Tuesday, August 5, 2014

RE-SITUATING THE PAST - THE ALCHEMY OF STORY

 


"For storytellers, the writing of dramatic stories, plays and/or screenplays, seems to involve an imaginative re-construction of a personal past, and the re-situating of that past in the present. The actions of characters, in the context of compelling and identifiable narratives, allow change to become visible. Fairy tales, including Aboriginal Dreamtime legends are not fanciful contrivances. They provide, and have always provided, significant warnings based on tribal experiences of what can go wrong. By passing on this wisdom of what to avoid, the tribe offers advice to the tribe concerning the nature of being present. As such, these stories work to build both courage an freedom. Recipes, methodologies and techniques for 'making it' as a storyteller/filmmaker/playwright in the modern world usually stifle the creative adventure of becoming present by insisting upon and prescribing 'desirable' behaviors that frustrate the openness required liberating the present from the past."

- Billy Marshall Stoneking

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