Musings on Storytelling

I have in my mind a fancy. It is probably one of those passing whims which flicker into sight and dissolve as quickly as they came, and yet the idea has a simplistic elegance I cannot help but be drawn to. I should like to tell a story by guiding an audience through different forms of communication, as though the telling of the tale evolves through time in a way that mirrors the evolution of media.

This little journey might begin by a fireside, hearing an itinerant bard tell us of places and people, inspiring us with a sense of bold adventures in a world so very different from the room in which the tale is told. After this intimate introduction in the low, quick-flickering light, the scene would change, and the solitary story-teller would be joined by actors, performing their parts amidst scenery and props, ever-increasing in complexity and detail with the plot.

And then the format might again change, as the soliloquies of the characters transpose from stage to ink, and for a brief moment the audience is reading from a novel, learning from the words more about the characters than they could guess from the actors. In this period we have a window into the motivations of the players, and the message on the page is interpreted privately, in the sacred, solitary act of reading.

By and by, the actors return, but slowly diminish into the background as the pivotal final sequences are played out on a screen, with a scale and grandeur impossible to achieve in the confines of the theatre. The film concludes, the tale is told, and the lone story-teller returns to share a moment of insight with the audience. And he smiles.