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I love tales of childhood friends growing up and doing something cool together--like Brooklynites Saskia Miller and Stephanie Ursula Hodges, who instigated this "story experiment" called PenTales20:
We handed 20 empty notebooks to 20 friends, and asked them each to
start a story. These books are now traveling the world as each
storyteller passes the book on to someone new to continue their story.
The last storyteller will return the completed PenTale to New York
City, where the curious collection of works will be celebrated and
shared with a larger audience.
You can see the path of these globetrotting exquisite corpses through this map--and if you've contributed to any of them, I'd be fascinated to hear what the experience was like--too much pressure, or great creative play? And how did having the physical object change the experience of making your contribution?
I'm also drawn to their monthly storytelling nights, where people get together to play themed storytelling games--which, I read in the National Post (reporting on the storytelling nights' cross-border migration to Toronto in April) "is actually cooler than it sounds and involves a roomful
of people trading stories, spontaneous artwork, and whatever else
inspires them at the time." (Sounds like more fun than reading Facebook updates.)
And I really dig their credo:
> We believe that everyone has a great story to tell.
> We believe that telling and listening to stories connects people in meaningful ways.
> We believe that getting people together in real spaces to share real experiences can produce powerful creative connections.
I think I might need to become a PenTales instigator. And I think I'm going to have to instigate some dioramas. (Seattle storytellers, start your glue guns.) --Mari Malcolm
Hi Mari, thank you so much for covering PenTales. We'd love to talk to you about starting a PenTales group in Seattle. Let us know whether you'd be game. Regards, Stephanie
Posted by: stephanie | April 01, 2010 at 08:28 AM