STORYTELLING RENAISSANCE TAKES HOLD IN INDIA
Preeti Mutha was a bundle of nerves. The 32-year-old housewife in Chennai was haunted by bad memories that had shaken her when she was in school. She had just lost her father and was also struggling with post-partum depression after giving birth to her son.
Then she heard that The Narrative, a local storytelling group that holds open-mic sessions, was organising a show based on the theme of personal loss. Preeti decided to let go of everything that was troubling her in the presence of a crowd of total strangers.
She broke down during the narration, but the session four years ago had a therapeutic effect on her psyche and led to the release of uncomfortable memories, she said recently.
Originally from Jodhpur in northwestern India, Preeti immediately took to storytelling. She started honing her skills with Indu Divya, the founder of The Narrative. In March last year, she formed her own storytelling group, naming it Meraki (a word that modern Greeks use to describe doing something with soul, creativity or love).
Refining her art has not only helped Preeti banish sad memories but also improved her confidence and communication skills so much so that now she is preparing to open a semi-precious jewellery franchise at the airport in Male, the capital of The Maldives.
“Cancer and many autoimmune diseases occur when you hold on to something. Storytelling lets that stress out,” she told Asia Focus.
In January, Preeti plans to bring storytelling to Jodhpur, her hometown. “I’m about to finalise a space for telling adult stories there,” said the commerce graduate, whose repertoire now includes around 15 stories.
Like Preeti, storytelling has helped Nasir Engineer discover his true calling. It’s also made him a better person, says the 28-yearold history and political science graduate.
When he told his first story in July 2012 at Tall Tales, a storytelling group in Mumbai, his parents were extremely sceptical. They thought he was wasting his life.
The story was about how he had forgotten to carry one of his gloves on a tracking mission and had to borrow one from a colleague.
Engineer has since migrated to Bengaluru in southern India, where he helps manage MyBoTree, a rooftop performance, arts and event space set under the canopy of a flowering tree. He is also the artistic director of Improv Comedy, a theatre group that specialises in works without scripts. Engineer has narrated 10 stories so far and believes he has many more to tell.
Storytelling has boomed in India in the last six years, he says, with dozens of groups and individuals having come up in Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi and other cities to tell stories to schoolchildren, adults and business employees.
Most storytelling groups cover their costs through ticket sales for their events. The skills that practitioners develop can also be put to use beyond the storytelling stage.
“Storytelling has become a way of life in Mumbai and Bengaluru with corporate groups using it to add better structure to pitches and helping their staff overcome fear of communication,” Engineer told Asia Focus.
Akshay Gajria, a director with Tall Tales and a storyteller, agrees. “Earlier storytelling was a niche thing. There has been a great boom in the last few years. Now everybody wants to be a storyteller,” he said.
Tall Tales, founded by American national Michael Burns, presents only real stories. It does not allow fiction, dramatised accounts or retellings of other people’s stories in its shows. Content is approved only after a thorough editing and curation process.
“We get into the crux of a story after six or seven drafts. It takes about a month and a half. We ask questions to ensure that nobody makes up a story,” Gajria said.
He believes storytelling is quite unlike the artificial communication that takes place on social media. He finds more takers for funny stories, while adding that tragic stories lead to better connect between the narrator and the listeners. “There is more empathy for heartbreaking, heartfelt stories. These are the stories that stay,” he told Asia Focus.
India has had a long tradition of storytelling with grandparents bringing up their grandchildren on tales from the Mahab
harata, Ramayana and other epics. Michael Burns, who has studied storytelling and is a doctorate in documentary filmmaking, founded Tall Tales in Mumbai six years ago as part of his effort to learn more about India. Now the group is looking to expand in Delhi and Pune.
In a typical two-hour show, Gajria explains, Tall Tales will present about half a dozen stories, with each narration lasting up to 10 to 15 minutes. The stories can be as simple as about a small town wedding, or crazy and gripping. They can be told either in English, Hindi or a regional language.
Unlike Kommune, a popular storytelling show modelled on The Moth, a US-based show, where stories are told live and rated and awarded, Tall Tales cannot guarantee remuneration or awards to narrators. It has presented more than 250 stories, all of which it uploads to YouTube except when the storyteller objects for fear of disclosing embarrassing details. Tall Tales also organises creative writing retreats.
Most of the storytelling groups do paid shows and do not use music. But there are also others that target business groups and do brand building to raise resources. Among them is Sowmya Srinivasan, one of the founding members of the Bangalore Storytelling Society.
The society also conducts family-themed storytelling shows, offering narrations of written stories and folk tales as well. The group has nine storytellers and organises the Bengaluru Storytelling Festival (BeSt) in November each year. Srinivasan, a psychologist by training, says storytelling has had phenomenal growth in India and writing stories for narration has become big in the last few years.
Though some storytelling groups upload many of their stories the YouTube, they are not interested in online shows. Vikram Sridhar, an independent Bengaluru-based storyteller, believes in “facelook” and not Facebook.
“The human connection is very important,” added Srinivasan.
“Storytelling has become a way of life in Mumbai and Bengaluru with corporate groups using it to add better structure to pitches and helping their staff overcome fear of communication”
NASIR ENGINEER Manager, MyBoTree