The Art and Craft of Telling Personal Stories is a 6-week focused workshop designed to help people become aware of their own potential as storytellers and discover the power of storytelling in their personal and work lives. If you want to feel more comfortable relating in groups of people, increase your skills as a public speaker in professional situations, or pass on family stories to your grandchildren, this is the workshop for you.

This is a shameless plug for my own workshop at the wonderful Casa Libre en la Solana at 228 N. 4th Avenue, Tucson. The mission of Casa Libre is to “support and enhance the creativity of professional and novice writers by providing a community venue for classes, readings and other professional development opportunities.” If you’re not on their email list, sign up today to find out about their programming.

Anyone who puts words together would benefit from the experience of developing a personal narrative and presenting it orally to an audience.  Storytelling employs a different, yet related, skill set than the act of writing and one can strengthen the other.

In this 6-week workshop students will discover a framework for selecting, perfecting and performing personal stories through a combination of instruction and interactive, playful activities. Students will uncover their private reserve of stories, learn to organize a story for telling, share feedback with the other storytellers, and become more comfortable presenting to an audience.

The workshop includes: 
Tuesdays April 3, 10, 17 and May 1 – 4 evenings of group work, 6:30 – 10 p.m.
1 private lesson, individually scheduled the week of April 25
Friday, May 4, – informal performance, 7 – 9 p.m.
Tuesday, May 8 – wrap-up celebration and feedback group, 6:30 – 10 p.m.

The workshop size is limited to 12 students so please make sure you can make a commitment to attend all dates. Contact Casa Libre for details on cost and registration. Registration ends on March 27 so sign up soon.

For more information you can contact penelope@odysseystorytelling.com, or casakeepers@casalibre.org.

Odyssey Storytelling is wandering around Tucson looking for your stories.

Penelope Starr and Kirsten Larsen

A few months ago we (the board of StoryArts Group, which includes me) decided that 2nd Saturdays Downtown would be a great place to find storytellers. Our plan was mostly unformed but evolved with a little bit of luck and a bit of organizing.

First off was to ask Julie Ray if we could transform her Burrito Files Cart into the Story Cart. Julie had finished her project where she did a whimsical and interesting interview process with people in downtown Tucson. I knew the custom made cart was gathering dust in her yard so I asked if we could revive it and she was happy to see it get a new life.

Next up was paint and signage so no one would confuse us with an ice cream cart (but of course, some people still do). With a little help from the Tucson Pima Arts Council in the form of a GOS grant we were able to buy a portable PA system. We loaded it up, along with the digital camera, and we were good to go.

Penelope Starr and Adam Hostetter

In addition to 2nd Saturdays, we’ve taken the cart to Tucson Meet Yourself and here you can see Adam and me in front of the Tucson Children’s Museum. We hope to do more events in the future. Our objective is to find diverse tellers, young and old, to share their personal stories on a variety of themes.

People can be shy at first to talk in front of a camera and many people just walk on by but the ones that stop and talk with us are pretty amazing! We’ve heard about a New Year’s Eve escape on a boat from Cuba 20 years ago to a wife’s tragic death from cancer to college pranks.

Kids can be remarkable storytellers.  At the Children’s Museum for a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we were amazed by the insight and knowledge of one 7 year old girl and delighted when a 5 year old sang We Shall Overcome for us while her very proud father looked on.

You can see a few videos on our website from the Story Cart and from our regular monthly shows at the Club Congress. And keep checking back as we add more videos.

Odyssey Storytelling is a program of StoryArts Group, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit volunteer run arts organization.  We can use some help getting more videos online so please contact me if you have some experience and would like to be involved in story capturing.

When I arrived at the Titanic Artifact Exhibition in the Rialto Building on Congress Street, I received my boarding pass, a replica tickets from White Star Line, that included the name of an actual passenger who made the voyage. My name was Mrs. Arthur (Emily) Ryerson and I was traveling back home to America with my husband, 3 children and maid to attend the funeral of one of my sons who had been killed in an automobile accident. The party was traveling 1st class in cabins on the “B” deck.

I found the Ryerson’s cabins on a large layout of the ship and saw pictures of where they would have their meals. And unlike what Mrs. Ryerson would have seen, I saw how the 2nd and 3rd class passengers would travel.

The exhibit is arranged so that you see photos and artifacts of all aspects of this amazing and tragic story from the engineering and planning of the great ship through the voyage and then the fatal meeting with the iceberg (which makes a startling appearance in the exhibit) until the end where you find out if the person you’ve been following survived the ship wreck.

But mostly it’s about stories. If you rent the device where you can hear recorded information, you will hear many factoids and voices recreating first hand accounts of their experiences. But better yet, find one of the very helpful and friendly docents to tell you the stories.

Alora Cohen was the whiz who amazed Julie Ray and me with her voluminous knowledge of all things Titanic. At every artifact or photo she could recite interesting anecdotes and behind-the-scenes kind of information. Turns out she’s not a professional touring with the show, she’s a local Tucson artist that was hired for the duration of the show and she did her homework. A lot of it. All of the people we met were locals and all of them were brimming with info and stories.

Paul told us that the Titanic had 4 funnels: 3 were operational, the 4th was fake.

We heard that people weren’t the only passengers on Titanic. Six dogs were housed in a kennel on F Deck.  It is rumored that American millionaire John Jacob Astor (who Alora called her “Titanic boyfriend” because she so admired him) released those dogs from the kennels.

We read that the last living survivor, Millvina Dean, recently passed away on May 31, 2009 as the oldest survivor of Titanic at age 97.

You can read more stories at the Titanic website and learn more at Encyclopedia Titanica.

I came out of the exhibit singing “It was sad, it was sad, it was sad when the great ship went down. Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship went down,” a song I remember from my childhood.  I bumped into Paco Velez in the gift shop at his day job and he said he had never heard the song. I guess it’s a generational thing.