BENGALURU: With 60 foreign participants and seven non-Indian storytellers this year, the Bengaluru Storytelling Festival seems to have gained popularity with an international crowd as well. Living up to its aim, the festival has become a platform to connect storytellers from across the globe with local narrators, allowing both to share their insights with each other.
For Singapore-based Mindy Neo, the festival, which was held over the weekend, was her first time attending an international one and an experience she learned lots from. “I’m a teacher and I tell stories to share knowledge with the students. Storytelling has wide benefits in all fields,” she said.
Agrees Giovanna Conforto, who said she learned a lot about the Indian culture at the two-day festival. The creative director of Italian Storytelling Center and member of Storytelling and Peace Council added, “I attend a session called Taboo Tales, which gave us a glimpse of what is accepted and what is not in this society. By listening to each other’s stories, we can learn things without a didactic.” At the festival, she also led a workshop on making a storyboard and conducted a bi-lingual storytelling session in English and Italian.
Sheila Wee, director, Federation of Asian Storytellers, was also present and said India has high potential due to its rich regional heritage. “I grew up in England, a mono-lingual society. I think multi-lingual societies like India are rich in cultures. In India, storytellers can look more into the translation part. Through storytelling, the tellers also preserve these local languages,” Wee explained.
As the conversation moved towards the parallels between stand-up comedy and storytelling, she recalled an instance from her childhood, where an Irish-origin comedian called Dave Allen used to tell stories while sitting on a chair with a cigarette. “He was a pure storyteller. But not all standup comedians are storytellers. We concentrate on catharsis or evoking myriad emotions, while stand-up comedy is all about fun and jokes.”
Speaking about the trends in global storytelling, Conforto said she finds more specialised sessions like storytelling in science, while Wee threw light on her workshops with corporate and business companies in Singapore for leadership training. When asked about the storytelling festival culture in India, Conforto added, “Storytelling festival culture in India is a big movement. There are larger festivals in foreign countries but I sense the same enthusiasm here.”