Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The Storytelling Environment

If you read books on sharing scary stories, or if you go online and look for websites with suggestions for telling scary stories, you will almost always find advice on "controlling the environment".  You'll get great advice about dimming the lights or building a campfire or creating a spooky atmosphere. You'll be told about eliminating distractions and about making eye contact with each audience member.

HOWEVER - at the Festival of Ghost Stories in Bryan Park you will have to work with a very different setting.
You are in the park, and the park is dark - but you are on stage.

Go on, go up those steps and on to the stage.
There is an audience out there in the dark - can you see them?
Once you are standing on stage under the bright lights you probably won't be able to make out many folks beyond the front row. 
Can they see you?
Well, the lights are on you, and there's a back drop behind you,
so certainly the closer audience can see you. 
Maybe they can catch your expressions and gestures from half way back.

But look where people are setting up their chairs and blankets.
They are waaay up the hill.
You are going to be a tiny silhouetted form up there on stage.
They will hear you - you have the microphone.
It can be a really effective storytelling environment.
Just not an intimate one.

Think about this when you pick out your story.

No comments: