This critique compares and contrasts three different storytellers: Karen Haas, Tim Ereneta, and Bunjo Butler, all professional storytellers. I witnessed a live storytelling as performed by Karen entitled, Rip-roaring, Rollicking, and Down-right Ridiculous Tall Tales, at the Key Center Library in Key Center, WA. Both the remaining storytellers were found on-line with Tim’s, Isabella and Her Brother (audio only), and Bunjo’s, Mrs. Bear and Mrs. Crow and The Story of Talk, (audio and video).
Karen and Bunjo’s stories were for a children’s audience, but Tim’s was a fairy tale for adults. I thought this was appropriate since fairy tales were originally written for adults. Karen had the children enraptured with her tales. The way she approached the telling was as if she were performing for a crowd and not just the four children that were in attendance. Bunjo appeared to be on stage, but there was no audience in attendance since no background noise was heard. Tim performed in front of a live audience. The sounds of laughter made it apparent that he was performing for a large audience.
Karen fully engaged her audience, including adults in attendance. She began by explaining about the term Tall Tales. She emphasized that these stories were exaggerations and gave examples of what she meant by the word exaggeration. She included the audience while playing the guitar and asking the audience to sing along with her I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Spider. She also asked the kids to make the sounds of the animals that Davey Crockett encountered during his travels. Tim and Bunjo’s stories did not include audience participation.
Using different voices for the characters in her stories, Karen also opened her mouth wide while telling the story of The Wide-Mouthed Frog. Her pacing a good while she was telling the tales and also between tales. She used pauses for emphasis and full voice range. Bunjo tried to use different voices for his characters but was inconsistent which was confusing. Tim did not make voices changes, but again, he was performing in front of an adult audience.
A Tennessee accent was used by Karen when telling the tales of Davey Crockett. She used slang from the era including “fur” for “for”, “this-a-here” for “this.” She also used very descriptive words. She described the eyes of the panther that Davey encountered as, “glowing like barbecue coals”. Bunjo used a southern accent with African American slang terms, for example, “Say what?” This may be his natural style of storytelling since the stories were of southern origin although The Story of Talk was listed as an African tale.
Davey Crockett is an American folk tale as performed by Karen. She also included the story of The Wide-mouthed Frog and I was not able to find the origin of the story. Tim’s story I would categorize as “fractured fairytale”. The story was introduced as a tale from Sicily, although I was not able to confirm the claim. The “good” characters live happily ever after and the “bad” characters did not. Bunjo’s story Mrs. Bear and Mr. Crow was labeled as an African American tale and as described, ended with a “universal truth”. The Story of Talk was labeled as an African tale. I was not able to find other references of these tales on the internet.
Karen used a guitar and played music for her “Spider” song. She also used to body to move about and dramatize the story. She asked for audience participating in imitating the frog’s question “Who are you and what do you eat?” Bunjo was dressed in African culture clothing and he used a whisk type broom which may have been made of horse-tail hair. It wasn’t used for a prop, but used more as emphasis in spots during the telling of the story. I could not tell if Tim used any props or other elements in his story since the story was in audio form only, What Tim did use was humor as evidence from loud laughter from his audience. He fully engaged is audience with the humor in his tale.
The strength in Karen’s storytelling was her full engagement in her telling of the stories. Her method of defining for the children the meaning of the term “tall tales” showed sensitivity and understanding of the age group of her audience. Her enthusiasm was engaging both for the children and the adults. Bunjo’s tales were interesting in that they were different types of stories than I had encountered previously. Tim’s story was full of humor and had the audience and myself, fully engaged. The story was based on a familiar theme (beautiful Isabella and the King lived happily ever after), but the story contained adult content as to the horrors that befell the wicked stepmother and ugly stepsister. The story was a hilarious “fractured fairy tale”.
It is hard to think of a weakness in Karen’s storytelling. The storytelling was 30 minutes in length and I could have listened to more of her stories, but I’m sure for the target age group the length was appropriate. Bunjo’s stories were odd. Although the characters and story were geared to children, the universal truth as stated at the end of Mrs. Bear and Mr. Crow, “Your friends don’t tell you the truth, and some say the naked truth is nothing but a dressed up lie”, was not age appropriate. His second story “The Story of Talk” did not have a satisfying ending. I would conclude that Bunjo’s stories were his weakness. I found no weaknesses in Tim’s story.
In conclusion, what I gained from this experience was the understanding that if you are not fully engaged in your story, neither will be your audience. The more enthusiasm you show, the more engaged your audience. Voice changes for characters add to the fun of the stories. Lastly, good stories are the foundation of good storytelling.
Bibliography
Karen Haas Storytelling
Faulkner Keith, and Jonathan Lambert, The Wide-Mouth Frog: A Pop-up Book
(Dial; 1st edition, March 1, 1996), 16 pp.
Haas, Karen. “Living History Performer, Storyteller, Musician”
http://www.karenstoryteller.com/
Traditional Folk Song, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly (Cartwheel, August 1, 2001)
Board Book, 20 pp.
(I was not able to find a reference to the specific story of Davey Crockett as told by Karen, also the I’m Still Hungry story)
Bunjo Butler Storytelling
The Story of Talk as told by Bunjo Butler. Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore,
Maryland. http://www.prattlibrary.org/home/storyIndex.aspx?id=7512
Mrs. Bear and Mr. Crow as told by Bunjo Butler. Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore,
Maryland. http://www.prattlibrary.org/home/storyIndex.aspx?id=7512
Tim Ereneta Storytelling
Isabella and Her Brother as told by Tim Ereneta, May 2008 podcast. Storyteller.net
For more information about Tim Ereneta here is his webpage on myspace:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=92677
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