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Our next presenter is a lovely lady, excuse me for using such words,
but I'm honest.
It is very important, it should be very important in all our lives, to learn how to tell a story,
because people give information and entertain each other with stories.
Well, Csenge knows how to tell a story,
she is really good at telling stories, tales, in several languages, she will prove this today.
Come, Zsenge!
Csenge Zalka: The road of fairy tales
Once upon a time...
If I told you that story-tellers do exist, what would you say?
If I told you that there people who make their living by travelling from country to country, city to city, and they tell stories and tales.
There are people who know hundreds and thousands of amazing stories and they can share them with others.
What if I told you that there are people who heal, teach and build with tales,
What if I told you that the way you immagine these story tellers based on One Thousand and One Nights, the Grimm tales and other stories is all true.
Story-tellers do exist and I am one of them,
and from among the several stories of the world, I'm telling you mine.
How does one become a story-teller? This is a question I am frequently asked.
My story starts with the family,
I was born to and brought up in a family where my parents and grandparents told me a lot of tales.
One of my first story-telling memories is connected to hair washing,
when I was young, my hair was longer than now and it took almost an hour to wash it thoroughly, and while my parents washed my hair, they told me tales.
And I remember that I was deeply offended when it turned out that my grandfather is not Baron Münchhausen!
Well, he could tell tales.
So I grew up in such a family and I read a lot, the Greek mythology, the Northern Heroes, Gods and Fighting Men and other kinds of old stories,
and at the age of 14 I wanted to be a bard.
I was told that this occupation no longer exists so I became an archeologist.
I was a univeristy student when I discovered story-telling.
In every tale, there is a point when an accidental meeting or event throws the protagonist off balance, and he/she starts off.
I remember the summer day when I was sitting in front of my computer searching for a tale and I discovered a homepage,
which presented story-tellers, real, living, professional tale-tellers, and I was asthished that professional tale-tellers do exist nowadays,
so I started to search for this topic and I found a mailing list on which tale-tellers from all over the world share their thoughts with each other.
I sent them a letter saying 'Hi, I'm in Hungary, I want to be a tale-teller, I love tales for a long time,
but I didn't know that this occupation exists, and what do you do? How do you do it? Where do you live? How come?'
Next morning my inbox was full of e-mails from all over the world.
I received 50-60 e-mails during that night.
Story-tellers greeted me.
'Hi, we are glad to receive your e-mail, it's nice to hear from you, we don't know anybody from Hungary who tell tales.'
All of them very so kind and they started to teach me through the letters.
And I started to tell stories.
I sent out a few letters to museums, libraries if they need a story-teller,
some of them invited me and I started to tell stories.
And the moment came when I could start off like the protagonists of tales.
Thanks to Kellner Foundation, I received a one year scholarhip to the USA.
This was my great oppurtunity.
I learned a lot in that one year.
There is a tale, a very old Chinese story which is as follows:
Once upon a time there was an emperor who was born in the sign of the dragon and he was passionate about dragons,
He wanted that somebody should paint him a picture about the perfect dragon.
and the painters were standing in line in front of the palace, all of them tried to paint it but none of them succeeded.
Finally, a young boy came to the palace and he said he could paint the perfect dragon but he needed a year for that.
The emperor give food and dring to the boy for a year, he got a room in the palace and everthing that is needed for painting
and when the one year expired, the boy appeared in front of his majesty with an empty canvas.
The emperor lost his temper and he demanded an explanation from the boy: 'I have fed you, dressed you for a year waiting for the picture of the perfect dragon and now you come to me with an empty canvas?'
The boy said that there is still two minutes left from the one year.
'Please tell me, Your Majesty, how does the perfect dragon look like in your immagination?'
And while the emperor explained how the perfect dragon's eyes looked like, what are its colours, nails and shape,
the boy painted the picture of the perfect dragon in two minutes.
The emperor was astonished: 'Yes, this is my dragon, exactly as I thought! But please tell me why did I have to wait for a year if you painted it right now in two minutes?'
Well, Your Majesty, because it took me for a year to learn how to paint a dragon in two minutes.
This story is can be applied to what story-tellers doing in more aspects.
At first, it takes a long-long time to learn how to tell a story well, I also learned it for long and I'm still learning it.
Secondly, because the perfect tale is made in that very moment with the help of the audience when the story teller starts to speak
and he/she sees the faces, the reactions of the audience.
In this way, every tale is born again and again everytime I'm telling it.
My other very interesting experience far far away is that the community of story tellers is very friendly,
wherever I travelled there was always a story teller whose door was open for me and invited me to stay with them
and even nowadays wherever I travel there is always a story teller who welcomes and hosts me and shows me his/her country and his/her world.
And I realised in America that I can pay for all of this kindness with only one thing,
there is only one universal currency with which I can pay for all of the good I received: Hungarian tales.
I tell Hungarian folk tales in English and Spanish abroad
and the first thing they ask me is how do I translate phrases like 'Hétszünyû Kapanyányimonyók'.
Well, I don't translate them, I use the names in Hungarian in the tales,
as the audiences abroad love to hear how the Hungarian language sounds,
so I say several parts in Hungarian in the tales,
like once upon a time, it doesn't need to be translated, everybody knows how a tale begins.
It was a great experience to see how foreigners react to Hungarian tales,
for example they don't know what is kacsalábon forgó palota
and they laughed for 10 minutes when I explained that it is a palace whirling on a duck's leg.
and they didn't know that there are dragons with several heads,
they were quite astonished each time the dragons had more and more heads.
The Hungarian tales received praises.
I told not only folk tales but literature stories as well,
for examples there is a story, half literature, half fairy tale: Az istenhegyi székely leány by Mór Jókai
which I told several times in the USA and received reviews that Shakespeare would become envious of this.
It is so good to hear that foreigners enjoy hearing these stories so much and they like them.
After one year, I returned home.
There are some tales in the world's cultures where the protagonist spends a very short time in a different world travelling
and when he/she returns home he/she finds that it seems that centuries elapsed.
and there are such tales in which the protagonist spends a very long time somewhere and when she/he returns home it seems that no time has passed
and as for my experience in the USA, both of the two is true.
and when the protagonits returns home he/she has to re-fit into the world where he/she started his/her jouney from.
And I started to work as a story teller.
I was invited to a lot of places and I was very happy that museums,libraries and schools needed story-telling.
And it was also very good that when story-tellers came here they contacted me
and asked if I would guide them and show them my country and its people,
and I was always glad to welcome them as they also welcomed me warmly when I travelled.
I participated at festivals, conferences as serveral of them are organized worldwide, international story-telling festivals and conferences,
there is even a European Story-tellers Association where the only Hungarian story-teller is me,
We can learn a lot from each other.
How does a story-teller's working day look like?
Story telling requires a lot of work.
When I'm not telling stories on a performance, I have to work, although this is not always visible,
people see that I either read books or sit in front of the computer.
Making a story is a long process.
At first I find a story which I like, which captures me
in a book, on the internet ot I hear it from another story-teller,
Story-tellers usually say that a written tale is a 'frozen product' which has to be melted to become a living thing.
When I tell a story I don't study a text but the story itself which has to be recreated every time.
When I find a story that I like, I start to work on it.
I listen to music which fits to the story in atmosphere, I think it over more times,
I look for its background which is very important. Every tale has a cultural background and a good story-teller should be familiar with that.
How many variation does the tale have?
There are tales like The Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella or other famous stories which have many variations all around the world,
and if you read a lot, you will see what is the common value in these tales.
and when I feel that the tale is ready, then I have to start to tell it to an audience as the audience will help in showing what is good in the tale, how it functions and what should be included in it.
Then I start to go to preformances, tales can be told at various places.
It should be noted that the Hungarian word 'mesemondás'(tale-telling) is not exactly the same as story telling, the word used in English.
The story contains a lot more than only folk tales, myths and legends, story is everything that people tell.
Story-telling is very important because it runs in people's blood to tell stories.
When you arrive at home in the evening and you are asked how your day was, that is also story telling.
When my granparents tell me about their childhood, that is also story-telling.
There are various type of stories that can be told and it's essential that we tell them.
It is very important to tell stories. It can be noted, not only on children but on adults as well who was told stories.
During one of my performances, I was telling stories to a second grade class.
Children always love stories, they are a very good audience.
There was one boy there who was listening with starry eyes, he almost entirely hold his breath,
by the end of the story, I was really worried that he will feel ill.
Afterwards their classmaster told me that this boy heard a tale for the first time in his life then.
He was seven years old. His parents thought that tales makes us weak,
and they are a waste of time and children should engage themselves with more serious things.
I was shocked by this experience.
I think we can learn a lot from tales.
I have a story teller friend, Ulf Ärnström, who lives in Sweden, and he has a saying that story-telling is the Swiss Army knife of education.
Tales are connected to every subject, we can find tales related to everthing that we learn in school.
There are some projects in different countries of the world in which folk tales or myths are used to teach environmental protection and awareness,
or history, which is a sequence of stories.
Tales can be used for various purposes and a good story teller always finds the story which is best for that audience in that situation for that topic.
You don't have to be a professional story-teller to tell stories.
And there is a significant difference between story telling and reading,
beacuse story telling is happening face to face, live, there coudn't be any transmitters to connect them and it is unique and alive because the story teller and the audience is there at the same time.
It is such an experience which happens less and less although it would be highly needed.
Sometimes after my performances, I am thanked for reading such nice tales,
and there is no book in my hands, not even close to me (a yeah, there are some books), so there is no book in my hands.
People simply don't know the notion of story-telling.
Everbody thinks that tales can be read only which is not true.
Tales are living around us. We think about our own life in stories and that is what we remember.
We don't remember the exact date three years ago on which day it happened but we remember that very birthday party...
That is how people think.
It's very important that we preserve traditional stories as well.
I personally like telling traditional stories because I feel that they were told centuries ago.
And I like this feeling.
So story tellers work this way...
They learn a lot of stories and take them with themselves everywhere.
And as they travel, they swap stories with each other, and they collect experiences,
which is an important part of a story teller's work and that of travel because the collected experiences add a surplus to stories and tales,
the tales become more colourful and enjoyable,
I can also identify more with a tale if I have visited its location,
if I have travelled to the country where the story takes place, if I know the culture where it came from.
That is how story-telling and travelling is connected.
So I think my main point is that story tellers do exist.
I am usually asked a very important question of which I haven't talked about in this talk so far,
Is it possible to make one's living of story telling?
My question is, however, is it possible to live without it?
Thank you very much.
I'm really ashamed to be so stereotyped but that was also my first question when we first met.
Most people ask this first.
Yes, but we didn't receive a proper answer but nevermind, I don't ask it again.
I would like to ask just one question: The good story is the one that we think the audience will react to and answers a question which is important for the audience?
Yes.
All right, thank you.
Usually, the case is that I go to a performance and they give me a topic, e.g. advent, so I have to tell advent tales and stories,
I prepare with five stories and I step up the stage, look at the audience and I say no, and I start to tell a different story because I think they will like it. That's how it is.
Related to the Chinese tale, it came to my mind that people in Hungary usually find it hard to understand why drugs are so expensive.
You buy a box of drug which contains let's say twelve pills and you ask why have I paid 30 euros for this when it's obvious that this little pill couldn't be more expensive than a euro cent?
It is a real question, isn't it?
And the answer is, yes, the second pill costed one euro cent but the first one costed one billion.
That story gaves a fine answer to this question so I steal it if it is not a problem for you.
Just do it.
Csenge, thank you very much.