STORYTELLING

Laurie Block has performed his stories in Artist-in-the Schools Programs throughout Manitoba and South Dakota since 1987. He has appeared at the Sundog Storytelling Festival, the Yukon International Storytelling Festival and the Annual Conference of the Storytellers of Canada. A former Early Years educator, he teaches and facilitates workshops in storytelling and creative writing for all ages. His writing has been published in anthologies and magazines throughout Canada. His story, While the Librarian Sleeps won the 2003 Prairie Fire Fiction Contest and the 2004 National Magazine Award for fiction. Theatre Projects of Winnipeg produced two of his plays, The Tomato King and POP!. He’s also published three volumes of poetry; Governing Bodies (1988); the bilingual collection based on his experiences in Chile, Foreign Graces/Bendiciones Ajenas (1999); and his latest, Time Out of Mind, published in 2006 by Oolichan Books.

Touring Performance

This hour-long storytelling journey through experience and literature, folk-tales and family history unearths the buried treasures of life and language, offering family audiences a playful exploration of memory and make-believe through the spoken word. Stories based on such common childhood milestones as home-made haircuts, getting lost in a store and struck in a tree, adventures on rooftops and in mischief, reflect the child’s world as she grows and stretches the limits of her abilities, autonomy and, occasionally, the facts. Bears in bad moods and tongue-tied monsters liberate laughter and invite participation. Mature audiences delight in a poetic and spirited romp through the world of technophobia, travel, vasectomies and a grandmother’s touching love affair with the artist, Marc Chagall.

Program for Residencies

From a well-travelled suitcase jammed with everyday materials Laurie improvises props and costumes for stories that grab attention, liberate laughter and invite participation in a playful exploration of memory and make-believe through the spoken word. In workshops his aim is to support curriculum goals and enhance literacy skills by helping each student express and record their own narratives. Student tap into their own life experiences, interests and curiosity to develop into confident and effective communicators. They share events, memories and ideas using dramatic techniques such as voice, visualization and mime to provide the sensory information that creates powerful word pictures. Through creative writing exercises, story starters, memory triggers, drama and hands-on activities students cross the bridge from oral to written expression. By the end of the residency they record stories in various media including voice, print, visual art, modelling clay, improvisation and guided narrative drama.

Artistic and Educational Objectives of Storytelling Program

to envelop students in an experience of language used at it’s highest and most powerful level
to empower students to express, validate and record ideas, beliefs, feelings and experiences by involving them as active participants in the creative process
to help children access and elaborate dreams and memories
to provoke delight, thoughtful response and feelings of self-worth
to explore the collective experience of family, community and culture
to find common ground and bridge the differences between individuals, nations and culture through the lens of the imagination
to trace the source of our stories: from our lives to our literature and oral traditions
to enhance the literacy process by supporting the acquisition of the skills necessary to express, receive and record ideas and experiences
to complement the language arts program by coordinating the content delivery and process of storytelling with classroom curricula
to illuminate the connection between words, memory and the senses
to facilitate the give-and-take between oral and written expression by providing opportunity for students to record their stories in a variety of symbolic media including graphic, visual, plastic and dramatic
to assist and encourage teachers to use their own experiences and gifts as storytellers to model effective and entertaining language and to understand how storytelling can serve as a powerful teaching tool