Stories can be great teachers
As a part of the World Storytelling Celebration in the city the Story Arts Foundation, Hyderabad organised Damadikiya,on Wednesday.
Professional storytellers from different parts of the world including Dr Wajuppa Tossa from Thailand, Wanagari Grace from Kenya, Paula Martin from Argentina, Sabrina Arusam from France and Deepa Kiran from India participated in scintillating sessions.
A perfect ambience was set up for the story telling session where kids tagged along with their parents and grandparents. Most of the story tellers used their traditional instruments while they narrated folk tales from their countries, to a thunderous applause from the audience. Kids and adults alike learnt a lot of virtues like honesty, faith, determination from the messages in the stories and also built on their listening skills and memory power as well.
The show began with Paula Martin narrating the story of a miserly man who had a strange habit of collecting unnecessary things. Paula also sang a Spanish song as part of her performance and interacted with the excited audience, asking them what they would wish for, if they got granted a wish by an angel. Predictably, the answers from the audience included a good wife and a long and happy life.
Next, Wanagari Grace narrated a story about a forest in Africa that grew all the fruits in the world. Using her story, she had kids in the audience talk about the fruits they were familiar with. The animals of the jungle could only find the tree if they remembered its name, which was Omommaragongaadabango. Several animals tried but could not remember the name of the tree and neither did the audience. The audience thus learnt the importance of listening skills.
Sabrina Arusam, performed a comedy puppetry show that was about a grandfather who looked for a wife at his old age. Sabrina had the audience in splits by interacting with the crowds and pretending to be looking for the old man’s wife from among the gathering. She equally entertained the kids and elders with her jokes and kept them enthralled with a magic show.
Deepa Kiran, an award winning educationalist, used a lot of Indian traditional instruments for her story and entertained them with songs about a young girl called Kamli who loved music but could not sing. The audience applauded when it turned out that Kamli eventually found a song for herself that she could sing.
The show ended with a performance by Dr Wajuppa . She usually tells stories to revitalise the dying Thai/Lao folk tales and storytelling tradition. She narrated a folk tale about a brave small fish in the Mekong River, through which she gave the message of how people can win over hardships with their determination.
“With time, storytelling has evolved. A few years ago there were fewer people who encouraged story telling sessions but now the numbers have gone up significantly. These days apps have replaced a lot of things including story tellers but it is not the same because there is no magic without the interaction of the teller and the listeners,” Wanagari Grace concluded.