Theater video tags: storytelling

Hanif Abdurraqib: Exploring Depth in Stories that Matter

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“I have heard my father tell a wide variation of the same five stories but you can affix a certain moral to one—you can affix an entry point, an exit point, an image—that makes it feel like a new story every time,” says Hanif Abdurraqib in this lecture on the nature and impact of storytelling for CreativeMornings in Columbus, Ohio. “Twelve Things That Help Me Set My Table” by Abdurraqib appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Jason Reynolds on Friendship and Storytelling

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“To me, reading becomes a lot more palatable if young people realize that the stories, the books that exist within them are as valuable as the books that exist on the outside of them.” In this CBS Sunday Morning interview, Jane Pauley speaks to Jason Reynolds, award-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, about lifting up children through storytelling, his journey as a writer, and the importance of friendship.

Alex Schulman: From Reading to Writing

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“I read so much, still, because I want to learn how to tell the perfect story.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Alex Schulman, author most recently of the novel The Survivors (Doubleday, 2021), speaks about the impact reading has had on his life, the power of storytelling, and how he started his writing career as a blogger.

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Chris Abani: When Strangers Meet

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“The only time I meet a stranger is when I confront myself. Any time I meet new people, they’re not strangers.” Poet, novelist, and essayist Chris Abani tells a story about meeting strangers in the airport, learning from their kindness, and how these experiences have influenced his writing for this 2016 House of SpeakEasy event at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York.

Story and The Writer

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“This is how you tell a story,” says narrator Tilda Swinton in a short film written and directed by Andrew Ondrejcak, which goes through six steps of a writer’s process paired with a dance choreographed by Kyle Abraham. “There is a problem. It is an obstacle so monumental that it seems unlikely our tiny protagonist will be able to overcome something so impressive. It’s a mountain pressing down, it’s a witch, a curse, a giant.”

Russian Roulette Storytelling With Benjamin Percy

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In this video, Benjamin Percy, author of Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction (Graywolf Press, 2016), is challenged to tell a five-minute true story from a randomly selected prompt for the Back Fence PDX storytelling series. Percy joins the two-day Poets & Writers Live conference in San Francisco on January 14 and 15, 2017.

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