MOTHER GOOSE Storytelling CD
STORY FROM MOTHER GOOSE
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Bring Mother Goose into your home!
“Tales From Mother Goose Land” is now available for Bedtime.
Two-disk set is filled with Mother Goose’s enchanting stories.
Each disk is 1/2 hr, a comfortable listening length for small children.
Disk 1 contains:
“Old Mother Goose and her neighbors, the Three Little Kittens” “Simple Simon at the Fair”
“Sheep Tales” “Mary Had a Little Lamb song” “Sing a Song of Sixpence”
Disk 2 contains:
“Hey Diddle Diddle” “The Muffin Man and Betty Botter”
“Wee Willy Winkie” “Hickory Dickory Dock”
For Storytelling CDs from Judith “Mother Goose” go here to the Storytellers Store
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Judith Weyerhaeuser.
Mother Goose Telling Stories at Chicken Festival
Mother Goose Telling Stories at Chicken Festival
Judith lived in Joplin, Missouri, right on the edge of the Ozarks and the Prairie. She started storytelling at the University of Kansas as a student. The teacher of a class on creative drama stated that you must tell story not read it so that the children can act out the story. She first started to worry she could not remember the story, but later discovered it was really quite simple, and it was the most effective way to get the children involved in creative drama.
After two degrees in theater and going to conferences, workshops and things like that since then, and she did have a little more training as a storyteller. She is a trained Waldorf kindergarten teacher where storytelling is at varied big part of the day and she was taught to tell stories in a different way than she was taught in theater and that you try and tell the story very simply without any improvisation and as a theater person that was very difficult, because as a theater person she wants to be more flamboyant and go into characters, but they said not for children. You simply tell the story, and you don’t color, allowing the children to add their own color with the results of that adding to and developing a style of her own.
That is simple, where she combined all of her background, and she is now very happy with the results of her style. It reflects in her CD telling as Mother Goose, the stories take the child to where only they know and can relate.
The farthest she has traveled to tell stories was Angel, Russia. She had friends over there that invited her to come on over and she went over to tell stories with children, an English learning experiment over there and she used Mother Goose as well as creative drama. And she had the children act out the mother goose story in English. But then she told to some adults also but not Mother Goose and she told at some schools there that had been arranged. She’s traveled to England at the Cambridge folk Festival, Vancouver Washington, Mexico, and all over MO.
When she first started telling her family first considered it as a nice hobby, but I she decide to become professional and started spending many hours a day promoting herself. Her husband got to the place where he felt she was not spending enough time at home, her daughter was very supportive because she was raised in storytelling, but it did create problems in the household. Specially with her husband, because of putting so much time and effort into it, but it has settled down.
The finances did come, but they were not equal to the amount of time put in at the start. Not really paying for the time put into it, but she thoroughly enjoy a telling stories and going out meeting people. But as far as the financial it paid for itself. And she did make a little bit of profit, but it did not bring in a kind of money that you would think it would for the amount of time she put in.
The easiest thing for her to learn was doing Mother Goose. She’d done a lot of thinking a lot about why Mother Goose. And when she was a little girl her mother used to tell her nursery rhymes, her mother was quite a storyteller, she would tell stories at home all the time and mother goose was a large part of what she would tell. So she knew all the Mother Goose rhymes.
When she decided to Mother Goose as part of her performance. It was a spontaneous thing. It was because a friend organized a preschool Festival and asked her to come in, do some storytelling. She says how about I do Mother Goose, They said yes that would be a great idea so she quickly made a costume and didn’t have any stories to tell. But when she started telling they just sorted just came flowing out it was amazing. She only had about five stories she told then. But she still tells them today and they’re her favorite stories to tell and it was as easy as it could be. They just flowed right out.
Since then, she has made more Mother Goose stories but she does more Mother Goose than anything.
Her best audience is a mixed age audience of adults and children. Children that are old enough to pay attention. When you have an audience with a lot of babies, you get a lot of those at the summer reading program. When the people bring their older children of course they bring their babies that don’t have the attention span. Even though considering herself very adaptive at telling stories of all kinds. But when you have children who are one or two years old it’s difficult to do. So that for her ideal audiences is made up of children of three years and up to adults that are there.
I asked her, “From your past experience, what wisdom can you give new storytellers and what would you say to encourage them.”
Her reply was, “Tell them how important it is to try and not imitate another storyteller. hey can listen to other storytellers watching their styles and to pick out the ones they really like. But when you start telling the stories put the story into your own words and the best way to do that is to look at the bones of the story which really means the plot line and the basics of the story, but not fill in all the narrative. Then when you work with the bones, you just start telling the story and you know what they are and the stories just flow on out. Then it’s in your own words.
That’s how you develop your unique style, and it makes it easier to remember the story because you’re not trying to memorize. Another thing for tellers who wants to be professional is to realize it’s going to take some time to get well-known and a lot work. It is very fulfilling work, but it is time-consuming and you have to let everybody know who you are what you are doing and you need to have a website and that takes some time and money that you put into it. She sent out lots and lots of letters to libraries and schools letting them know that she was available and directing them to the website and you get some very small percentage of the people you sent the letters to who actually hire you. You need to take it easy and realize that it is a labor of love. Not a labor of money, but there are some storytellers that are successful it is possible to do that. But basically DO NOT quit your day job until you have really establishes yourself as a storyteller.
The Chicken Festival the first time she went she loved it. For one thing there is no featured tellers. So there’s no stars of the show, and here’s everybody else. Everybody is a star at the Chicken Festival. It is so informal that anybody can feel welcome to get up and tell a story even to people who have never even told stores before and she thinks that’s wonderful. It’s a way in which people can get together and share stories without any kind of pressure. And there was music involved and says she is a musician also. It was fun to have the opportunity to play the guitar and sing.
Her final words to tellers are, enjoy the stories, tell stories you really love, love it while you’re telling the story. Enjoy the interaction between you and the audience, whether you’re telling the story to one person or full auditorium. The importance is the love that you tell that you impart as to the person you’re talking to and that were her final words to me.
Hope you enjoyed, Brother Beno Your Storyteller
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