An engaging storyteller. A brilliant raconteur. Dinner party guest extraordinaire, and all-round entertainer.
Who wouldn’t love to hear those words said about them. To be known as an ingenious orator, a master narrator and skilled speaker. To have friends clamoring at your door with invites to the next soiree to enthrall their guests with their titillating tales.
But what is it that makes a good story-teller? Is it the ability to weave together the loose threads of mundane everyday existence and recount them in a way that engages, or inspires, or persuades? Or do you just need to be able to make someone laugh?
These questions and more will be asked, explored and declaimed at the London Storytelling Festival, held at Leicester Square Theatre from 9-18 November, in a ten-day celebration of the magic of the story.
With an Australian at the helm as artistic director, Sarah Bennetto, this festival is sure to help seal our national reputation as weavers of a good yarn.
Also injecting a further Antipodean flavor into a packed program of feature-length storytelling shows, workshops and showcases is screenwriter and comic Deborah Frances-White and comic storyteller Asher Treleaven.
Both Sarah Bennetto and Deborah Frances-White will offer up their own years of collective wisdom on turning a tale in two separate workshops, whilst Asher will entertain audiences with an award-winning comic tale of his failed career as a circus-performing promotional biscuit mascot.
Festival favorites not to miss:
Sarah Bennetto is Lucky
Wednesday 14 November
Sarah Bennetto is lucky. She’s won it all: concert tickets, holidays, shopping sprees, the lottery, a car, 27 cans of hairspray.
People always tell Sarah she’s lucky. But what is luck? Can you make your own? And should you? The truth is, there’s a point at which most people eschew luck in the name of having a nice, normal life. Not Sarah.
Sarah’s critically-acclaimed first ever full-length solo comedy show is sure to impress, and inspire!
Deborah Frances-White: Cult Following
Friday 16 November
Atheist comedian Deborah Frances-White used to be a Jehovah’s Witness. Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe, this is the surprisingly hilarious story of what she learnt knocking on your door and how it prepared her for stand-up comedy.
For the full program of events, from the cult comedy collective Storytellers’ Club through to solo soliloquies, go to www.londonstorytellingfestival.co.uk.
