kids podcast – Story Story Podcast

Wit and Wisdom (with Host Simon Brooks): Richard Martin, Anne Shimojima

January 10, 2021 No Comments

The stories Richard Martin tells are the folk tales which have been told for hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. With over 300 stories in his repertoire, they reflect the full range of human experience: the comic, the bawdy, the profound, the divine. Far from being for little children (although he does tell for children, too), these powerful and deep tales offer unforgettable listening for adults. If you like theatre, you’ll definitely love storytelling. It combines the intensity of a play by a solo performer with the intimacy of a one-to-one conversation. Richard tells stories throughout Europe and as far away as India, Singapore, Hong Kong and America – in theatres, universities, schools, for corporate events or private parties. He usually tells in English, although having lived in Germany since 1976, he is sometimes asked to tell in German.

Anne Shimojima

Anne Shimojima is a third generation Japanese American, born and
raised in Chicago, Illinois. An award-winning elementary school library
media specialist of 35 years, she first discovered the power of story
with her students, using storytelling to enrich and expand the
curriculum and develop a deep emotional connection with her listeners.

Some highlights in her storytelling career include a week as Teller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, TN and performing at such venues as the National Storytelling Festival, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the 1st Asian-American Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Talk Story Storytelling Festival in Honolulu, Storytelling Arts of Indiana, the Hans Christian Andersen Statue in Central Park, and the Stories Connect Us All Online Storytelling Festival.

Guest Host – Simon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World! He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new book Under The Oaken Bough and listen to his new podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

Music by Podington Bear!

Podcast, Storytelling

The Hosts tell Holiday Stories! : Simon Brooks, Isabelle Hauser, Rachel Ann Harding

December 23, 2020 No Comments

View the show on YouTube!

Rachel Ann Harding

Traditional Storyteller and Musician, Rachel Ann Harding is passionate about telling the most beautiful folk, myth, and traditional tales.

Rachel Ann weaves story and song together to create unique and entertaining storytelling events, keynotes and workshops that display the relevance of storytelling in our lives. She believes that fairytales are not just for children and mesmerizes audiences with old tales woven into new adventures. As the producer of the Story Story Podcast she brings traditional stories to people around the world who also are in love with fairytales.

Rachel Ann Harding began singing and playing a variety of instruments in her early twenties, crafting lyrics laced with tenderness and humor. She blends harmonies on the ukulele and looper to create melodies that connect to the heart and the ear. Her music has been called, “delightful, folksy, avant garde.”

Simon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World! He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new album “A Flight of Stories” is a gathering of tales from around the world – England, Russia, Japan, and Africa. They are stories for the whole family to enjoy.” You can also get his first published book Under The Oaken Bough or listen to his podcast Conversations with Storytellersto hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

Isabelle Hauser

A fairy tale believer since the beginning of her time, Isabelle Hauser discovered the path of storytelling training with professional storyteller Liz Weir in Northern Ireland. When Isabelle is not telling tales or playing the harp on various stages in Switzerland and abroad, you can find her talking to the swans on the shore of her hometown lake, looking for four leaf clover, or chasing rainbows in the surrounding forests.

Music by Podington Bear

Podcast, Storytelling

Stories for the Solstice (with Host Isabelle Hauser): DD Storyteller, Cooper Braun

December 18, 2020 No Comments

DD Storyteller

Hi, I’m Dawn Nelson, also known as DD Storyteller. I live in a village on the beautiful South Downs I have had a passion for stories all my life, from the epic sagas of the old worlds to the anecdote told between friends at the dinner table. As a storyteller I write and perform both interactive stories and traditional tales, as well as creating story based events and workshops for all ages. The nature that surrounds me has influenced many of my stories and I love to incorporate the outside world and ancestral wisdom into my performances for young and old.

You can also find her on Patr e on!

Cooper Braun

Cooper Braun was raised by granola eating coyotes in Boulder Colorado and grew up without a television. Lacking the traditional American form of child pacification, he found a love for storytelling from records and cassette tapes. Drawn to performance and theater from a young age, Cooper started as an actor (what do you do with a BA in Theater?) and has been working as a professional theater technician the last ten years. In a whirlwind return to the world of live storytelling, three years ago, he now co-hosts the Boulder Story Circle and performs regularly with Rachel Ann Harding as Stories with Spirit. He is a mammal.

Host – Isabelle Hauser

A fairy tale believer since the beginning of her time, Isabelle Hauser discovered the path of storytelling training with professional storyteller Liz Weir in Northern Ireland. When Isabelle is not telling tales or playing the harp on various stages in Switzerland and abroad, you can find her talking to the swans on the shore of her hometown lake, looking for four leaf clover, or chasing rainbows in the surrounding forests.

Music by Podington Bear

Podcast, Storytelling

Soup (with Host Isabelle Hauser): Norah Dooley, Simon Brooks

November 26, 2020 No Comments

Norah Dooley

Norah Dooley is a storyteller, educator, critically acclaimed children’s author and creator of StoriesLive®, a high school storytelling curriculum and story slam program. She is the co-founder of massmouth.org and the Greater Boston Story Slam series. As project director of StoriesLive® she created and implements a curriculum used to teach over 7,000 Greater Boston high school students to tell compelling first person narratives. As an adjunct faculty she teaches storytelling to undergraduates at Tufts and runs a Junior Seminar at Lesley University. In January of 2014, she returned to lecture on storytelling and language acquisition in Tokyo, Japan as part of a multi-year grant funded by the Japanese government. www.norahdooley.com

Guest Host – Simon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World! He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new album A Flight of Stories ” is a gathering of tales from around the world – England, Russia, Japan, and Africa. They are stories for the whole family to enjoy.” You can also get his first published book Under The Oaken Bough or listen to his podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

Host – Isabelle Hauser

A fairy tale believer since the beginning of her time, Isabelle Hauser discovered the path of storytelling training with professional storyteller Liz Weir in Northern Ireland. When Isabelle is not telling tales or playing the harp on various stages in Switzerland and abroad, you can find her talking to the swans on the shore of her hometown lake, looking for four leaf clover, or chasing rainbows in the surrounding forests.

Music by Podington Bear

Podcast, Storytelling

Secretive Spouses : Cathryne Fairlee, Brenda Wong Aoki

November 18, 2020 No Comments

Cathryn Fairlee

Cathryn passed away in October 2019 and will be deeply missed as a friend and a storyteller. In her own words about her storytelling from an interview last year with edex live –

I started storytelling 35 years ago. I have travelled around the world gathering epics, myths, legends, histories, and folk and fairy tales from the folk. I work with other storytellers whenever I travel; even in Chennai and Kanchipuram, I’ve worked with a few of them. I have travelled and learnt about different cultures and I’ve gone back to the US to share them with others. I like the fact that one can give people therapy and teach them how to listen and enjoy the entire experience. It’s not lecturing or commanding them to agree with you. It’s about helping them enjoy and learn something.

Brenda Wong Aoki

Brenda Wong Aoki is a storyteller, anthologized playwright, producer, artistic director, and performer. Her song/dance/dramas are drawn from her family’s 121-year history in San Francisco and the Bay Area, Kabuki legends, ghost stories, and her personal experience. Known for her agility across disciplines, she creates monodramas rooted in traditional storytelling, dance movement, and music. Her sensei is Living Treasure, Nomura Mansaku, a Kyogen master; she also studied Noh with Nomura Shiro, who is a Cultural Intangible Property. It is extremely rare for a woman (and especially an American woman) to get to study with masters like these; ironically, it is because she is an American that she was able to work with artists of this caliber. Her other teachers/coaches/mentors include stage director, choreographer, performer, and former director of Theatre of Yugen, Yuriko Doi, and longtime director and coach, Jael Weisman of Dell’Arte Players and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

Music by Podington Bear!

Podcast, Storytelling

Golden (with Host Simon Brooks): Jenni Cargill-Strong, Jane Dorfman

November 11, 2020 No Comments

Jenni Cargill Strong

Jenni Cargill-Strong is an enchanting award-winning Australian storyteller and Owner Operator of ‘The Story Tree Company’ and ‘Stories on Foot: Tales of Byron Bay and the Rainbow Region‘. Jenni has twenty-eight years experience as a professional storyteller, four award-winning story albums, seventeen years experience teaching storytelling and several years experience teaching online. She is Australian, and lives with her two nearly grown children in the seaside town of Ballina on the east coast, just south of Byron Bay. Discover testimonials and details of preschool and school shows on Jenni’s Performance page, see a gallery of images or watch videos.

Jane Dorfman

Jane Ogburn Dorfman tells tales of dutiful daughters and wise women, faithful sons and wicked kings, of magic skipping ropes and Irish heroes, of the angel Elijah and the fools of Chelm, of tricky animals and clever kids. She tells personal stories about her New Orleans childhood and her Maryland neighbors, her favorite being “Daddy’s on the Roof and He’s Got the Ax.”

She tells stories for children and adults at festivals and in libraries and in the schools. She loves stories that carry the listener away. The world has an amazing heritage of stories and she wants to pass them on.

Jane has performed at the Hans Christian Andersen Statue in Central Park. She has told at Speak! a storytelling series in Shepardstown WVa, The Stone Soup Festival in S.C., and the Rose Valley storytelling series in Media, PA. She’s shared personal stories at ‘Better Said than Done’ in VA.

She has crafted a program of lesser known Arabian Nights stories as part of a grant, Muslim Journeys, at Montgomery College, and performed them at the NSN Conference Fringe in 2016.

She has told at the Smithsonian Institution and on television Channel 32’s holiday storytelling program and on ‘Stories in Focus” local television. She is a repeat teller at the Washington Folk Festival and Voices-in-the-Glen Festival and to storytelling classes at The University of Maryland and Catholic University. She’s told stories at the Virginia Celtic Festival, Rockville Festival of the Arts, The Elva Van Winkle Memorial Storytelling Festival and others. She has also conducted a workshop on how to get started storytelling for the Maryland Library Association.

Guest Host – Simon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World! He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new book Under The Oaken Bough and listen to his new podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

Music by Podington Bear!

Podcast, Storytelling

Weep and Wail

March 21, 2020 No Comments

Brenda Wong Aoki

Brenda Wong Aoki is a storyteller, anthologized playwright, producer, artistic director, and performer. Her song/dance/dramas are drawn from her family’s 121-year history in San Francisco and the Bay Area, Kabuki legends, ghost stories, and her personal experience. Known for her agility across disciplines, she creates monodramas rooted in traditional storytelling, dance movement, and music. Her sensei is Living Treasure, Nomura Mansaku, a Kyogen master; she also studied Noh with Nomura Shiro, who is a Cultural Intangible Property. It is extremely rare for a woman (and especially an American woman) to get to study with masters like these; ironically, it is because she is an American that she was able to work with artists of this caliber. Her other teachers/coaches/mentors include stage director, choreographer, performer, and former director of Theatre of Yugen, Yuriko Doi, and longtime director and coach, Jael Weisman of Dell’Arte Players and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

Janice Del Negro

Janice M. Del Negro, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.

Del Negro has been a featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Fox Valley Folk Festival, and many others. She has conducted workshops on various aspects of storytelling and narrative for librarians, teachers, parents, storytellers, and other educators in a variety of settings, including the National Storytelling Network Annual Conference, the Illinois School Library Media conference, the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of San Diego. Her most recent recording, Fortune’s Daughters: Ghost Tales and Folktales, was released in October, 2010.

Music by Podington Bear!

Podcast, Storytelling

Well, Well, Well : Adam Booth

March 21, 2020 No Comments

Adam Booth

Adam Booth’s original stories blend traditional mountain folklore, music, and an awareness of contemporary Appalachia. He has been featured at the International Storytelling Center, the National Storytelling Festival, the Appalachian Studies Association Conference, the National Storytelling Conference, the National Academy of Medicine, and has been a Spoken Word Resident at the Banff Centre (Alberta). He is a member of the Recording Academy and recordings have received two Parents’ Choice Silver Honors and four Storytelling World Awards and Honors. He is a four-time champion of the West Virginia Liars’ Contest.

Podcast, Storytelling

Faithful and True (with Isabelle Hauser) : Jane Dorfman, Cathryne Fairlee

March 20, 2020 No Comments

Jane Dorfman

Jane Ogburn Dorfman tells tales of dutiful daughters and wise women, faithful sons and wicked kings, of magic skipping ropes and Irish heroes, of the angel Elijah and the fools of Chelm, of tricky animals and clever kids. She tells personal stories about her New Orleans childhood and her Maryland neighbors, her favorite being “Daddy’s on the Roof and He’s Got the Ax.”

She tells stories for children and adults at festivals and in libraries and in the schools. She loves stories that carry the listener away. The world has an amazing heritage of stories and she wants to pass them on.

Jane has performed at the Hans Christian Andersen Statue in Central Park. She has told at Speak! a storytelling series in Shepardstown WVa, The Stone Soup Festival in S.C., and the Rose Valley storytelling series in Media, PA. She’s shared personal stories at ‘Better Said than Done’ in VA.

She has crafted a program of lesser known Arabian Nights stories as part of a grant, Muslim Journeys, at Montgomery College, and performed them at the NSN Conference Fringe in 2016.

She has told at the Smithsonian Institution and on television Channel 32’s holiday storytelling program and on ‘Stories in Focus” local television. She is a repeat teller at the Washington Folk Festival and Voices-in-the-Glen Festival and to storytelling classes at The University of Maryland and Catholic University. She’s told stories at the Virginia Celtic Festival, Rockville Festival of the Arts, The Elva Van Winkle Memorial Storytelling Festival and others. She has also conducted a workshop on how to get started storytelling for the Maryland Library Association.

Cathryn Fairlee

Cathryn passed away in October 2019 and will be deeply missed as a friend and a storyteller. In her own words about her storytelling from an interview last year with edex live –

I started storytelling 35 years ago. I have travelled around the world gathering epics, myths, legends, histories, and folk and fairy tales from the folk. I work with other storytellers whenever I travel; even in Chennai and Kanchipuram, I’ve worked with a few of them. I have travelled and learnt about different cultures and I’ve gone back to the US to share them with others. I like the fact that one can give people therapy and teach them how to listen and enjoy the entire experience. It’s not lecturing or commanding them to agree with you. It’s about helping them enjoy and learn something.

Host – Isabelle Hauser

A fairy tale believer since the beginning of her time, Isabelle Hauser discovered the path of storytelling training with professional storyteller Liz Weir in Northern Ireland. When Isabelle is not telling tales or playing the harp on various stages in Switzerland and abroad, you can find her talking to the swans on the shore of her hometown lake, looking for four leaf clover, or chasing rainbows in the surrounding forests.

Music by Podington Bear