National Storytelling Festival
Rafe was a featured teller at the 2010 National Storytelling Festival, the largest and most prestigious storytelling event in the world. This was his third time as a featured teller at this magical event where 10,000 people come to hear three days and nights of storytelling.

Storytelling Institute at ETSU
Rafe says: “Unlike written stories, told stories must be embodied. Face, hands, feet, posture, eyes, voice, rhythms of speech and silence, along with quite specific word choices, ARE the story. There is no text outside the moment of telling. To bring a story alive we must understand the relationship of our own creative imagination and the gestural forms through which the tale is brought to life and transmitted to our audience. Through presentation, as well as working together one on one, and in larger and smaller groups, we will learn to understand the role of the creative imagination in forming our stories, and then learn how to ground our bodies and voices in imaginative reality and thus make our stories come alive.”

Participants had the opportunity to work intimately with Rafe in the beautiful hills of northeastern Tennessee, at the East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City, TN, where he led a Storytelling Institute entitled Imagination and the Language of Gesture in July 2010.

 

Writing for Storytellers: Master Class

"Many Stories—One World", the 2010 National Storytelling Conference took place in Los Angeles from July 29-August 1, 2010. The conference included workshops, panels, and resources for those interested in the art and application of storytelling. Rafe led a Master Class on July 29 entitled Writing for Storytellers. The workshop addressed the issue of how storytellers can learn how to write stories that have all the life of told tales, yet without being able to make use of the usual tools of the teller— voice, eyes, facial expressions, hands, feet and bodies to do so.

Storytelling Live in Jonesborough, TN
Rafe had a great time in Jonesborough, Tennessee in August 2009 where he was the featured Teller-in-Residence of the International Storytelling Center’s program

Every afternoon he did a one-hour concert for a predominantly adult audience, telling new personal and family stories about WWII and the Holocaust, childhood wishes, and his own adventures motorcycling, then linking those stories up to traditional tales. He also presented a workshop titled Embodying your Story: Imagination and the Language of Gesture, for the Jonesborough Storyteller’s Guild.

Jonesborough is also the home of the National Storytelling festival that takes place the first weekend in October every year, and the home of the national and international storytelling revival. So it is a great place to be invited to tell stories! It was an honor and a pleasure to be there.