Types of Story Telling
Cultural Stories
Cultural stories are the transference of morals, values and beliefs from one generation to the next. They are often told to children to teach them certain things, pass on traditions and to share religion.
Family Stories
Family stories tell the audience about the history of a family. What their heritage is and where they come from. They may include traditions and events that have happened in a family's past. They allow a family identity to emerge. They often include the finest traits of a family's history and serve as a motivational tool as a reminder to live up to something,
Friendship Stories
Friendship stories help unite groups of friends and prevents them from growing apart once they begin to lead different lives. They are a recollection of a shared experience. They may be told at reunions or just to bring about a few laughs. To the right is a picture of a number of mementos that I have collected over the years. I think that each one is a good example of how friendship stories can be represented physically. In a production props such as these could be used to show aspects of character or backstory.
Apocryphal
Often called Urban Myths, apocryphal stories are regularly presented to the audience as unlikely or doubtful. They revolve around the fear of things that can not be fully understood.
Personal
Personal stories are continuously picked up as an individual goes through their life. They concern individuals and often act as a way to understand, change and find meaning to life. They may also serve as tool to motivate, inspire or instill fear in others. Biographies are a form of personal story telling,
Myths
Myths are stories that are presents as being true but with little to no evidence to support their sometimes outlandish claims. They serve as reminders of what different cultures should fear in life.
Fun fact without a source! I once read that myths could have also served to explain mental illness like schizophrenia or autism. For example, the changeling myth may have come about to explain autism in children as it does not become apparent until they're a few years old when they suddenly start acting differently. However, as it stands I do not have a credible source.
Unexplained
Unexplained stories are stories about paranormal or extraterrestrial activity. For example, stories about ghosts, ghouls and UFO's all fall under the Unexplained blanket. They help conquer fear and help us believe in things we do not understand, like faith in a religion or higher power. They help fill people with hope that there is something more than what they currently know to be true.
Tapestries
Tapestries are a visual style of story telling that historically depicted scenes of major battles, like the Bayeux Tapestry, which detailed the lead of to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Poetry
Poetry uses a combination of the aesthetic, notional and semantic qualities of language in order to convey ideas and themes.
Sculpture
Paintings
Tattoos
Carvings
Music
Film
Books
The left is a picture of a Study Task - Look at condensed imagery in music. Select specific lyrics.
Condensed Imagery
Golden Skies - Little Robyn
Throughout the song there is a running parallel between life and death, fantasy and reality. Shooting at things with a gun - stark contrast to the idea of 'golden skies'. Shows harsh realities.
Golden skies acts as a metaphor for heroin use, while the fruit metaphor, "fruits around you begin to spoil." is symbolic of the broken friendships that addiction will eventually lead to.
Strong images of nature. death connotations.
Metaphors
"stories of the dice decisions and tales of tinfoil."
It is a journey. Blurs the lines between reality and fantasy.
Colours - Halsey
Colours - Halsey
"only happy" contrasts "sorry head"
"You’re dripping like a saturated sunrise"
"You’re spilling like an overflowing sink" - Such vibrant colour. Too much emotion. Almost gluttonous?
"Pulled apart at the seams"
"you're a masterpiece"
Loads of references to art and colour. This could be to show that this isn't real love and that it is an impossible idealism. On the other hand, a less cynical interpretation is that the love is emphasized by the intensity of the colour.
"You’re dripping like a saturated sunrise"
"You’re spilling like an overflowing sink" - Such vibrant colour. Too much emotion. Almost gluttonous?
"Pulled apart at the seams"
"you're a masterpiece"
Loads of references to art and colour. This could be to show that this isn't real love and that it is an impossible idealism. On the other hand, a less cynical interpretation is that the love is emphasized by the intensity of the colour.
This excess of colour is then contrasted by the use of grey in later verses. Halsey uses grey to show the absence of colour, even stating that this man is "now so devoid of colour."
"You were a vision in the morning when the light came through." This once again suggests something ethereal and not real.
Extras
Woman in Black
The woman in black used projection (an example of condensed imagery?) in order to change location, namely when they projected the image of a church onto wire mesh during the funeral of Alice Drablow. They also used set pieces, such as a crate, and the audience's imagination in order to depict several events they could not realistically get on stage. I loved this device as it got round possible budget constraints, remained true to the story they were presenting, and engaged the audience more. No -> Imaginary Set -> Actual Set
This is similar to a production of Peter Pan I saw where they used every day furniture to show the children traversing the wild forests of Neverland. Though the techniques were the same, I thought the effect achieved was different; while The Woman in Black used it to progress the story, I felt that it added to Peter Pan's childish sense of imagination and made it seem more like a game.
Aladdin
Another good example of condensed imagery can be seen in a college production of Aladdin; due to the low budget that the college had at the time, it was not feasible to create new sets for each of the pantomime's locations. This was overcome by the changing of lights depending on where the characters were. For example, they used a green glow when in the villain's lair, a gold light during the Cave of Wonders sequence.
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Cognitive dissonance theory is the idea that humans like to seek consistency in their cognition, any dissonance (inconsistency) found must be eliminated.
In art, cognitive dissonance can be used to motivate people to change something in order to obtain consonance. It can be used to challenge an individual's beliefs and/or their perception of a image or piece of text. Cognitive Dissonance often makes use of challenges that inspires the reader to accomplish or change something. For example, writers/journalists may begin an article with a fact and then challenge it. This encourages the reader to continue with the article in order to discover the truth and achieve cognitive consonance once again.
Banksy often uses his art to present conflicting images that can make the viewer uncomfortable or stop to question what it is they're seeing.
"you think you know everything about -insert-" - fact
"but you don't." - challenge to fact
This encourages people to read the article so that the fact once again becomes true and they regain their cognitive consonance.
The picture to the right is a great example of cognitive dissonance as it offers information that we know to be untrue and so creates a conflicting viewpoint that contradicts our own knowledge.
"you think you know everything about -insert-" - fact
"but you don't." - challenge to fact
This encourages people to read the article so that the fact once again becomes true and they regain their cognitive consonance.
The picture to the right is a great example of cognitive dissonance as it offers information that we know to be untrue and so creates a conflicting viewpoint that contradicts our own knowledge.
Oxfam
Although not directly related to theatre, I found Oxfam's use of the Taurus constellation in their shop window a brilliant and clever design plan as it keeps in line with the Christmas-sy atmosphere and was connected to the Ox.
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Understanding Comic Books
"Icon" used to describe anything that presents an idea, person, place or thing.
Concepts - Ideas, concepts and philosophies
Practical realm of icons - language, science and communication: +, -, x, 1, 2, 3, a, b, c...
Pictures - resemble actual things
Photography and realistic paintings - most resemble real life counterparts but are smaller, flatter and less detailed. Films sometimes called cartoons to acknowledge this fact.
By stripping down an icon to it's essential components, they are able to amplify those components.
Faces can be seen everywhere. Anything can be turned into a face.
You see yourself in cartoons. Cartoons are a vacuum that pulls in our identity and awareness. They are concepts that can be filled with your own thoughts and ideas. You don't think about their beliefs or views. The less detailed a character is the more we can identify with that character and put ourselves in their position.
Life can be separated into two realms, the realm of concepts and the realm of senses.
Fry, T. (2011) Design with dissonance – smashing magazine. Available at: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/design-with-dissonance/ (Accessed: 4 December 2016).
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