About this Event

We believe that the mass move to online tools is a wonderful opportunity to bring the oral storytelling community closer together.

Once a month, we organise a free virtual story circle where tellers can come along, tell stories, listen to stories, give feedback, and share story ideas and insights.

In March, let’s talk about what REALLY happened in the story of The Animals’ Dam.

This is a South African folktale collected in a number places, including by The story is a fairy tale collected by Sanni Metelerkamp in “Outa Karel’s Stories” published in 1914.

It’s a trickster tale with many different characters and it will put American storytellers in mind of Brer Rabbit and co. It’s classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as ATU 55: The Animals Build a Road (Dig Well).

Here is a link to the story bones.

In this month’s “Here’s what REALLY happened”, I challenge you to tell the story in a whole new way. Instead of simply retelling the story from the 3rd person (external perspective), pick a character or a “thing” in the story, and let them tell the story! For example:

• Oom Leeuw (Uncle Lion)
• Tricky Jackal
• Baboon
• The other animals
• Tortoise
• Inanimate objects – the sun, the rocks, you name
• What else? YOU decide!

Grab a cup of coffee, tea or simply a glass of water, and join our monthly Zoom call (we’re trying 30 minutes later this month then will see about changing the time in the future):

7am CET (Europe) / 6am – UK / 1am – New York / 8am – Israel / 5pm – Sydney, AU / 11:30am – Delhi AND in the US (the day before) 10pm – California / 10pm – Vancouver

About the organiser:

Our “What REALLY happened” events are organised and facilitated by Suzanne Whitby, known in the storytelling world by her stage name, Ziyadliwa. She is passionate about people, communication, connection, and of course, stories, and will be applying her facilitation and event-organising wizardry to make sure that events run smoothly and that each session sparkles!