© By Dorothy Cleveland and Barbara Schutzgruber, 2018 STF Presenters

Many of the workshop proposals we come up with are based on conversations we have with fellow tellers at storytelling conferences. “Sex, Death, and Violence — Telling the Unspeakable Story” came from two different conferences. In 2001 at the Northlands Storytelling Conference Dorothy told her story ‘Ice Man’ at the Friday evening “adult” stories. ‘Ice Man’ takes place in 1930’s about a man who delivers blocks of ice to households. At one apartment he meets a woman lying nude on the couch. She wants the block of ice to be put in a pan before her oscillating fan. It’s a fun story with a 1930’s style of innuendo. The 300-person audience loved it, especially the wives of ministers, salesmen, and insurance men. That telling was the seed of the workshop of today.

At another conference four years ago, we were talking with a gentleman who wanted to tell the story of having visited a strip club. He found the club, its clientele, and performers curiously interesting. However, he felt that, as a man, he wouldn’t be taken seriously or worse yet — be taken perversely. We explored options with him from our woman’s perspective as to how he might successfully tell such a story.

That conversation sparked the actual work on “Sex, Death, and Violence…” as we took a serious look through our own folktale and personal story repertoires and realized just how many stories we both tell that have aspects of not only sex, but also death and violence in them. We added these components to our workshop, as they are realities of life and when skillfully crafted, there are times and places where they can and should be authentically told.

Dorothy and Barbara enjoy working with each other and have earned high praises for their team approach to presenting workshops. Join them for a memorable experience!

Want to learn more about telling stories with difficult subject matter? Take Barbara and Dorothy’s workshop, Sex, Death, and Violence – Telling the Unspeakable Story, (Sunday, March 25  from 9:15 – 10:45 am) at Sharing the Fire 2018. Visit the STF Conference Details page to register for the conference.  Want to share your own experiences on this topic?  Leave a comment.

About Dorothy and Barbara:

We have a combined 50 years of performance experience in this area as well as Dorothy’s master thesis on Women’s Leadership Through Story and Barbara’s master degree work in Comparative Folklore. Our joint research and workshops for writing Beyond the Sword Maiden – A Storyteller’s Introduction to the Heroine’s Journey has lead us to this topic. When we presented the workshops, we discovered many of the participants were hesitant of telling tales that included violence and death. Since our story repertoires include these themes, we are in a position to share our knowledge and practical experience with others.