Storytime

So we changed the characters of our folktale to fit with the members of our group. Our instructor emphasized the importance of the narrator and how he/she was the central of the performance, acting as the glue to hold everything together. And so I fulfilled the role of narrator whereas Michelle played the North Wind, Esther the main girl, and Eric the kleptomaniac landlord. The gist of the story is that the North Wind steals the girl's food one day as she is having lunch and so she goes to the North Wind's house to receive compensation for the food that was stolen from her. When she arrives there the North Wind gives her a magical cloth that serves all sorts of good dishes and this cloth is stolen from the girl by the landlord. And so she goes back to the North Wind's house for something in return and all the Wind has is a stick that will beat people up upon command. And so she returns back to the inn where the landlord stole her cloth to punish him with this magical stick. And so the tale ends when the girl leaves happily with her magical items.

Afterwards, our instructor critiqued about how our group focused more on dramatizing rather than on the aspect of storytelling. I suppose that because we were unsure about the task at hand, we didn't fully understand the purpose of this assignment. She told us of how she wanted the main focus to be on the narrator with minimal dramatization. She had hoped for the dramatization to add to the story narration rather than having the story narration add to the dramatization which is what winded up happening in our particular performance. This meant that she wanted there to be less dialogue between the characters and more speech from the narrator who was supposed to captivate the audience and hold their attention.