1. Introduction¹

The present text deals with the experience lived through a training research at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), where an optional subject EDCC60 Vamos Contar Outra Vez? Storytelling Workshop was created as an intervention proposal, especially for research. The purpose of the course was to mobilize enrolled students to experience oral narrative performance practices in formal and informal education spaces in order to understand the methodological path of the constitution of the subject in contemporary storyteller.

There are many concerns about the methodological path constituted for the formation of the storyteller, especially regarding the preparation of this narrator in a dynamic relationship between the three elements that involve the art of storytelling: the teller, the listener and the tale (^{MATOS , 2005}). Thus, there were also many concerns that emerged from the group of students enrolled in EDCC60, an optional discipline offered to students of the Pedagogy course at UFBA. By observing the course syllabus - “Theoretical-practical foundations about the art of storytelling; repertoire of oral and written narrative stories; storytelling art; affective memory of storytellers in formal and non-formal education spaces.” -, the enrolled students had different expectations, such as:

[...] I enrolled in this discipline because I consider it essential in the process of our formation as an educator who values popular tradition, so important for the cultural and ancestral rescue of a people. (NARRATOR 1, Discussion group held on 08/16/2011).

[...] I took this course because I imagine it will be different from anything I’ve ever experienced at the Faculty of Education. I believe that, through her, I will learn to tell stories much better than I do today. (NARRATOR 2, Discussion group held on 08/16/2011).

[...] I noticed that this was one of the most sought after and most recommended subjects during enrollment, I received good references, especially that it will enrich my personal and professional training... And that’s what I hope. (NARRATOR 3, Discussion group held on 08/16/2011).

[...] this discipline, for me, is like an invitation to embark on a world of dreams, enchantments and magic, where I will learn to tell a story well and I will be able to pass it all on. (NARRATOR 4, Discussion group held on 08/16/2011).

[...] I imagined that taking this subject would be like finding, at the Faculty of Education, a magic door, full of laughter dust, golden like a sun... Just like in story books, I look for a place full of fantasy that, at the same time, would be real, stuffed with cotton candy from the sky, like the clouds we eat with our eyes on sunny days. (NARRATOR 5, Discussion group held on 08/16/2011).

According to the actors of this research, while they wanted to find the imaginary universe present in the books, they also hoped to interact with what is fanciful in popular culture, the raw material of the stories. They also signaled the desire to learn to tell stories to overcome shyness, to gain the attention of their students, to improve the quality of their classes and to enter the infinite universe of emotions and learning provoked by oral narratives, described here by ^{Abramovich (2005}). , p. 23):

Listening to [...] stories is also developing the child’s full critical potential. It’s forming an opinion, it’s formulating your own criteria, it’s starting to love an author, a genre, an idea and then following this path and finding other and new values (which maybe make you redouble the love for the author or live a disappointment... But this is all part of life).

The entire workshop group, after they managed to start sharing their affective memory, mobilized emotions capable of triggering the desire to narrate. Proof of this was the delivery of these subjects during the report of the founding narratives arising from the contact with a traditional teller. Stories exchanged, desire sharpened, it was time to know a little more about the structure of the story and about the preparation of the storyteller. How to memorize a tale? How to narrate with emotion? How to use the voice properly? And the body? Is it necessary to be an actor? How to engage listeners during narration? And it was ^{Abramovich (2005}, p. 23) who helped them with their first reflections:

To tell a story, it is necessary to know how it is done... After all, new words are discovered in it, the music and the sound of the phrases, the names are encountered... like a song... And for that, the narrator has to create the atmosphere of involvement, of enchantment... Knowing how to give pauses, time for each child’s imagination to build their scenario, visualize their monsters, create their own dragons, enter its forest, dress the princess in the clothes she is inventing, think about the king’s face... And so much more...

Telling from memory is a sophisticated operation, which requires an in-depth reading of the tale, apprehension of its symbolic language and its deepest meaning. For this, it is necessary a close identification with the characters, the situations experienced by them and their own daily experiences as a storyteller. How to convert the story read or heard into a performance is the object of the text that follows, when commenting on the process of memorization of the oral narrative itself.

The tale: from the statue to the moving body

To guide the group in order to build the tale memorization processes, ^{Matos and Sorsy (2009}, p. 9) were invited to point out the methodologically established dialogues:

The great secret of good tellers lies in the perfect assimilation of what they intend to tell. Assimilation in the sense of appropriation. To appropriate a story is to process it within oneself. It is letting yourself be so impregnated by it, that all the senses can be sharpened and that the whole body can naturally communicate it through gestures, facial and body expressions, voice intonation, rhythm, etc.

By getting closer to the characters, by searching for a similarity with the situations lived by them in the story, by seeing what is in them, even if they are real or fictional characters, the storyteller begins the process of appropriation of the tale. For this, it is necessary to be open to the invasion of the tales that choose them, and, in this way, allow oneself to be possessed by the pleasure or sadness that overflows from a well felt story, in the body and in the soul, that will certainly find an echo in the game played by the narrator and their audience.

When they physically exposes themselves before the audience, the player-narrator is confronted with all the issues of theatrical performance; their body begins to mean as much as the bodies of the player-characters do. The variations in their gaze, their movement, the quality of their concentration, the diversity of their vocal emission cannot but be read and interpreted by the audience (^{PROPP, 1984}, p. 87).

To facilitate this process, the actors in this research followed a methodological path common to the training of storytellers, which begins with the oral narration of affective memory and reflection on it, going through the recognition of the similarities between the stories one likes to hear or tell and one’s own life. It was by becoming fond of the characters in a tale, seeking an identification with them, noticing the nuances of their own trajectory and in what they resemble to that of the characters that the actors in this research saw narrative as a way capable of “sharing with wisdom, charm, humor, and subtlety their own life experiences” (^{MATOS; SORSY, 2009}, p. 9).

When converting a tale into performance, a truth emerges through which the storyteller reveals, in a way, their own story. they lend the emotion of a loss, the joy of a new love, the anguish of longing, and all sorts of feelings that they once experienced, sharing, in this way, experiences and dreams. This is why it is so important that they know the stories by heart (from the Latin cor, cordis, heart), that they maintain a close relationship with them, and that they also seek a two-way street in which they feed from the life and emotions of the characters. And this is exactly the connection that Narrators 6 and 7 reveal, respectively, in the discussion group held on 13/12/2011:

I like to tell animal stories... There can be fable stories, public domain stories, even recent stories, author’s stories... It’s all a mixture [...] These stories have a direct relationship with the Black Bird, which was told by my grandmother, and also with my childhood, because I lived in the countryside - my best friend was a jaboticaba tree...

I try to do like him [the brother], right? To take the lyrics of the songs as I heard them and tell them... I remembered once when we were at home and it was at the end of the year, on vacation, and then there was a tambourine of a friend of mine and then I picked up the tambourine - which was all I knew how to play - then I picked it up. the story of the mermaid and singing the song and then I saw those little eyes of my nieces shining... And the little one confirming that the mermaid exists and telling me that one day she went diving and saw the mermaid go by... Then I was happy because there was a seed of stories planted there...

In order to extract the countless messages contained in a short story, it takes a lot of study, countless readings and a deepening of its many layers, until the storyteller discovers the best way to work with it. For this, it is necessary to think of the short story as a body and to see the parts that constitute it. Thus, through this analogy, it will be possible for the storyteller to see different elements with each new reading: “Both (the story and the body) have in common a skeleton, muscles and tendons. But a written story would be like the sculpture of a body, while, told, it would be like the living body.” (^{MATOS; SORSY, 2009}, p. 18).

In this analogy presented by matos and sorsy (2009, p. 18), the tale is compared to the body: “the skeleton, the muscles, the blood and breathing, the heart.” translating its description, we say that the skeleton brings the idea of rigidity, even with the possibilities present in the joints, and this makes it the bearer of the message of the tale, the idea of beginning, middle and end contained in the plot that is passed on without alterations. The muscles refer to the images that the story presents and that sharpen the listener’s imagination (details about places, physical characteristics of the characters, actions, among others). blood and breath are the intentions of the teller that leads the listener’s emotion, through voice, silence, gestures, rhythm, to where they want. and the heart refers to the story’s intention, which promotes the transmission of a story from heart to heart and establishes an empathy between the teller and their listeners.

Although this analogy was discussed in the classroom, the study of the short story was carried out in moments of solitude, when the research actors were faced with the challenge of choosing the stories they wanted to tell, dissecting them and, at the same time, reconstructing them for the moment of performance. This repertoire was constituted from two matrices, the stories heard by them during the classes and the ones read, specifically, in the book traditional tales of Brazil, by Luís da Câmara ^{Cascudo (2004}), the basis of our own repertoire. And it was listening and reading these stories that the choices of the repertoire and the study methodology were made, with the option of memorizing what is heard:

I think it was really cool when you told stories... Not when you explained after you told stories, but when you started telling stories... I think that there had to be three times a day, right? Because that was what connected the whole reason for that class... It was the story you told. And you told stories in different ways, but that different way of that day could be dealt with in several stories and I think that comes from... Damn! Learning to tell stories... There’s almost no way you can learn from the book... It’s watching you do it and then you tell it - it’s really like that, right? When you brought a girl who talked about dissecting the story - Keu - from the skeleton, it was super cool, but for us to do it was super difficult... But watching her do it... When she took a story that everyone knew and made it. .. It was super cool, because you understand the structure of that story, you know? So, there it was fantastic! That moment was one of the pulls of my training as a storyteller... (NARRATOR 6, Discussion group held on 12/13/2011).

Or to memorize what you read:

[...] when I saw myself in front of the book and needed to memorize that story that I had chosen by heart... From my heart, right? I always tried my best to make links with my previous experiences... It’s much easier for us to internalize a story that we identify with than one that didn’t say anything, that doesn’t touch us! (NARRATOR 8, Discussion group held on 12/13/2011).

To understand how this study was carried out, we observed the performance of the storytellers-teachers and inferred the methodological path they used to get there, especially their interaction with the story. However, we also promoted a conversation through a discussion group, when they were able to tell a little about how this process of inter locution with the literary text took place, what aesthetic effects the tale produced and what catharsis was also caused in this reader-listener-narrator: “ [...] the way in which the literary text is read is what gives it its aesthetic status; reading is defined, at the same time, as absorption and creation, a process of dynamic exchanges that constitute the work in the reader’s consciousness. (^{ZUMTHOR, 2007}, p. 51).

^{Zumthor’s ideas (2007}) led us to the Aesthetics of Reception and generated a reflection on the processes of the aesthetic experience lived by the actors of this research in the movement of approximation and departure from the tale, of perception of the facts of fiction and reality, of assimilation between the profile of the characters and that of the storyteller himself. This is what, for ^{Lima (1979}, p. 19), “[...] consists of the pleasure originated from the oscillation between the self and the object, oscillation by which the subject distances himself interestedly from himself, approaching the object, and withdraws interestedly from the object, approaching itself”. Seeing the study of the tale made by the storyteller through the Aesthetics of Reception promoted the analysis of the artistic and, in this case, cultural fact, focused on the text - written or oral - and on the reader.

And among the aspects investigated, we highlight those that were important for the constitution of this study and are fundamental for the understanding of the processes of study and preparation of the short story for the conversion of writing into oral narrative: 1) the reception and the effect that the short story provoked in his reader (and caused him to be chosen by “color”); 2) the aesthetic experience of the act of reading (the emotion that the chosen story produced in the reader based on the previous knowledge he has); 3) the possibility of filling the tale’s silences (the reader’s inference action in the construction of the feelings that promoted the tale’s truth at the moment of the performance); 4) the timelessness of the work (the ability of the story to be read, understood and narrated orally outside its production time); and 5) the detachment of the tale (when the narrative offered the reader other learnings and even new dimensions of existence). These aspects were explained through the speech of Narrator 9 in the discussion group held on 12/13/2011:

[...] first, Lu, for a story to remain in my memory or for me to memorize it, it needs to touch my heart to truly interest me... I was talking about this at the school where I work... The girl and the fig tree is a good example of this. I need to have an affective connection with the story, emphasizing that I don’t just decorate, it’s not a ‘memorize’... I assimilate, understand, appropriate myself in the sense of liking and having a true affective relationship with the story. So, after understanding, assimilating inside me - first in my heart and then going to my memory, otherwise it doesn’t work -, the story stays here inside me, assimilated in a unique way, right? Using my form or formula of ‘decorating’ which is of ‘color’, from the heart. For the first step to work, I also need to identify with the story, with the situations, with the characters, places. It’s really realizing how much the characters, the situations, among an infinity of things in the story, have to do with me, with my trajectory, with my life yesterday, today and what I think of it for tomorrow. Structurally, after the steps above, I think about the story, I read the story to myself, it’s my test to see if I know very well the story I’m going to tell. If I’m in doubt about what’s next, I don’t even start to tell it... I think that if I can retell it to myself, get emotional and learn from the story and the characters’ stories, I can do the same thing for anyone. person. My friends say that I think of little balloons, like a comic book... So, that’s my process with the story. As it is internalized, I draw the places and characters of the story in my mind... It’s something of mine... So, every time I start a story, some words that I usually highlight in my study before the story remind me of images and, as I have the sequence of images in my head, I consequently know all the actions of the sequence of the story, that is, the order in which the actions take place, but also the silence and the emotions that appear. Example: The girl and the fig tree. She was once such a beautiful girl that her hair was golden as sunlight. In this case, the expression golden hair reminds me of a blonde girl with very light and long hair... Soon I know what will come later - which is the mother combing the girl’s hair and so on... Yeah, actually. , a skeleton... I read the story, sometimes I write... If the story is too long, I like to write it, I reread it to myself, I tell it to myself and, in the process, I highlight significant expressions in the beginning and middle and end of the story, which refer me to images, and these images give me the sequence of the tale from beginning to end. But what I think is that everything depends on the first point: I always choose a story, a story that I like, that touches me. So I gladly tell it and I think there will be more chances that others will like it too and, most of all, very naturally I will internalize this tale. And more: this whole process that I reported happens naturally and is intrinsic. If I like the story and think about telling it, I do as I described... Ah, that goes for both written and oral history...

The aspects described here were also used by other pedagogues-storytellers, subjects of this research, with the same objective of apprehending the processes of study and preparation of the stories to be presented. Although all the stories presented in the story circle, the final product of the EDCC60 discipline, were recorded in books, some of them were also presented in our workshop, sometimes by us, sometimes by other guest tellers, with other styles of narration, which also influenced the performance of the subjects of our research.

Finally, it was clear from the speeches of the research actors that the training of the teller is procedural, demanding and, above all, involving, in the sense of creating links between narrator, narratives and listener. It is this bond that guarantees the permanence of tradition through the secular certainty that “telling history is always the art of telling again” (^{BENJAMIN, 1994}, p. 203). Or, as ^{Matos and Sorsy (2009}, p. 39) teach: “[…] the best storyteller is the one whose stories are remembered many, many years after their own name has been forgotten.”

The performance: the storyteller’s encounter with the tale to give body to the narrative

The storyteller plays three important roles for the maintenance of oral culture: narrating, listening and absorbing the stories that are told. This means, for ^{Fernandes (2007}, p. 56), that when the teller

[...] narrates, is the performer sensitive to the audience, as he embodies the voice of the community; listens, exchanges experiences with other narrators and absorbs the stories they tell; and creates, becomes responsible for constituting a meaning for what he heard, as well as for updating it with different signifiers and meanings.

To fulfill these roles, the storyteller needs to potentially explore the narratives to whom he lends body and voice, in order to enhance the relationship between him and the listener at the moment when the performance of the narrative is manifested through different mechanisms. : the voice that gives power to words and gives color to the text (silences, pauses, noises, personification of types, change in volume, speed, intonation); body movement, which reveals the intentions behind the text and enhances the meanings of words (gestures, facial expressions, mimics, imitations); and the gaze, which marks the complicity between the public and the storyteller, capable of giving them the necessary fuel to keep it alive. And it is in this perspective that storytellers defend the idea that reading and telling are distinct activities:

Here it may be opportune to make a distinction between the storyteller and the story reader. The art of the teller involves body expression, improvisation, interpretation, interaction with their listeners. The teller, as we have seen, recreates the tale together with their audience as they tell it. The reader, in turn, lends their voice to the text. They can use vocal resources so that the reading becomes more engaging for the listener, but they do not recreate the text, they do not improvise from the stimuli of the auditorium. The same is true of the actor who plays a literary text. They cannot recreate the text, they cannot interfere with the author’s literary style. (^{MATOS; SORSY, 2009}, p. 8-9).

And, to give vent to the text, the storyteller, even before starting the performance, thinks about the physical space in which they will carry out the storytelling circle and invests in objects that stimulate the imagination and that can work as important partners for the narration. of the tale. They take care of the costumes, they set the stage - which is often just a patchwork quilt - and ensures the comfort of the listeners during the space and time of narrative creation. In the case of the actors in this research, they were encouraged to wear colorful clothes, bring objects that would give vent to the imagination - of the teller and the listener - and choreograph the inputs and outputs of each storyteller as a new story began. All this to help the listener get into the atmosphere of the story.

When analyzing the performance of these storytellers in training, we are faced with the question that it is not possible to transcribe all these ways of narrating, because they get lost in the description, especially those that arise from improvisation, from spontaneity. Describing the tone of voice, the modulation of the utterance that reveals exactly the narrator’s intention and that causes a change of meaning in the text itself or a pause, generating a certain emotion in the audience, although they were not the focus of this study, were surprisingly incorporated in the performances of our narrators in training, which surprised us positively, considering their importance for the act of narrating.

We started the analysis of the performance reflecting on the beginning of the story circle, in which the storyteller provokes in the group a feeling of belonging, of union, in which the individual feels part of a community, like the classroom itself. And this movement takes place from the sharing of incantatory songs, or even an introductory conversation, capable of raising the group’s imagination. This is the “warm-up moment” (^{MATOS; SORSY, 2009}), when the storyteller promotes the creation of an atmosphere that catalyzes the attention and integration of those involved. And such behaviors are maintained not only at the beginning of the story wheel, but throughout the time the teller leads the telling.

The actors in this research made use of different activities to promote the warm-up moment in their story circles, through riddles, tongue twisters, quatrains and nursery rhymes, using musical instruments and various objects that ensured eyes and ears at their disposal. They did this collectively, summoning the audience to the entire show, and individually when introducing a new tale. The public domain song “Acalanto”, learned during the workshops, was used in all story wheels: “This boy is not mine / they gave me to create / the comfort of those who create / is to be able to cherish”. Just like the incantations: “So I was told, so I told you...”, or even, “Walk today, walk tomorrow, walking makes the path...” or “That was where this happened, beyond the Red Sea, beyond the Blue Forest, beyond the Crystal Mountain, beyond the Town of Straw, there where water gathers in the sieve...”. Generally, whoever chose a certain incantation formula or song kept the choice in all story wheels, as in the song “Sabiá lá na Gaiola”, used by a group of tellers.

Incantatory formulas have the main function of rescuing the pleasure of listening and, consequently, taking the listener to different universes, full of magic and enchantment. They take us to the space of “Once upon a time”, where the impossible is possible, where heroes and villains face each other and good always wins, where the storytellers in training, actors of this research, led their audience to live together, for the via narratives, with the world upside down, as advised by Chevrier (1986 apud ^{MATOS; SORSY, 2009}, p. 134):

A radically different world where the supernatural is the rule and where the usual order of things is reversed. It is the moment when everyone is united, and this integration into the psychic space of the story fully favors the feeling of solidarity and awareness of a common destiny.

In order to more accurately analyze the “good storytelling practices” carried out by these storytellers, we demarcated some items to be considered as indispensable in the storyteller’s performance: Rhythm, Energy, Expression, Power, Memorization and Improvisation (CARAM; MATOS, 199_).

To analyze the Rhythm printed on the narratives presented in the classroom (essays) and during the event “Once a month”, promoted by the Education and Language Research Group (GELING), we refer to the idea of Ítalo ^{Calvino (2001}, p. 52) when he compares the narrative to a horse: “[...] a means of transport whose type of gait, trot or gallop, depends on the route to be performed, although the speed mentioned here is a mental speed. ” Although referring, with this metaphor, to the written narrative, we borrow the same idea to speak of rhythm in narratives of oral tradition, in which it is also necessary that the narrator does not interrupt the gallop (the text) with the use of expressions that generate discomfort in the listener (there, you know, ok...) and that compromise the rhythm of the story.

If by rhythm we understand this safe galloping, with energy and also smoothness, we can also understand rhythm as the musicality of the narrative, sometimes more agile, sometimes slower, sometimes with more volume of voice, sometimes with less, sometimes playing more with the bass, now with the treble. In short, these predicates collaborate to create a score, a melody that packs the tales. Here, that attentive eye is needed to see where it is possible to ride fast, and where to stop for a quick breath. (^{BUSATTO, 2008}, p. 65).

When we talk about mental speed, we highlight the rhythm imprinted on the narratives and the dexterity of the knight (the storyteller) in holding the animal’s reins (the tale) firmly and guiding it along the chosen path, sometimes with more speed, other times. at a slower pace, and even printing a pause at a given time. It is through the awareness of rhythm that the storyteller promotes the harmony and musicality necessary for good storytelling. For this, the teller needs to be sure of the chosen story, in order to balance the rhythm necessary to give color to the text.

Imprinting rhythm in the narrative does not mean just starting to narrate quickly until the end of the story. By rhythm is not understood the speed in the emission of the voice, where the narrator reaches the end exhausted and breathless, but a relationship between this mental speed, which is the ability to think agile, to adapt to the situations that are presented by the tale, and the correct perception of the moment of silence. (^{BUSATTO, 2008}, p. 66).

Feelings such as apprehension, anger, despair, courage, among others, were intensely experienced in the narratives presented by the actors in this research, especially because they promoted the necessary rhythm to bring the tale to life. The narrators featured here were able to make balanced use of opposites - from silence to scream, from speech to whisper, from laughter to crying - and of every form of expression that made history pulse in the hearts and minds of those present, giving our young people another necessary mark for the good practice of the teller: Energy.

When the storyteller comes into contact with the tale and begins the process of choosing and structuring the text for the oral narrative, the development of what we call energy already begins to happen. According to Caram and Matos (199_, p. 55):

Energy is life in history. A teller uses his life experience to talk about the feelings of the characters, to describe the places, to give life to what he narrates, because he will not be repeating empty words, but full of experience. In this case, they have energy.

When touched by the stories, the narrators enter a process of triangulation between these narratives, the founding emotions that dialogue directly with them and the emotions experienced by the listener while listening to the tale. And it is this energy that can lead them to the desire to narrate. The same may have happened with the storytellers in training involved with this research: at the time of the storytelling circle, their listeners, to a greater or lesser extent, may have been taken by an energy that opened the desire to tell one or many of the stories. stories.

And, for this energy to be processed, it was also necessary for the storyteller to use all kinds of expression, in order to mobilize their listener. For this, the actors in this research needed to have a body awareness - generated by the theatrical games promoted in the classes - that would give them the ability to recognize, on the face and body, the expressions capable of defining feelings: “Expression is linked to energy and is translated into gestures, things, occupation of space with one’s own body. Using your hands, the way you move through space, mimicking the character’s state of mind.” (CARAM; MATOS, 199_, p. 55).

And, even knowing that telling stories is different from theatricalizing the tale, there is an appropriation by the storyteller of theatrical language, a very rich didactic resource that can have certain aspects taken advantage of at the time of telling. However, the limit between one art and another lies in the fact that it gives the listener the possibility to imagine actions, characters, scenarios, without necessarily having to imitate these elements:

In theater we look for the exact gesture of each character, their voice, their thought, in such a way that they presents themself completely to whoever is watching. In the narrative this character will be conceived by the listener through elements offered by the narrator, often no more than half a dozen words, which provide enough elements for the character to come to life in the listener’s imagination. (^{BUSATTO, 2008}, p. 74).

For ^{Matos and Sorsy (2009}), it is necessary to rethink the role of the actor and the role of the storyteller, because, in this way, the demarcation of the differences between them will be more clearly. For these authors, the main difference between the two crafts is found in the figure of the director: while the actor needs an external eye, the storyteller has an inner director who works as an internal eye. And it is from there that these authors define: “[…] any person who has a voice, some power of memory and an ability to observe, reflect, and who is able to learn lessons from life is a potential storyteller. ” (^{MATOS; SORSY, 2009}, p. 37).

However, it is Narrator 10 who, in the face of the comment of a student from EDCC60, defines the hybrid between the actor and the storyteller and between the latter and the teacher himself:

I would like to comment on what Luiza said that, in a way, the storyteller is an actor. We all live playing roles. All the time, isn’t it? Playing the role of teacher, role of buyer, role of talker, role of father, role of mother, right? So, we live all the time acting... Yeah... Now, the more we get into this role, the more natural it becomes [...] I remember her saying: ‘I was impressed with Keu that she, so, seriously, etc., she goes into that, internalizing more and more this role (of storyteller) that she doesn’t even need to enter smiling and doing pantomimes and antics... That’s already internalized, isn’t it? And then she tells it more and more naturally. And that’s our way, the way when you assume the role of teacher, isn’t it? You are playing a role there, a social role... Very important!. So the more you get into that role... It’s almost erotic... The social roles we play are erotic. You’ll have an ever-increasing penetration movement... So you can assume this role more and more naturally. So, I don’t need to be worried about: And so, now Mary is playing the role of teacher... So, now I have to change my look, my voice, my gestures, etc...’ Each time we it becomes more natural. And that’s what storytelling is all about... [...] But Lu, in life everything is like that, a universe of representations... We are acting all the time. The important thing is to do it all naturally. (NARRATOR 10, Discussion group held on 12/13/2011).

And it was this naturalness that the group of storytellers in training imprinted on the stories that came to the circle. Whenever necessary, they looked for the actor at the counter and described spaces and scenarios with hand gestures, facial expression or with the whole body.

The moment they make use of sounds, gestures, mimics, the moment they look at their listeners, the storyteller manages to convey the truth of the tale and, with that, they promote another element of good storytelling practices, power, which concerns the ability to “seduce” the listener, to retain their attention and to keep them in a state of enchantment. For this, it is essential to make use of the elements described so far: rhythm, energy and expression, all in the right dosage to provoke the sharing of history: “Power is, in short, the ability to lead the other on a journey to the imaginary. For this there must be pleasure. The teller needs to feel pleasure in telling. If there is no pleasure, the tale does not happen”. (CARAM; MATOS, 199_, p. 55).

Power is the element that gives the teller the ability to capture the listener at the time of the story wheel. This is what, for ^{Zumthor (2007}, p. 222), means the moment of performance that is processed through dialogue, even if the word is only in the mouth of the storyteller: “Oral communication cannot be pure monologue: it requires imperiously an interlocutor, even if reduced to a silent role. This is why the poetic verb demands the warmth of contact.”

It is through dialogue that the narrator feels when it is time to continue or to conclude the narrative, when it is time to expand elements, give more details, or draw an ending. It is the metaphor of the boat and the captain, of the wind and the sail, described by Gislayne ^{Matos (2005}) in a lecture held in Salvador. History is the boat, the teller is at the helm, about to go on voyage. The listener is the wind that blows the sail of the boat through the gaze. When the teller looks at their listener and establishes a silent dialogue with them, when they read this listener through the head nod, the expressions raised by the story (fear, joy, sadness), the murmur between them, it is possible to print a rhythm to the journey, it is possible to change the meaning of the narrative and re-signify it.

Another important aspect to flesh out the narrative is memorization. When we talk about memorization, we also refer to the storyteller’s ability to memorize the tale, creating the images that will later be described to the listener.

When we brought up the metaphor of the skeleton to speak, among other things, of the structure of the narrative, we were also referring to the movement of memorization of the tale, which, for ^{Coelho (1999}, p. 21), is not synonymous with memorizing a story. , but: “[...] it is, in the first place, having fun with it, capturing the message that is implicit in it and then, after some readings, identifying its essential elements, that is, those that constitute the its structure.” Ensuring that the narrative structure is memorized is essential for the storyteller to feel free to better explore the rhythm, energy, expression and power of the art of storytelling, triggers of improvisation, an element that guarantees the renewal of the same story each time it is told.

The idea of improvisation, in common sense, is attributed to something that was not foreseen and that, even so, had to happen, usually in a disorganized and hasty way. Sometimes this kind of improvisation even works. In the case of storytelling, improvising “is letting happen on stage, without any prior preparation, a personal creation that has quality as if it were part of the script” (CARAM; MATOS, 199_, p. 56). The improvisation technique takes place according to the moment experienced by the characters in the story and must happen spontaneously: “Improvisation is a complex art that consists of associating randomness with rigor.” (CARAM; MATOS, 199_, p. 56).

Improvisation, teaches ^{Matos (2005}), can be born from an object, from someone in the audience, from a stumble, from a noise and even from an involuntary act, such as a sneeze. Faced with this, the storyteller needs to concentrate to provoke an emptying that will make them available for the story and still need to have the flexibility to sharpen the imagination and assign, with some speed, a way out of the unforeseen situation. This, perhaps, is one of the most important items for the construction of good storytelling practices and, of course, the most difficult to be internalized, as it requires a subtlety from the storyteller to capture and make use of images, desires, emotions, impulses and all kinds of feelings that can erupt in a wheel of stories.

That’s it, reader: the course started in the EDCC60 and in the activities resulting from it, such as the discussion group, the participation in “Once every month”, the story wheels in formal and non-formal education spaces, left indelible marks on all of us involved, research subjects, researcher and advisor.

Final considerations

And that’s why the actors of this research arrived from all sides, coming from different academic semesters and for very different reasons, but always with one certainty: they wanted to tell, tell and tell! As if interest in oral narratives had never been lost, and the need for art was always a constant, as ^{Rocha reveals to us (2010}, p. 325):

Still, an increasing number of people are looking to the old storyteller in the new. They look for it, motivated perhaps by a hunger for fantasy, beauty and religiosity, or perhaps by the dryness or aridity of the noisy solitude of modern times... to the moon, we continue and will continue to need poets making the moon a theme for their songs.

And it was searching - because, according to ^{Lispector (1999}, p. 180), “it is from searching and not finding that what I didn’t know is born” - that they found, in their trajectory partners, the inspiration to tell stories. It was in the affective memory of the other that emotion was defined and functioned as a device capable of communicating so many other narratives and uniting people through emotions that are within the scope of the human and the sacred. From there, the stories found fertile ground to flourish and add values, as well as promoting an aesthetic experience capable of imprinting the necessary transformation on the art of narrating that led the pedagogue in training to the storyteller.

For this, the training space for young storytellers presented here enabled the interaction between narrators, listeners and many narratives, in a poetic perspective that permeated collection research, storytelling in formal and non-formal education spaces and many bodily activities, musical, plastic and scenic. It was in the experience that the formative path of these subjects took place, sometimes through story wheels, sometimes through individual studies that led them to articulated learning experiences, promoting aesthetic perception and knowledge about the art of narration.

The learning of young storytellers presented in this study permeated imagination and creativity. Their material was humanity itself, personified in an aesthetic experience, which put them in contact with internal images that, because they were enchanted, borrowing Djavan’s poetry, revealed themselves to us, transporting us to the place of knowledge, of the senses. and meanings imprinted on the materiality of the voice, which imposes the creative function of the narrator’s word:

According to Zumthor, the word is the creative breath that emanates from the body and is its lightest part. Beyond its acoustic dimension, the voice is also the least limited part of the body.

It is inhabited by the word, but it is prior to it. His name is spirit: in Hebrew rouah; in Greek pneuma, but also psique; in Latin animus. What it brings to us, before and inside the word it conveys, is a question about the beginnings, about the moment without duration in which the sexes, the generations, love and hate were one. (^{MATOS, 2005}, p. 70).

Listening to the memories of these “people of wonders” in the midst of the formative process, listening to their stories - real and fictional -, triangulating these stories with the ones we bring, all of this was the key to the production of the knowledge embedded in this research. Listening and telling many stories were acts that integrated present, past and future, enhancing respect for oral tradition, bearer of mysteries and wisdom that are perpetuated until the times of time.

And this story does not end here, as it adds other stories and characters incorporated in the field research, it opens in a frame for many other stories within it to be told. Like “The Thousand and One Nights”, it works as a space of arrivals and departures for different narratives that were told and lived in the body of the way. Such stories teach the things that fit in the formal spaces of education, but they also bring a new teaching, that of those who are in the process of personal growth. In this journey, we learn... We continue with the stories, always loaded with many possibilities... We know more about ourselves than before... At least, we try to understand ourselves more and to so many who populate the world, through the knowledge granted by the griots, storytellers who took us by the hand and led us to the realm of words, where we were able to look for treasure.