Os contadores de histórias na contemporaneidade: da prática à teoria, em busca de princípios e fundamentos

This research starts from the following question: as the storyteller always existed, why do people keep on looking for courses on storytelling, assuming that they cannot ‘tell a story’? When structuring my personal 20-year experience of giving out courses, workshops and storytelling for different audiences I reached the principles and basis that elucidate the practices of a storyteller. Aiming at contributing to the broadening of the art of telling stories, reaching more storytellers and audiences, the context and subject of the research were defined as principles, within the relations between culture, education and art, and in the definition of the storyteller, described in the two first chapters. The other chapters clear out the basis resulting from the principles elected for the study, resulting from the reflections over the practices already carried out. Therefore, the presence of the storyteller involves the following basis: memory, imagination, emotion and spontaneity that act together on the meaning of the story during the act of the telling. The selection and preparation of the story are pointed out as bases that define themselves through the knowledge and autonomy about the assumed definitions and alternatives. And, at last, the bases of the self-knowledge in order to meet the needs for the use of body language for each text. The survey on these principles and bases may orient the constitution of other storytellers without, nevertheless, offering a ready model that does not take into account the individualities and objectives of each storyteller.