. Yes, having this closeness allows the emotion to sweep through the audience.

If you’re up on a stage—because there is that distance between teller and audience—the reaction is not the same. You have to work a lot harder to achieve that result. I did a storytelling for a charity function six months ago and a bloke came up to me afterwards and said “That was a terrific story. We all really enjoyed it.” But I didn’t know that until I came down from the stage and people told me. It’s that invisible distance—they’re out there and I’m up here—which you have to bridge.”

Do you use any special skills to draw the large audience towards you?

“I try to set an atmosphere before I plunge into the story. When the audience is close by you can get straight into the story and it’s easy to get the emotion going. Up on the stage you need to introduce an atmosphere. Now, when I’m telling a ghost story and I’m up on a stage, I might start with, “Some people may believe in the supernatural, some may not. Have you ever been alone in the house at night when a door has closed for an unexplained reason? Has a window rattled and yet there’s no wind?” 

You build up this atmosphere. Everybody has experienced something unusual in his or her life that is not rational. They think ‘better fix that window’ but they are alone in the house the question arises... So you set the atmosphere and they say to themselves ‘Ah, we are going to have a ghost story.’”

Who has been your greatest storytelling influence?

“I suppose Pat McDonagh was. At the time he did influence the way I tell a story. He taught me how to paint word pictures so that the reader or listener could see my vision.”

You believe he was a great seanachie?

“Absolutely! I don’t know how he lost his legs but he’d travel round in a pony and trap selling tobacco, cigarette papers, matches, cottons, needles and threads. That’s how he made his living. Whenever he came to our area for some reason we knew he was coming. He’d arrive at a cousin’s place and have dinner there. He’d pass on all the gossip to the ladies. We would just stand outside the door and he’d come and say “Come in kids”. For the next hour or so he’d tell us stories. He always kept the best story for last. By this time it was dark. We lived out in the countryside where there were no streetlights and he’d tell us scary stories of places that we knew. He’d terrify us. It was hard to go past that place on the way home. Now, we were all good friends when we were kids but when it comes to fear it’s every man for himself. Yes, one way or another Pat had a great influence on me.

Dave Allen, a very laid back teller, also had a great influence on me. A terrific storyteller, he could do great accents and really work an audience. Peter Ustinov was also a great storyteller who influenced me. He had a certain way of telling stories that helped you remember them. There was a Jewish storyteller in London whose name eludes me. He was often on television telling children’s stories. He had such a gentle way of telling stories. When I am telling to children I try to do the same even though the story may be a bit threatening. I tell it gently so it’s not horrifying—the children would be bothered with nightmares.
Of Australian tellers I find Peter Dargin a great storyteller. I like his relaxed way of spinning a yarn. He can weave such a tale, it draws you in. You may sit there thinking ‘I don’t want to hear this story’ but he just drags you in there wanting to know what happens next. He does it in such a relaxed way—whether he’s relaxed internally I don’t know—but he comes across as very laid back. It’s almost an Irish way of telling. There’s no rush to get the story out. Everyone’s talented in different way. Donna Sife for instance tells her stories with so much conviction—often with humour—and you get the feeling she really enjoys doing it.

It’s really important that you enjoy your storytelling as your feelings are transmitted to your audience. They see you enjoying yourself and they enjoy themselves. If you’re miserable so are they.”

John, you write many of your stories. What proportion of the stories you tell do you write?

“About fifty-fifty. Most of the stories I tell are my own but a lot of them are influenced by my childhood. I’ve read a lot of Irish mythology but I’ve never taken any of the heroes of old and created a story around them. They belong to themselves. It would be like an Aboriginal story being updated to a modern version. If you take the culture out of a story it loses everything—like the Aussie films that have been changed for American audiences. Altered they become complete and utter flops. Therefor I would not and could not change an Irish mythological story because I would break away from the mythological and historical facts and that would be wrong.”

Do you use any aids to help your storytelling?

“I just sit and tell to the audience. All I need is a chair. I dress down to make the audience concentrate on the words. Bright colours could distract. I prefer a low light—no overhead lights—because then there’s no outside distraction.  In other words I want the audience’s entire attention on me. I like candles but often you can’t get candles. Anyway they could set off smoke detectors—could have a dampening effect on the storytelling audience! I really prefer the light behind me so they can’t see my face. All they hear is the spoken word.”

I presume you’re talking about the renowned tent tellings when you’re camping. Does that enhance or restrict the contact you have with the audience?

“Yes. I don’t know how they feel but I find they sit very still. The gaslight is not up very high so it’s not dazzling. I can get more of a reaction because I can see them. Therefore I can feel at a closer proximity to them. I get greater feedback from the audience. In that kind of set up especially with smaller children, they tend to sit very still for quite a long time, which amazes me. Trouble is they keep on wanting another story and I have to insist it’s time for bed. I get the parents to take them and settle them down so I can tell scary stories to the teens and the older audience. It’s amazing how fast their kids are settled into bed so they can rush back to hear the rest of the stories.”

Do you have any stories based on Australia folklore?

“No I don’t. Although I have been here thirty years I don’t feel it is my right.”

At what point in your life do you believe you’ll be able to tell them?

“Well it’s a bit of a paradox really. I’ve been short listed three or four times for the Henry Lawson Short Story Bush Competition Award. They obviously think the stories are good enough to be short-listed. 

There’s very little difference between Australian storytelling and Irish storytelling. Both of them are laid back with a subtle text to them where a lot has been going on but it doesn’t feel like it. I suppose I’m a bit reticent because of my accent. I can’t say “Gidday” in a real Aussie drawl. Maybe I’ll get around to it one day.”
Well, John we’ve discussed many things about you. Why do you believe storytelling is important?

“I think it is important in two areas. Firstly there is a lot of untold stories of mythology and history—particularly the Aboriginal stories and tales of the early days of settlement here. The same applies to Ireland. There are the popular stories that everybody knows but there are also other important stories that would go untold without a storyteller. When they are told to audiences they continue on a tradition—like Pat McDonagh—who told me stories that are in my subconscious memory. They’re all still there you know. Whether they’ll one day come to the fore I don’t know.

Secondly due to the influence of the electronic media and family breakdowns we are living in an increasingly isolated society. We are losing the art of communication and conversation. Just being able to sit down in a group and share stories of our everyday lives is a rare event. 

Today we have smaller and smaller families; our lives have been pushed to the limits where work is concerned. There’s very little time for a family to sit down and talk to each other.      It’s frightening to see that one business college—which offers computer courses—has added a course to teach basic communication. They’re teaching students who are working on computers how to turn around and say “Good day” to their next door neighbours. That’s scary!

So this art of storytelling—being able to get people to sit down in an auditorium, small room, hall, library or a tent listening to mythology, stories of the past, present or future—is very beneficial to our society. It’s a form of social therapy.”

Do you wish to offer advice to other tellers?

“Feel comfortable with the stories you are telling and show the audience you enjoy what you are doing. Sit back and relax—don’t worry about how you appear to your audience. They just want to enjoy your stories.”