FREQUENTLY (& NOT SO FREQUENTLY) ASKED
QUESTIONS
1. WHAT ARE THE AIMS OF THE CRICK CRACK CLUB?
2. WHAT DOES THE CRICK CRACK CLUB MEAN BY ‘STORYTELLING?’
3. WHAT ARE ‘STORIES’ AND WHAT STORIES ARE TOLD IN STORYTELLING?
4. WHERE DO THE STORIES COME FROM?
5. DO ANCIENT STORIES HAVE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE?
6. WHAT IS ‘ORALITY’?
7. WHAT ABOUT DIGITAL STORYTELLING?
8. WHO ARE ‘STORYTELLERS’?
9. WHAT IS PERFORMANCE STORYTELLING AND HOW DOES IT RELATE TO THE FIRESIDE TRADITION
AND COMMUNITY STORYTELLING?
10. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STORYTELLING AND ACTING?
11. WHAT IS THE CREATIVE PROCESS OF A STORYTELLER?
12. HOW DOES THE CRICK CRACK CLUB CHOOSE ITS STORYTELLERS?
13. WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?
14. WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF THE CRICK CRACK CLUB?
1. WHAT ARE THE AIMS OF THE CRICK CRACK CLUB?
The club was founded in 1988 to develop storytelling as a contemporary performance art – to give
audiences access to the vast ocean of international fairytale, folktale, myth, and epic. We think we’ve done
a pretty good job, and we’re still hard at it. The Crick Crack Club aims to:
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Promote, programme and create events that give the public access to rich and varied content of
international traditional narrative material.
Promote and progressively develop the professional performance storytelling sector in the UK.
Develop & build audiences (especially adults) for performance storytelling, and invest in the
audiences of the future.
Create an economy for the public performance of traditional narrative
Showcase excellence, whilst celebrating experimentation.
Develop repertoire and skills, and raise standards amongst professional storytellers.
Nurture and support new talent.
Research and support the potential of storytelling in education at all levels, from pre-school to lifelong learning, and in a myriad of contexts.
2. WHAT DOES THE CRICK CRACK CLUB MEAN BY ‘STORYTELLING?’
We take storytelling to refer very specifically to the oral re-telling of traditional tales. ‘Tell’, ‘talk’ and ‘tale’
are terms from the vocabulary surrounding orality and the spoken word. The spoken word is something far,
far older than writing and is guided by very different principles from those established by literacy. When
the Crick Crack Club speaks of ‘storytelling’ we are not referring to the reading of texts aloud, nor to the
recitation of memorised text - and indeed (while some storytellers may use writing as a tool within their
compositional process) there are generally few tangible ‘scripts’ in storytelling.
From our perspective, storytelling is the re-telling or the performance of a narrative through the spoken
word for a specific audience in a specific context. It is an immediate, living, ‘mantic’, performance art.
The inclusion of the physical co-presence of an audience clearly distinguishes the work of a storyteller from
that of a writer. It is a communal, rather than solitary, art. The act of storytelling can only occur when a
story, storyteller and audience come together. The relationship between the storyteller and the audience is
constantly reaffirmed and renewed by what is known as, ‘Crick? Crack!’ - a call and response. The call and
response is by no means always verbalised as directly as this, but is nevertheless subtly maintained in terms
of interrogative remarks and gestures that ensure the complicity of the audience in the performance. The
stance of the storyteller is one of poise between two worlds - the world of the story and the ‘here and now’
world of the event. The storyteller is a mediator between the story and the audience.
It is important to grasp that the 'story' being told is separate from the 'words' used by the storyteller. Form
exists to serve content: The story is what happens. The words are used to communicate what happens. The
story exists as a series of events, ideas, metaphors and images. The storyteller knows the narrative
sequence and translates this into words to tell the story. The audience translates the words back into
images and ideas so that the story is understood and imagined. The absence of a fixed text allows freedom,
spontaneity, improvisation, and the possibility of fresh insight to enter the telling of the story. A story can
be told to thirty 5-year old children sitting on a mat, using an appropriate language and energy. When the
same story is told to seventy 12-year olds, a different language, energy and emphasis is required, and when
the same story is told once more, but this time to adults, it will demand yet another language and energy,
because their response to the content of the story is being measured against a much greater degree of life
experience, different knowledge and different humour.
Consequently, in storytelling, stories are rarely told in exactly the same way twice. However it is inevitable
that stories which are told very often by a single storyteller, will gradually establish repeated phrasing though, even then, the delivery, in terms of performance and play, will always remain variable. The
dynamic power and appeal of storytelling lies in this constant renewal.
The Crick Crack Club can therefore never guarantee two audiences an identical experience, because no two
audiences are the same; but we do try to guarantee each audience a high quality experience of storytelling.
Storytelling is intangible and challenges many of the conventions and safeguards established by literacy
(such as scripted drama and set form). There is an inbuilt riskiness to storytelling. It exists only in live
performance, demanding intensely sustained creativity from the storyteller, and intense participation on
behalf of the listener.
The Crick Crack Club’s particular interest is in ‘performance storytelling’ (a phrase we coined in 1989) –
namely storytellers performing on formal stages to public, paying, audiences of strangers. Considering that
this often demands a solo artists to research, create, self direct, self produce and perform work that
engages and entertains 100-250 (or more) people for a couple of hours, it’s not very surprising that this is a
pretty ‘niche’ artform!
Just eight years ago there was great debate in the storytelling world about rebranding the artform, as the
term ‘storytelling’ was considered so unattractive. Today we have the opposite problem - the term has
become so ubiquitous, that it is at risk of becoming meaningless.
3. WHAT ARE ‘STORIES’ AND WHAT STORIES ARE TOLD IN STORYTELLING?
The Crick Crack Club promotes, almost exclusively, performances which are based on or inspired by
traditional stories: folktales, fairytales, epics, myths and legends, of which there is an oceanic repertoire.
The rich content of these stories is why the Crick Crack Club does what it does.
A storyteller may tell a straight version of a traditional narrative (though generally composed of multiple
versions and variants recovered from collections from different cultures, or having been 'mended' or been
altered, recreated and recomposed by the storyteller), or they may tell a narrative that is inspired by and
draws on the patterns, imagery and motifs found in traditional narrative material.
In some parts of the world oral narrative traditions survive, but they are rarely thriving, and are usually
under threat as development urbanises rural communities and the increasing commonplace of television
terminates talk in the home. The general situation in the developed world now, is that mere (but tasty!)
crumbs from the feast of stories remain in oral circulation, in the form of urban legends, jokes, conspiracy
theories and vaguely remembered local legends. To get a glimpse of the full continuum of the riches lost,
one has to turn to published collections of folktales and mythology – both in paper form and on-line.
Paradoxically, it is thanks to writing that so many of these stories have been preserved; yet most sit
uncomfortably on the pages of a book. Being born of orality, traditional narratives deploy language and
structure in ways quite different from the customary narrative conventions that have evolved with literacy,
meaning that most collections of folktales function best as reference books rather than as a ‘good read’.
The poetry of oral narratives is found primarily in the imagery and in the meaning and metaphor that these
stories contain. They come to life when told and shared with a live audience. This said, some collectors such
as the Grimm brothers, Asbjornsen and Moe, A.K Ramanujan and Italo Calvino have served the tales well
with their re-tellings, poised halfway between a literary and vernacular use of language - but even these
should be properly understood to be notes on the stories or one telling amongst many, rather than the final
word.
The vast range of traditional tales offer extraordinary opportunities for artists to find a means of expression
- expression that serves the needs of their own self, the needs of the story and the needs of the audience.
Remembering that there is no such thing as an original version of a traditional tale, each teller, both in the
past and today, is at liberty to renew the story they are working with, making it their own. In fact doing so,
is part of the storytellers job. An experienced storyteller has permission to omit, change and add details
and episodes, combine different versions, add new material, and colour it with their own understanding
and values. In this way, a story becomes a new work of art in the hands of a contemporary artist. This is
what storytellers have been doing since time immemorial. There is no such thing as the ‘right way’ for a
story to go – it is quite simply up to the teller to make that decision.
4. WHERE DO THE STORIES COME FROM?
Traditional stories are folktales, fairytales, myths, epics, jokes, riddles, tall tales, legends, urban legends,
proverbs and so on. These are stories that have been created and authored by entire societies,
communities and cultures. They are stories which have been shaped by thousands of tellings across space
and time. Some artists also use personal stories, reminiscence and true life tales, in combination with
traditional material. Whatever the source of a story, the role of the professional storyteller is to find a way
to make the story their own - through their choice of language and the nature of their performance, by
researching and combining other versions of the same story, finding variations which appeal to their own
sense of creativity, and patching up stories where they find pieces missing or dissatisfying. This is the
compositional work of a storyteller. We consider performance storytellers to be artists, for whom
composition is a key area of artistic practice. Traditional narratives, as found in books of folklore and
mythology, are their raw material - the emphasis being on the word 'raw'.
There are thousands of traditional stories from every imaginable culture across the world, many of which
have been recorded in books of folklore. Many collections of stories are now also published on the internet,
and numerous storytellers have made audio CDs of the material they themselves have shaped and
performed. Story collection projects have taken place across the UK, and further afield, and the Crick Crack
Club holds a major and unique audio archive of recordings of performance storytelling collected since 1981
in the UK.
Storytellers also talk, and listen, to other storytellers - gathering stories from one another. This sharing of
stories involves a certain etiquette - an honour amongst thieves - as while the no-one owns these
traditional stories, many artist work very hard to rebuild, recreate, combine and adapt a story for their own
performance, and some stories are the signature pieces of particular storytellers. It is the responisblity of all
professional storytellers to ensure that they do not simply steal one anothers artistic compositions – but go
back to the source materials and make their own versions – their own art.
5. DO ANCIENT STORIES HAVE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE?
‘Past and present are related, advice is passed along
Good words to enlighten the world, instruction infused in amusement!’
Words inscribed on the wooden boards hanging on each side
of the stage in the storytellers' house of Yangzhou in China.
Translated by Vibecke Bordahl.
Traditional stories address issues and ideas that have always been contemporary. They essentially deal with
what it is to be a mortal human being on this fabulous planet of ours, and they confront the difficulties and
questions that have always surrounded human kind. They explore justice, crime and punishment, desire
and greed; they question the use and abuse of authority, the relationships between people, trust and
betrayal, fate, destiny and accident, death, responsibility, etc. Some are moral, some cautionary; others
exemplary and others are intentionally, delightfully, or shockingly ambivalent .
They deal with these ideas through myth, metaphor, magic, comedy, tragedy and the whole range of
human emotion. Not everyone will enjoy every story, and what a particular story means, will differ from
person to person, and from time to time.
Many (though not all) traditional tales are set in the past – or perhaps more accurately, in a time that was
once upon a time, but isn’t this time now. This means that the imagination is immediately called into play
when listening to them. In trying to conceive unfamiliar landscapes, geographies, architectures and
costumes etc, fresh synaptic pathways through the brain are activated enabling the story to challenge
habitual patterns of thought. Past settings also liberate the teller to use a broad descriptive brush so that
the story can move swiftly to its vital business of what’s happening, without being delayed by incidental
detail. The vital business of wonder tales, epics and mythology is emotional truth: though the stories may
evoke fantastical phenomena, the losses, sufferings and joys of the human characters correspond to those
that we may have already faced or are yet to face. Such stories exercise and feed our emotions.
To give just one example of the relevance of wonder tales: many of the stories (set in the context of the
English speaking world) concern the adventures of ‘Jack-the-Widow’s-Son’. This is immediately interesting,
as Jack is, by implication, a boy who has grown up without a father. Setting off ‘to seek one’s fortune’
clearly marks the rite of passage from childhood dependency, to adult independence. On his way, Jack-theWidow’s-Son encounters various benevolent or malevolent male figures and through the subsequent
adventures is initiated into the responsibilities of manhood. Boys and young men who have no father in the
home find themselves listening intently to such tales.
6. WHAT IS ‘ORALITY’?
Just as ‘literacy’ refers to reading and writing, so ‘orality’ refers to speaking and listening. Orality is
everything to do with the spoken word as distinct from the written word. The authority of literacy is so
dominant that we rarely pause to consider whether its development and the growth of printing
technologies may have changed not only the nature of narrative, but also the experience of receiving
narrative. In fact some would go further and argue that the hegemony of literacy has probably changed the
nature of the functioning of the mind. Those interested in this question may find it profitable to read
'Orality and Literacy', by Walter J. Ong and also ‘The Other Side of Eden’ by Hugh Brody.
An immediate difference between the world of orality and the world of literacy is the presence of the
speaker’s physical body and the physical presence of the responsive listener. Anthropologists call this
physical co-presence. The body can colour a sequence of words through the qualities of the voice - tempo,
tone, pitch, inflection, volume, accent, elongation etc, - and through supportive gestural, postural and facial
expression. The body is organically rhythmic, powered by breath and pulse, thus true orality revels in
meaning that is supported by the rhythmic play of the physicality of words - alliteration and rhyme are clear
examples of this and belonged to the world of orality long before they were absorbed into the world of
literacy. A global wide study of playground chants, clapping and skipping rhymes etc, rapidly reveals the
building blocks of orality.
In the long history of the growth of literature, first the advent of the printing press and then mass literacy,
lead to the spread of silent reading and the subsequent emergence of more intimate literary styles. This
meant that the properties of physicality had increasingly to be suggested entirely by the words on paper
resulting, for example, in written narratives that are far more dependent on adverbs and adjectives than
spoken narratives. It can be argued that as a model for spoken language development, purely literate
language risks triggering a divorce between the mind and corporal reality.
Traditionally, professional storytellers are also praise singers, called to formally honour people and to mark
rituals and events with spontaneously composed oratory and verse. Storytellers are expected to know
riddles, proverbs, axioms and epithets; again, all linguistic genres with a primary emergence in orality.
Interestingly, contemporary performance storytelling would not exist today without literacy.
7. WHAT ABOUT DIGITAL STORYTELLING?
We think storytelling is at its best when you’re in the same room as the storyteller, sitting in the dark
amongst other people, all listening to the same story and watching our own cinema of the imagination. We
think live is best. And the best is….well, best!
8. WHO ARE ‘STORYTELLERS’?
All of us tell stories in the course of our daily lives, but a professional storyteller is a performance artist who
has chosen to develop an expertise that enables him or her to stand before the paying public (i.e. strangers)
and entertain and interest them for a sustained period of time. The impulses behind the desire to become a
professional storyteller are of course varied.
The storytelling of our daily intercourse is not self-conscious, however the work of professional storytellers
is conscious: they will knowingly use language and the physicality of their communicative skills to transmit
their stories. In the same way as any actor has skills and technique – so does a performance storyteller. The
results may seem very natural, but none of it is haphazard. A professional storyteller will have the
performance skills to ‘wear’ a stage and to engage an audience. They will be able to adapt their material in
response to the needs and moods of the audience. They will have rapid access to language selection and
spontaneous composition.
A professional storyteller will be equipped with a working repertoire that has been garnered over time, in
some cases numbering several hundreds of stories ranging from 30 second jokes to three hour long epics.
To take an analogy from the world of literacy: storytellers are living libraries. They should be able to select
appropriate stories for a great variety of situations and audiences.
Some contemporary storytellers choose a repertoire that reflects the distinctiveness of their cultural
background, others choose to roam the globe in terms of geography and of historical epoch, seeking stories
that reflect essential commonalities of human experience. Stories, like people, have always migrated,
meaning that many stories have readily translocated from one culture to another. Some storytellers
specialise in one genre, say comedic folk tales, others explore the full continuum of genres. Many
storytellers have specific ‘pieces’ or ‘shows’. These are usually sequences of narratives arranged to explore
a theme, or they are substantial epic or mythological extracts.
The Crick Crack Club works with storytellers who have proven their competencies as performers: artists
who have mastered the secrets of expressing their individuality whilst respecting the disciplines demanded
by tradition; artists whose work is entertaining, full of vitality and intelligence; artists whose presence can
command both stage and audience; artists with quick and ready wit.
9. WHAT IS PERFORMANCE STORYTELLING AND HOW DOES IT RELATE TO THE FIRESIDE
TRADITION AND COMMUNITY STORYTELLING?
There are, and always have been, two distinct storytelling traditions, existing in parallel and each feeding
the other: ‘The Fireside Tradition’ and ‘The Professional Tradition’.
The ‘Fireside Tradition’ can be defined as ‘the telling of traditional tales within a given community for
entertainment and instruction’. The spectrum ranges from storytelling between generations within a
family; storytelling as a public house pastime; travellers telling tales ‘to shorten the road’; ‘yarning’ at work
and the moral instruction of the less experienced by the more experienced. The fireside tradition is largely
casual, though there can be events which occasion something more formal, for example during calendar
festivals and to mark rites of passage such as weddings, namings and funerals. In other words it is the
storytelling of ‘the folk’. The Fireside Tradition seldom involves any financial gain for the storytellers and
though it is thus amateur in the true meaning of the word, that is, ‘done for love’, it can certainly involve
skill and status. Within communities and families certain individuals can gain powerful reputations for their
storytelling skills and their role as ‘word-keepers’.
By contrast, the ‘professional tradition’ of storytelling is immediately distinguished by an element of
financial or life-supporting gain. Professional storytellers work in two sets of circumstances that can be
called, ‘The Court’ - i.e. for private patrons - and 'The Market’, where any member of the public can listen
to the teller but is expected to pay for the privilege. The repertoire of the professional tradition is also
significantly different, containing, for example, epics - extended and highly dramatic narratives designed for
large scale (or formal) performance. The fireside tradition is essentially sedentary and the professional
tradition, itinerant. Itinerant peoples such as the Roma or the various British travellers are strikingly
positioned on the cusp between a rural fireside and a professional tradition: storytelling, singing and music
making was/is counted amongst their many traditional sources of income. In diverse global and historical
terms professional storytellers lie behind such titles as Scop, Skald, Bard, Minstrel, Trouvere, Troubadour,
Griot, Ashik, Akyn, etc.
In contemporary ‘western’ society, the professional tradition is now represented by ‘performance
storytellers’ and the folk/fireside tradition is being resuscitated and encouraged by professional
‘community storytellers’ working alongside genuine amateur storytellers. Community or ‘folk’ storytelling
aims to empower others to have the confidence to stand before their peers and speak. It also aims to build
community cohesion by sharing stories and experience. Community storytelling has modest but profound
ambitions and has many different therapeutic benefits. Many contemporary Performance Storytellers also
work as community storytellers for a portion of their time.
There is a continuum between the storyteller who tells to members of his or her family, the storyteller who
is a community ‘animateur’ and the storyteller who proposes to hold the attention of a paying audience of
strangers for several hours. At various stages along this continuum, thresholds are crossed: each threshold
demands a different skill-set from the storyteller and raises different expectations in the audience.
In this light, a major historical difference between the ‘fireside’ and ‘professional’ storytelling traditions is
clearly the degree of self-consciousness about the artistry involved (this is also paralleled as a difference
between the ‘community/folk’ and ‘performance’ neo-traditions). Generally speaking, in the fireside
tradition technique is instinctively applied, modelled on the manner of previous generations and very
‘natural’. In the professional tradition it is possible for technique to be studied, developed and consciously
applied. The results may appear as natural as in the fireside tradition but they may equally - and
impressively - appear stylised, because of the supra-natural physical and vocal energies required to
entertain large audiences.
10. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STORYTELLING AND ACTING?
Storytelling is the primal progenitor of theatre. A myth is first told, then ritualised, then dramatised. In the
transition from ‘story told’ to ‘play performed’, the narrative journeys from an imagined event in the inner
world to a manifestation in the external world. The crucial difference between theatre and storytelling that
needs to be understood is that, with a theatrical performance, the drama is observed unfolding on the
stage and with a storytelling performance the drama is observed unfolding in the imagination. Theatre
needs spectators; storytelling needs an audience. Theatre requires eyes turned outwards; storytelling
requires eyes turned inwards. There is certainly plenty to watch in the work of a storyteller, but although
the storyteller is suggesting characters, objects, space, size, direction with his or her physicality, it is a
physicality that indicates rather than demonstrates: the viewer is invited to marry these gestures with the
words being spoken and complete the scene in their own imaginations. The storytelling audience
experiences the story through the individual subjectivity of their imaginations, whereas spectators,
watching a play collectively, experience an objectified event. Both art forms are extremely powerful, but in
different ways.
To watch the storyteller as one watches an actor’s carefully considered, crafted (and then often fixed)
performance is to risk missing the point. In performance storytelling, it is the story that needs to be
watched. That is where the most interesting craftwork lies - in what the 12th Century Irish bards called ‘the
harmonising and synchronising’ of the tale.
A storytelling performance is not the same as a repeatable ‘one man show’, the inclusion of the audience
through improvisation means that no two audiences experience the same event. So, although the story is
well known to the performer in advance, the story is given its form in the moment of its retelling, as the
great French Storyteller, Abbi Patrix once said: ‘I cannot possibly tell all that I see: I have to make choices.’
This means the storyteller must be three-persons-in-one working immediately and simultaneously;
mastering three different sets of skills and making decisions at great speed. The storyteller is: The
author/adaptor/composer of the language in which the story is being told; The performer of the story, and
The director of both the stage performance and the way the story unfolds in the listener’s imagination
Therefore, whilst the storyteller has to draw on some of the skills of the poet and some of the skills of the
actor, storytelling is actually an entirely different art from either of these two. Indeed as Dominic Kelly once
said ‘ The thing about being a storyteller, is that you open your mouth and whatever comes out, you have
to deal with it…’
Another significant difference between a storyteller and an actor is the question of repertoire. A storyteller
is almost defined by the permanent repertoire of stories he or she carries. They are the researchers, the
creators, the directors, the dramaturge, the producers and performers of their work…and they’re generally
pretty obsessed with stories.
11. WHAT IS THE CREATIVE PROCESS OF A STORYTELLER?
Obviously this can’t be answered properly in a couple of paragraphs, but here’s something to get started
with….
At one level, the storyteller’s work is probably closer to that of an author than an actor in that the
storyteller is composing the words through which the story is communicated. Both storytellers and writers
create worlds with words, inside the listener’s or reader’s mind. The pen however buys the writer crafting
time that a storyteller simply has not got. The storyteller needs to be a master of spontaneous verbal
composition - composition that is shaped and polished. The storyteller needs to be adept at using all forms
of narrative and descriptive language, not just the direct speech and characterisation of drama. Storytelling
gives the artist an opportunity to incorporate audience response immediately into his or her work in a way
that is denied to an author.
The storyteller is placed between the world of the story and the world of the audience; in fact the
storyteller is in two worlds at once. The role of a storyteller is therefore one of mediation, translating into
words and gesture the information that will help the audience to access the story world in the way the
performer intends. The storyteller needs to know the story extremely intimately. Some storytellers live
with their stories for years before beginning to tell them, and, once a story has entered a storyteller's
repertoire, it will stay there, evolving with each telling over years. The storyteller needs also to know his or
her 'self' well, because through the story something very personal will always be expressed.
It has often been said that storytelling is like Jazz, or perhaps even more like the many classical, improvised
musics of Asia. A structure, pattern, theme or form is given as a discipline, but from that starting point
there is freedom to embellish and interpret in as many ways as there are artists capable of engaging with it.
In fact storytelling has much more in common with pre-renaissance approaches to art than with the many
conventions that now surround contemporary art; paradoxically, this renders storytelling a provocative and
challenging art form.
Working in the neo-tradition of performance storytelling, and with the assistance of 32 students over a
three year period, Ben Haggarty was able to draw up a list of nearly 100 definite techniques and strategies
which a storyteller can study and master in order to have them available in the moment of improvisation.
The techniques range from compositional work on the selection of imagery with an awareness of its
semiotic significance, to language work such as the effect of the use of different tenses, to vocal work such
as the effect of monotone and the use of pitch, to performance work such as the shifting of the centre of
gravity and the effects of contra-movement, etc.
To summarise, the greatest skill of a professional storyteller is the swift accessing of communicative
language to convey the story as it is revealing itself in the moment and to combine this with all the dynamic
energies of the body to make the story heard by the listeners. All this can only happen if the storyteller is
deeply familiar with the stories, their levels of meanings and their patterns. The Crick Crack Club holds that
it takes between seven and ten years of constant practical experience before the emergence of a
storyteller’s real mastery of their art – and then there’s always room for improvement, experimentation
and development.
12. HOW DOES THE CRICK CRACK CLUB CHOOSE ITS STORYTELLERS?
The most important quality a storyteller can possess is their relationship with the material. Storytelling is a
'content-lead' art form and the Crick Crack Club is interested in supporting storytellers within whom stories
are really alive. Colleagues in Britain and overseas are constantly scouting for performers who they
recognise as having a certain fire in their eyes: performers whose love of the material they have chosen to
transmit is evident in their bearing and in their performance. The Crick Crack Club works with storytellers in
a range of contexts (theatres, literature festivals, schools, museums, community projects etc), but its real
specialism is performance storytelling, and performance storytellers. It therefore has a particular interest in
artists who have the skills to work on stages and perform crafted storytelling 'pieces' for audiences of
between 80 and 200 people who are paying members of the public (i.e – an audience of strangers). We
never programme storytellers whose work we haven’t seen.
Storytellers are highly individualistic artists – one storyteller will differ as much from another, as the RSC
theatre company differs from Knee High or from Forkbeard Fantasy. The Crick Crack Club tries to represent
as wide a range of performance storytellers as it can find audiences for in the venues we work in, and our
message to new audiences is that if you try one and don’t get on with it, then come back and try another.
‘Beware of Storytellers. Beware of Stories.
Truth and Falsehood live in the same house – and use the same door.’
13. WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?
Audiences are the most important people in the whole performance storytelling sector. Without an
audience, a storyteller and a story are worthless.
Crick Crack Club audiences for performance storytelling are extremely diverse. Storytelling is often
perceived as a branch of ‘literature-in-performance’ (indeed it is the original ‘live-literature’), but its appeal
extends far beyond the circuit of literature festivals. Audiences for performance storytelling are drawn from
theatre, performing arts, fringe theatre and so on. Oral ‘literature’, that is, fairytales, folktales, myths and
epics, are historically, and effectively, truly popular literature. It is not an art form whose appeal is
restricted to those who have ‘had an education’. It speaks to all: old, young, male, female, rich, poor, wise,
foolish and it is also able, in the words of the Natya Shastra, to ‘comfort the drunkard and the lonely man’,
as well as the educated and the intellectual.
Storytelling appeals to the huge audience of those interested in the humanities, in history, anthropology,
the development of literature, comparative religion, popular folk culture, etc. Those who have met
storytelling before and love the material recognise that traditional narratives are most vividly encountered
when being renewed by an inspired artist in the presence of a community of listeners.
In Britain, given that most evening performances are considered ‘adult’ shows - as opposed to family or
children’s shows - a lower age limit is often set (usually 12 or 14). These adult performances appeal to all
generations from the late teens to far beyond the grandparent generation. The demography of the
storytelling audience indicates it consists of about 60% women and 40% men (though in London we get
closer to a 50:50 ratio of male to female). As the style of each individual performer is unique - many
performance storytellers develop a fan club following. Different venues attract different audiences. In
addition some people are attracted by the nature of the material being told, the cultural background of
either the storyteller or the story, or the themes to be explored in the programme. A proportion of the
audience might have a professional interest in storytelling - teachers, archaeologists, psychotherapists,
writers, librarians, film makers, theatre directors, etc. But that said our audiences also contain physicists,
lawyers, NHS advisors, nurses, biologists, window florists….all and everyone.
14. WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF THE CRICK CRACK CLUB?
Our history is a long one – too long to give more than a summary here.
Founded in 1987, the Crick Crack Club was the first Performance Storytelling organisation to be established
in the UK. This was a ground-breaking move by Artistic Director Ben Haggarty, and a significant milestone
in the revival of storytelling in Britain.
Having established the first 'clubnight' open-floor storytelling events in 1981, Ben Haggarty then organised
Britain's first ever storytelling festival at Battersea Arts Centre in 1985. The success of this and a second
festival at Watermans Art Centre in 1987 prompted an invitation to stage a third, 16 day long, international
storytelling festival at London's South Bank Centre in 1989. This third festival remains the largest
international storytelling festival to have ever been held in the UK, and is recognised as a significant event
by UNESCO in relation to their work on intangible cultural heritage.
When the programme for the third festival was being considered, a list of international artists was drawn
up, including Louise Bennett, Vi Hilbert, Abbi Patrix, Eamon Kelly, Seref Tasliova and Punaram Nishad however questions arose as to whether there would actually be enough performance storytellers in the UK
at this point, with the stage presence to hold large adult audiences for a whole evening with appropriate
material. This concern led Ben Haggarty to found the Crick Crack Club, Britain’s first dedicated storytelling
club, programming performers on a weekly basis.
In the autumn of 1987 the first season of 26 weekly events was launched in a pub theatre in Ladbrook
Grove, with the expressed aim of trying out new artists and providing an opportunity for established artists
to develop their skills and repertoire for adults. Many of today’s leading British storytellers first cut their
teeth on adult audiences at the Crick Crack Club.
The Crick Crack Club promoted weekly events in various venues in London between 1988 and 1995, and
then monthly events at the Spitz from 1995 to 2001. At the same time it organised numerous monthly
events and mini-festivals in regional arts venues throughout England, including at the South Bank Centre,
The Green Room in Manchester, Peterborough Arts Centre, Leicester Phoenix, and in addition, Hugh Lupton
ran a Norwich branch of the Crick Crack Club at the King of Hearts Art Centre.
In 1993 Ben Haggarty met David Ambrose, the then Director of St Donats Arts Centre in Wales, and
together they founded Beyond The Border International Festival of Storytelling and Epic-Singing, set in the
magnificent grounds of St. Donats Castle on the South coast of Wales. With Ben & David as co-directors
(from 1993 – 2005), the festival rapidly grew into an annual, weekend-long event with a worldwide
reputation, attracting an audience of around 2,500 each year, on the first weekend of July. As an
international festival, it gave voice to storytellers, epic singers and musicians not only from across the UK,
but from across the globe, and it continues to this day.
Today the Crick Crack Club programmes and runs its own events (performances, talks & festivals) in the
capital, and works collaboratively with a number of high profile organisations to programme high quality
performance storytelling nationally. The work of the Crick Crack Club continues to focus on providing public
audiences access to high quality performances, and on making strategic interventions which assist the
continued evolution of storytelling as a contemporary performance art.
‘Theatre exists to reopen all comfortable convictions. It has the best weapons for breaking taboos and
smashing barriers. But not today. Not any longer. The ‘shock-effect’ cannot shock us any more, it is so
close to daily life that it has become quite ordinary. Today, our urgent need is elsewhere. It is to catch
glimpses of what our lives have lost. The theatre can give us a fleeting taste of qualities long forgotten.’
Peter Brook, Paris (2004)