An online evening course over 5 weeks.
Walking the Wildwoods is a three-year part-time training course with tradition bearer Shonaleigh where students learn the Midrash – a set of storytelling techniques and tools handed down to Shonaleigh by her grandmother that allows story-lovers at all levels of experience to engage deeply with narrative.
At the heart of the course is learning how narrative and story work. In the same way a silversmith must learn the nature of silver and a carpenter must learn the nature of wood, a storyteller must learn the nature of stories – how do they work and how can we work with them?
This is an online introduction to the three-year course, giving you a glimpse into some of the exercises, approaches and relationships with story that are built through this brilliant approach to narrative.
Although this is no replacement for face-to-face learning, this course will introduce you to the nature of story and, hopefully, inspire you to learn with Shonaleigh in the future.
Course overview:
- Week 1: Meet the Midrash
This week you will be introduced to the Midrash – the method Drut’sylas used to understand the nature of the story they are working with – and begin to learn the nature of the mysterious stuff-we-call-story. We will explore story through Midrash 1, looking at story arc and plot.
- Week 2: Inhabiting the senses
This session will give you some tools to open up to the world of story through the five senses. We will work into a story in this way and begin to develop a fuller, multi-dimensional relationship to a narrative.
- Week 3: All the Ps
This session looks at the four Ps – pitch, pace, plot and pause – and using techniques from Midrash 4, allows us to hone our language skills in service of the story we are telling.
- Week 4: Putting it all together
The final week of the course will be about mixing it up and letting it go. We will combine the ingredients we have collected and see what story magic we can cook up after our time together.
- Week 5: Optional plenary
This week is optional for those who would like to have a bit of a recap and space for questions or queries.
Strolling by the Wildwoods is priced at £125 for the month. Lessons are 7.30pm – 9.30pm BST (Zoom room open from 7.00 for catch-up and questions), every Monday evening from the 28th March to the 25th April 2022.
SOLD OUT. If you have already been emailed a booking link but haven’t booked yet, this does not apply to you.