STORY-TELLING PROJECT IS PROVING POPULAR
By Stephen Wilson



(Moscow, Russia)   - The weather was dreadful! A stormy, rainy and wind flipping weather which turned your umbrellas inside out! This did not deter those attending a storytelling session at an almost remote and half -hidden Omnibus bookshop tucked away behind a Cinema on Kutuzovskiy prospect.  In fact, the weather was ideal for such an occasion! The impact of the event was overwhelming!

The consensus amongst goers was that 'It was one of the best we have had'.  The goers gathered to share stories on the theme 'Who are the strangest people you have met?' but ended up digressing into stories about the war and ghosts. Alena and Juleva told intriguing wartime stories.

Anna Kogteva, who is the brainchild behind a novel experiment where goers come to interactively tell stories around a circle thus encouraging  maximum participation told me, 'Once a person tells a story, he has to pass on an object to the next person who can either tell a story or simply pass it on to another person who wants to'. So people are actively inspired to become experienced story-tellers.  Anna, who is an English teacher, states 'Stories are an excellent way of teaching English as a foreign language and make lessons less tedious'.

Instead of, say, one or two celebrity or professional story tellers addressing an audience, anyone can just  leap into to tell a story. The aim of the project is to encourage an almost dying art; the oral poetic tradition of keeping old Folk         stories alive. The audience tends to be mainly a dozen people in their early twenties, students and book-readers. Two or three of the audience tend to draw or paint pictures, while the stories are being told. (This is another aim;   combining drawing and story-telling!)

Such an event appeals to budding story-tellers honing their skills, avid folk-story collectors or those who simply enjoy a good yarn!

Of course, not everything can go smoothly. On such a very talkative theme such as 'strange people' there is an almost incurable temptation for a person to incessantly ramble on or for an academic set in his ways to offer an inappropriate lecture. On this occasion, the tellers displayed an agile and remarkable self-control.

To offer you an idea of the kind of stories which are told, it is worth citing some stories told by Juleva Kuzheleva. Perhaps she told the most poignant, as well as compelling story. She told her audience 'I certainly believe in the existence of spirits such as the Domovoi (an ancestral household spirit and guardian who looks after the household) and Leshii (wood sprites). There are also ghosts who tend to haunt old buildings with a history of misfortune. You can feel the presence of ghosts and cats can readily detect them and get excited '.  She told a story of how she could not sleep because a strange man kept making a din in her kitchen by pounding a plate on the table. When she went in to the kitchen he vanished. She went back to bed. Again, the racket erupted. This time she took the hint, went to the kitchen and finished washing up the dishes which had been crammed into a sink. The Domovoi stopped annoying her!

Another story Juleva told was from her grandmother. She said:  'Those events took place on a stormy Autumn evening which we are experiencing tonight. The story happened during the Great Patriotic war when my grandmother's husband, like most young men, were called to the front. It was late evening when she heard a loud pounding on the door. It sounded just like knocking which only men could make. When she went to the door she was astonished to see her husband! She had never expected this. When she saw him she noticed his appearance had completely changed. This was not the husband she had previously known. His hair had turned grey, his complexion deadly pale and gaunt. He had aged! Yet his identity could still be discerned. They embraced and then she asked him 'Why have   you come back?' 'I just had to come back to see you again. I felt a great urge.' They talked a little. She asked 'Won't you stay longer and have a rest on the bed?' but he replied, 'I don't have time. I must leave quickly. I have brought you a sack of potatoes. I know the village is short of a lot of food.' Then they said farewell. Afterwards, when my grandmother went to open the bag she was taken aback to find they were all stones! Later, her husband was reported as 'missing in action'. She never saw him again'.

Storytelling stories seem likely to be told at either bookshops ,dachas and at the University in the coming weeks! It is attracting more and more interest.