Telling Stories in Bangalore

Storytellers are pursuing the art form not just in terms of performance, but also experimenting with it as a tool for education. Three storytellers speak of their experiences with the art form.

Arthi Anand

Author of children’s books such as Ranganna and Have you seen this? Arthi takes time out of her corporate job to pursue her love for storytelling.

“When I was telling my children stories, I noticed that rather than reading to them, narrating stories held their attention.”

She went onto conduct many storytelling sessions, evolving a style of her own and has since been flooded with requests. “My style is more interactive. I am fairly good at craft and so create art work for the stories I tell. I also sing.”

Her Facebook page, Arts Tales with Arthi Anand has quite a fan following. “I conduct at least two events that are open to the public and one for a volunteer event at Kidwai Oncology unit and for the Ejipura slum kids.” Arthi’s storytelling sessions are wide-ranging, from The Story Feast series, in which she spins stories around food for children to Back to School Parade events. “For Pratham Books, I am doing the Pratham Books Story Express, where I tell stories from any Pratham book and the story express travels through India.”

Vikram Sridhar

A theatre personality, a storyteller and passionate about conservation, Vikram Sridhar’s varied passions inform his storytelling. 

Vikram initiated Around the Story Tree that uses storytelling to convey the importance of conservation and celebrates traditional human-to- human interaction. “Stories often depict animals in a particular, stereotyped way. For example, foxes are sly and snakes are dangerous. I want to correct these assumptions in my stories.” Moving away from the world of gadgets, which consumes much of our modern lives, Vikram wears handloom clothes and serves traditional food, during his storytelling sessions.

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Image Source : Arthi Anand