Oral Culture
According to Bruno de La Salle's experience, living
word has its own energy and power; sometimes it can be a game, but is also a useful skill, the oldest and the
user-friendly human instrument[1].
Oral history and storytelling are the most essential
types of interactive art based on using words in the "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre"
Centre's activities. Academically, there is a possibility of contextual definition
which involves the ‘oral history' discipline. Since ‘storytelling' has no
elaborate designation, it is necessary to point out some parallels between oral
history and storytelling, as these expressions might also sound miscellaneous without proper exemplification. First of all, they are two unique methods of
telling stories, which have developed in the United States of America. Nowadays
oral history is a kind of historical discipline which collects human memories
as important testimonies on former times and people. In fact, ‘storytelling
revival' is the whole movement connected with retelling fairy-tales and legends
(or telling own stories) using methods close to theatrical type. On the whole,
it is perceived as an entertainment, an art, while ‘oral history' supports
documental approach. However ‘storytelling', mostly in France, has
public and educational denotation. Yet Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, the creator and
manager of the NN Theatre, links two methods intuitively with imperative
educative results- most of schools in the Lublin Region are seen as active
participants of every particular event
organised by "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre"
Centre.
Choosing narrative in additional to
artistic activities is the first step to create a story - like exhibitions or
quasi-performances on the street, the so-called "Memory Mysteries", which
commemorate the nonexistent Jewish district in Lublin. There are numerous various ways of
telling a story and that is for instance, by telling, acting, painting or
singing. It is believed that "to tell is to be". The style and the form is
inside of every human being. The substance of the speaker and the receiver is
also very important, as we can divide the art of dialogue into the art of
telling stories/ giving testimonies and the art of listening
to them.
Both techniques are based on face-to-face contact. Indeed,
oral history is a method which can be used as a part of educational work; on
the other hand, storytelling is rather a kind of overexposed art today. The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Centre in Lublin has linked two different models of educational and artistic
activities making use of both comparable as well as incoherent methods. The
distinctive feature of the Centre's activity is transforming these techniques
into artistic
doings[2]. Testimonies can be treated as an
interesting documentary source in education, which is important for
cross-cultural and cross-generation dialogue. Finally, they are exploited in
practice while being presented in street quasi-performances or exhibitions.
Currently it is possible to observe
that art based on documentary sources (theatre, cinema, exhibitions) is
steadily gaining more popularity. There are more and more storytellers wishing
to tell stories about their own lives. It is rooted in human immaterial
heritage: before written language became common, people had been telling
stories generally focused on the history of vital ancestry. The whole idea is
strongly entrenched in ‘orality', ‘primary orality' as well as in ‘oral
tradition'. Communities have always liked listening to tales, legends as well
as individual histories. Allan Nevins
says:
Oral history is one of latest and most promising of these precautions, and
already it has saved from death's dateless (and updatable) night much that the
future will rejoice over and cherish. In hardly less degree than space exploration,
oral history was born of modern invention and technology[3].
A researcher also adds that it is a
highly adventurous and entertaining task. At every turn people are faced with a
new experience, a fresh view of history, gain more and more knowledge of human
personality[4].
A significant aspect of oral history
is that it can tell others details about essential things, both important and
trivial people but from their own individual standpoint, as this is an oral
source of personal reminiscence[5].
Speaking of new technology, Internet
users are able to listen to the testimony in mp3 format or view the photos or
videos on the Grodzka Gate's website. A document such as a picture assures the
reader that storytelling and oral history have analogous characteristics,
involving often emotional language and
face to face contact (between audience and storyteller or interviewer and
interviewee). What is more, the tone of the
voice, facial expression, gesture, a
smile, eye contact, showing compassion for somebody - all these can turn a
speech/conversation into a hard-luck story. A supplementary idea of the project is,
by using storytelling and oral history
techniques to cause major consequences. These include improving the art of conversation between
youth and older generation and progress in multicultural and multi-religious
dialogue- issues which still remain extremely problematical and complicated.
[1] www.clio.org
[2]
In most artistic projects conducted by NN Theatre, oral history has been used
continuously. For example on 16th March, during the anniversary of
the liquidation the Jewish ghetto in
Podzamcze area in Lublin, young people from local schools read aloud the
names and surnames of the last 4 000 Jewish inhabitants who had lived in
the ghetto (before its definite liquidation in 1942). The event has taken place
outside of the Grodzka Gate since 2001.
[3]
Allan Nevins, Oral History: How and Why
It Was Born. London
1968, p.30
[4] Ibid, s. 31
[5]
Gwyn Prins, Oral History: New perspectives on historical writing.
Edited by Peter Burke, Cambridge
1995, p. 120. |
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