PLACE, MOVEMENT AND GESTURE IN BIBLICAL STORYTELLING Notes from a Workshop with Biblical Storyteller, Dennis Dewey The National Storytelling Association defines storytelling as: an art form through which the storyteller projects mental and emotional images to an audience using the spoken word, including sign language and gestures, carefully matching story content with audience needs and environment. (Livo and Rietz, p. 8) Of course "sign language and gestures" must be included. It is said that if you tie the hands of the storyteller, the voice becomes mute. Storytelling is an embodied activity. Bodies take up space (place) and they act through space (movement). The importance of place movement and gesture for storytelling cannot be overrated. As I have lead workshops in recent years, a definition of Biblical Storytelling has evolved, a definition which I always offer as provisional because it continues to evolve. This is it (as it is in 1996): Biblical Storytelling is the lively expression and animation of a narrative text of the Old or New Testament that has first been deeply internalized and then is remembranced, embodied, breathed, and voiced by a teller/performer as a sacred event in time and space in community with an audience/congregation. Notice the relevant terms in the definition: expression, animation, embodied, space. Part of the evolution of this definition is a constant rethinking of the order of past participles. Does the storyteller first remembrance, then embody, then breath and give voice? Does the process start with the breathing? With the embodiment? My experience is that the sequence changes with each telling. But I know by acquaintance that sometimes a story begins in the muscles. My memory of the story of the man with the withered hand (Mark 3:1-6), for example, is kept in my hand. This is how that hand functions in my telling of that story: Again Jesus entered the synagogue and there was a man with a withered hand. [LOCATE THE MAN IN SPACE BY POINTING IN HIS DIRECTION WITH THE WHOLE HAND.] And they all watched Jesus to see if he would heal the man on the sabbath so that they might accuse him. And Jesus told the man to come to him. [BECKON WITH THE HAND.] And he said to those who were watching: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm? To give life or to kill?" But they [SLOW SWEEPING GESTURE WITH THE HAND] were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. [THE HAND IN A FIST THUMPS AGAINST THE CHEST.] And he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And the man stretched out his hand [THE HAND, HIGH IN THE AIR, SLOWLY TRANSFORMS FROM TWISTED FINGERS TO A SUPPLE GRACEFUL, WING-LIKE MOVEMENT.] And immediately the Pharisees [A POINTED POINT] went out and took counsel [ON THIS WORD THE HAND TURNS AND SEEMS TO GRIP SOMETHING IN MID-AIR] with the Herodians against Jesus: how to destroy him. [ON THE WORD, "destroy," THE HAND RAISED TO FACE LEVEL BECOME A CLENCHED FIST, SHAKING.] I think of storytelling almost as athletic event. In fact, I often "warm up" for storytelling by doing isolating exercises, tightening, then relaxing parts of my body. I will try to move about the room in a fluid and graceful way, using my whole body in slow and deliberate articulations of movement, breathing deeply and in time with the motion. If story is an embodied activity, then body awareness is as important in Biblical Storytelling as it is in dance or football. Bodies take up space and move through space. Each story has a geography. A good first step in discovering a story's geography is to mark all the "space, place and motion" words (including prepositions). In the following example, space and place words are in brackets [] and motion words in braces {}: That same day [two of them] {were going to} [a village] called Emmaus, [about seven miles from Jerusalem,] and talking [with each other] about all these [things] {that had happened.} While they {were talking and discussing,} [Jesus] himself {came near and went with} them, but their eyes {were kept from recognizing} him. And he said to them: WHAT ARE YOU {DISCUSSING WITH EACH OTHER} {AS YOU WALK ALONG?} And they [stood still,] looking sad. Then [one of them,] whose name was Cleopas, said: ARE YOU THE ONLY VISITOR TO [JERUSALEM] THAT DOES NOT KNOW THE THINGS THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE THERE IN THESE DAYS? Notice that the story happens with reference to the geographic points Jerusalem and Emmaus. (The text even provides us with the distance between them: seven miles---a goodly walk.) People who watch you tell this story ought to point in the same direction when asked, "Which way is Jerusalem?" The dispirited disciples are walking away from Jerusalem and toward Emmaus. Also, time has a spacial dimension in storytelling. We often unconsciously shrug, tilting our head back and to the side when we want ot emphasize that something happened in the past. Clearly (and paradoxically) for the two disciples, Jerusalem is the past and Emmaus is the bleak future. A nod to the direction from which they have come is natural as they are "talking about all these things that had happened (back there in Jerusalem)." Notice, too that I have indicated "talking and discussing" as an action phrase. In blocking (staging, choreographing) the story, I will want to indicate with gesture that there is an exchange going on between the two disciples, even as I am speaking in the persona of the narrator. The name "Jesus" is bracketed because each of the characters in the story takes up space. In this case the spaces are dynamic, fluid (because the dialogue takes place as they "walk along") but they remain in spacial relationship to one another, sight lines and body angles conveying these relationships. And all of the story takes place between the poles of story's macrogeography: Jerusalem and Emmaus. The "dance" of any story's telling begins before a word is spoken when the storyteller looks at the space in which the episode is to unfold and conveys to the audience the placement of key characters, objects and directions, creating a sense of presence and of sacred space of shared imagination. I often teach students the technique of visualization in the learning of the story by heart. Visualization is nothing more than picturing the events described in the story as unfolding before the eyes in three-dimensional space. Simonides of Ceos, according to Cicero (DE ORATORE, Book II), discovered the art of mnemonics when, after the roof collapsed in a banquet hall where he was storytelling, the great orator found that he was able to identify the remains of the dead by remembering who had reclined where at table! Hardly as poetic as Archimede's moment of "eureka," the reality was nonetheless valuable for Simonides and those of us who still practice something akin to his art. The teller must "see" what is happening in order that the audience also may see and believe. The process of "seeing" fixes what is seen in place. Sight lines become helps for the audience, triangulating in space the characters and objects of the shared imagination. This sorting of elements of the story in spacial relationship facilitates understanding of the story. I often refer to the storytelling approach to the study of scripture as "exegesis from the inside out." One might say that discovering and moving through the geography of the story is part of that exegetical process. Words can only communicate so much. Flesh and words do more. Some studies claim that 50-75% of human communication is non-verbal. We also know that hearers hear at about 1/5 the rate at which most speakers speak. Storytellers need to make an effort to slow down and be deliberate as part of the invitation to their audience to participate in the experience of the story. Paying attention to the story's geography benefits the teller by slowing down the telling. To "see" the events in space unfold takes time. Time allows savoring, reflection, wonder, affective flush, mental connection. Again, time and space are intimately connected in storytelling because storytelling is an event. When teller and audience and story and Spirit connect, the event is sacred and time and space are sacrilized. And here are some practical tips for making use of place, movement and gesture in the telling of biblical story: 1) characters in dialogue should cross sightlines. It is not necessary for a teller to move into one character's space, turn and look directly at the other character's space (which the teller has just left). More effective is looking out at the audience, saying the lines from the respective spaces of the characters in dialogue, but looking out so that the sightlines of the characters cross at about a 90 degree angle. If the dialogue is very rapid, the same effect can be achieved with movement of the shoulders and sightlines only. 2) Use the narrative connectors to move into place to assume another character. If we were to show the words scattered in space where they might drop as the story is told with movement, they might look like this: When the wine ran out, his mother said to him, ===================== "They have no wine!" ===================== Jesus said to her, ==================== Woman, why are you involving me in this; my hour has not yet come! ===================== 3) Pay attention to the rhythms in the story, the pace of the breathing. "Stories breathe.... The story inhales and exhales with the teller; it owns the teller's voluntary and involuntary movements." (Livo and Rietz, p. 124) 4) In learning the story, the more movement (even excessive) the better. In telling the story, less is more. 5) Aim for fluid and sustained vs. jerky and choppy. 6) Try using the WHOLE body, not just the hands. Let the motion be purposeful. (Don't move out of nervousness; undirected, random movement is confusing. Better to stay rooted in one place than to move for no reason.) 7) Know the story so well that it "owns" you. When you reach this stage you discover a wonderful paradox: that "a story is most powerful in the hands of a storyteller who also owns and manipulates the story.... The story teller who has not come to a sufficient degree of conscious intimacy, ease and comfort with the story through story preparation and development often has difficulty allowing the story its own unselfconscious and separate existence. (Livo and Rietz p. 92) 8) Observe how people move. I cannot resist calling upon the advice of Jackie Torrence, the featured presenter at the 8th Annual Gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers. A professional storyteller of international renown, Jackie enumerated the marks of a good telling, which I paraphrase as follows: 1) ATTITUDE: Know who YOU are, know the story, be at home with yourself, and enjoy the telling. 2) APPRECIATE YOUR AUDIENCE: Remember that they are your reason for being. 3) NEVER TELL A BAD STORY: A bad story is one you're not ready to tell or a story you don't enjoy telling. Jackie's body speaks its own language and tells its own story. Her performances at the 1995 NOBS Gathering made virtuosic use of the body---even as that ample body occupied a wheelchair all the while! She described sitting in church as a little girl and turning around in the pew to look backwards so that her mother (seated next to her) would not notice. As she related this, Jackie turned first her shoulders, while her head remained forward and her eyes glued to a point at her side where she had established the position of her mother in imaginary space, and then, when it seemed her shoulders had reached a point at which her head would surely twist off, her head turned ever so slowly to follow her shoulders! Masterful! When she described a woman as wearing a "a go-o-o-o-o-o-ld chain," her hands went slowly down the length of the invisible chain and widened to indicate the pendant hanging from it, her hands finally meeting at her waist. In another story she drawled out the words describing "the ho-o-o-ogs and pi-i-i-i-igs in the mu-u-u-u-ck and the mi-i-i-i-ire," all the while pointing her long-nailed finger, her hand extended, bouncing in sync with each pulse of the rhythm of the words. When Jackie marveled at how her "Aunt Sally would pump that pump organ," Jackie's SHOULDERS pumped up and down. Yes, the shoulders are connected to the feet that pump. You have heard it said, "A storyteller whose hands are tied is a tongue-tied storyteller," but I say to you, "There is more to storytelling than gesticulating with the hands." As we have noted, movement, place and gesture can almost tell the story without words. Actors know this. A bit of "business," and angle of the shoulders, a double take with a sideways glance are also story. Storytellers use acting in telling. In fact one might say that storytelling is a kind of acting that employs eye contact. Biblical storytellers can benefit from acting theory: The typical gesture helps to bring a player closer to the character he [sic] is portraying, while the intrusion of personal movements separates him and pushes him in the direction of his personal emotions. (Stanislavsky) The articulation of the physical part of role actually leads to inner support. (Grotowsky) The most articulated performances are those which have been pared away: all that's essential, all that's outside the center has been dropped, and what remains is a spare language of tasks which speaks of life and nature. (Joseph Chailin) Still, some will consider the kind of movement I describe as inappropriate for storytelling in general and biblical storytelling in particular. Those who feel this way often conceive of the process as "dramatizing" the story, that is doing something to the story, adding something to it that is not already there. To tell the story with this kind of movement is too "theatrical." Our attitudes toward theater, as Richard Ward has pointed out have been shaped by a long history. (Ward, p. 10) Some Christian theology, after all, has even considered the body to be an embarrassment, a prison (soma sema) for the soul. The notion that the use of our bodies to tell story is somehow inappropriate for Biblical material or other "serious literature" may find its origins in antiquity. The distinction between the mime and the tragic actor is clearly voiced by Plato. In the THE REPUBLIC, Socrates discusses the matter with his friend Adeimantes who had just come back from the theatre. Having some doubts whether theater should altogether be admitted to the Ideal State, Socrates is ready to make concessions for a "mode of narration such as we have illustrated out of Homer, that is to say, this style will be both imitative and narrative; but there will be very little of the former and a great deal of the latter. (Kohansky, pp. 17-18) Get a life, Socrates! There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy! Philip Hilts has written a fascinating account of a man named Henry whose hippocampus was surgically removed in the 1950s. Since that date Henry has been condemned to an existence in which he has no conscious memory of anything that happened longer than about 30 seconds ago. When Henry is asked if he knows the way to the examination room to which he has been taken every day 40+ years, he says, "No." Yet, unguided, he will exit his room to the hall and turn to the right, in the direction of that exam room. There is more than semantics to my preference for the term "internalizing" to describe the process of learning the biblical stories rather than "memorizing." As Henry's case demonstrates (and any musician who plays an instrument deftly will attest), our memories are diffuse, somatic, muscular. There is kinesthetic memory as well. Different parts of the story and various patterns of movement are somehow "stored" in different parts of our bodies, and our bodies express them in movement as the story unfolds. There is good theology behind our need to pay more attention to our bodies and to try to be more deliberate not just about how we live, but also how we move and have our being as tellers of the Biblical story. Storytelling IS an embodied activity, and Biblical Storytelling is INCARNATIONAL event. We start from the understanding that the God who created our bodies called creation "good." Whenever the story is told, in a real sense the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. Norma J. Livo and Sandra A Rietz, STORYTELLING: PROCESS AND PRACTICE, Littleton, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 1986 New York: Methuen, 1982 Richard Ward, "Biblical Storytellers in the Marketplace: Limits and Possibilities" in THE JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL STORYTELLING, 1992) Mendel Kohansky, THE DISREPUTALBE PROFESSION: THE ACTOR IN SOCIETY, Greenwood Press, 1984 Philip Hilts, MEMORY'S GHOST: THE STRANGE TALE OF MR. M AND THE NATURE OF MEMORY, Simon and Schuster, 1994