Storytelling Tip #6

Hmm, let's see, what was I telling the high school kids in the workshop this morning?

Be aware when you are creating physical noise in your performances.

I heard Heather Forest use the term "physical noise" in one of the very first storytelling workshops I ever went to. At the time, I belonged to a small storytelling guild. One of the storytellers in the guild did a kind of dance step when he told, not as a part of the story. It was his nervous tic. It was physical noise. Some storytellers, often teachers or professors, pace as they tell. That's a kind of physical noise. When I work with kids, they sometimes play with their buttons or hair while they're telling. It has nothing at all to do with their stories. I've seen storytellers and actors make a sort of pawing or grabbing gesture, usually because they don't know that they can let their arms relax. Physical noise.

I'm not exempt from this advice: I sometimes find myself pushing my sleeves up or down while telling a story--I speak sternly to myself about it (there are other annoying tics I have, but I'd rather not draw attention to them, ahem).

When I listen to a story, I get distracted by these extraneous movements.

About pacing back and forth: when I watch stand-up comics on TV, I notice this habit. I find it unnecessary. The audience can see the comic perfectly well, and the comic can easily just turn his or her head to take in the room (though stage lights make it almost impossible to see the audience, more on that later). Drives me crackers.

Do any of you have an opinion about this?