This afternoon I had the privileged of performing my "Summer of the Red Dragon" Program for the 5th graders at Spicer Elementary BISD. Though today was Memorial day it was also a make up day for Spicer and so the most of the kids were at school. So today was treated as a fun day for most of the classes.
Jane Redfern is the new librarian at Spicer and earlier this year I had given her my CD on which this program is based on for her to listen to. She loved the CD and decided today would be a good day to have a program like this one for her 5th graders.
I ended up doing the program in their small gym which normally is not my favorite storytelling location because of sound problems but this worked out ok or better than I had expected.
This particular story is one hour long and with the kids having to sit on a hard gym floor for an hour I decided that I might need to spif the story up a little bit to keep their attention. So I decided to use some props that would suggest items from the story. Also in order to tone down the drama of the story and to tie the idea of imagination and playing together with the story I decided to use toy props. In other words all plastic except for the artifact and sleeping bag. I used two toy swords that I had purchased a couple years ago just for this program and a little toy bat. The props worked just as I thought they would. I thought maybe the kids would be put off by them but just as I had hoped it seemed to peek their interest or help draw them into the story.
Despite having to sit on a very unforgiving hardwood floor for an hour (I kept the program to one hour almost exactly) and being late in the day, the kids did great. Some I could see were more interested or drawn into the story than others but overall they all seemed to enjoy the story and performance. The story itself is about two teen age boys, the time period is 1963 and I call it a modern day fairy tale. The story is a combination of mystery, drama and magic. The focus of the story is about how Jason must over come his fears to help save his friends.
This presentation was the FIRST full performance of this story ever. I wanted the kids to know that it was special and it was. I hope to have more opportunities to tell Jason's story again and again in the years to come.It is a special story that I believe many youths can and will appreciate. It is also a story that adults would enjoy as well.
I would had liked to expand on the story and supplied more details but reason dictates that with circumstanced as they were that I make the story as tight as it was on the CD. This I did and with hardly a mistake. It was a near perfect telling.
So thank you Jane Redfern and Thank you 5rth graders of Spicer for making this a very special day for me.I hope that I made it special for you.
Gary
Monday, May 25, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Summer of the Red Dragon- Beginnings
I have always wanted to write. It has been a dream since I was a kid. Not so much to be published but more to just find a way to use my ideas and material. When I was a youth I wrote short stories all the time. This is one of the reasons I fell into oral storytelling and have had such success in this field. Storytelling and writing stories for storytelling or converting material for storytelling falls easily within my mindset or how I approach material. I have off and own tried to approach writing a novel or book. But as always success is limited to vision and personal road blocks (basically bad habbits) that have been developed over the years. In other words oral storytelling and writing the novel are conflicting concepts in my mind. Your focus as oral storyteller is to reduce the material to a compact well organized and contrived presentation where as when trying to write a novel or novella you are doing just the opposite.
What about just writing short stories you ask? Good question. Yes I probably could do short stories and maybe get them published but that is not what I want in the end. What I want is to do the full blown book. To take a story and to flesh it all out. That is my real desire.
In 2001 I wrote a short story that I called Summer of 63. It actually developed out of a fun writing session that I had picked up from a book about writing Called The Zen of Writing by Ray Bradbury. I left the story alone and came back to it six months later. Reread it, liked it and decided to play with it some more. I did a rewrite of it and came back again to the story a few months later and decided to rename the story after the 2nd rewrite. I renamed it Summer of the Red Dragon.
The story sat again for another year when I decided I wanted to try and convert it into a oral presentation for a audience. I broke down the story like I do all material and began playing with it. I made some more changes of the oral version and I was quite pleased with what it sounded like. I don’t remember the 1st time I did the oral presentation but as all of my oral storytelling the presentation changes with each performance. I figure things out as I tell the story mostly through watching my audiences faces. Then I make the necessary changes to the performance on the fly. Lots of fun.
Finally in 2003 I decided to try and convert the story into a longer or more complete story. In other words finish what I had started story wise. To complete the tale more for fun than anything, so I went about the task of seeing what I could do with the original story. It truly took a beating. I fought with the characters and plot off and on trying all sorts of attacks and approaches and pretty much deleting all my efforts of what I wrote. What finally brought the story together for me was a series of incidents. I won’t go into detail on that but on of the major contributors to the final story involved a strip to
In 2006 I produced a CD called Summer of the Red Dragon in which I tell the 55 minute story of Jason and Weasel and their struggle against a fairy tale beast that is destroying their neighborhood. The oral version was not every thing I wanted but it was close enough to do the job. It worked in other words. I have had many praises for this CD from a variety of sources but it has not had the success that I had hoped that it would have. I envisioned doing this as a special one hour presentation at schools and libraries but I am apparently the only one who sees this.
At the end of 2007 I began work on writing a novel version of this story. At first I started out like gangbusters and quickly discovered the complexities of trying to write a story this long. After about four chapters I started creating reference materials. I wrote out a chapter by chapter brief, what I intended to write and then discovered that I was adding material as I went along and started up a chapter adaption brief to keep track of everything. It got worse, much worse. Eventually I bogged down myself after about 6 chapters and stopped for about a year, I did nothing on the story.
Last Month I decided to try and attack it again but this time I took a completely different tack with writing the story. I started by reviewing all I had previously wrote and rewriting and editing it as I saw fit. I have not yet picked up where I had previously left off but in a few weeks I will be there. I may make some other changes now after reviewing my writing and story but only time will tell.
One of my previous problems when I stopped before was due to the fact that I knew inwardly that something was missing or wrong with the story. I couldn't quite figure it out. So when I run into road blocks like that I shut down till the answer comes. Well it did a last Sunday in Sunday School. I went in and added the needed text and changes and now I am ready to continue on once I get to that point. Also some other problems with the story had previously haunted me and I think that now I have resolved those issues.
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