teller depicts a sad, angry or frightened character —

teller depicts a sad, angry or frightened character — it is simply by trusting the material and the truth it acquires in being told.

One classic form of storytelling involves not only a speaker but a mover, an actor who provides the movements to illustrate the teller’s yam. Working in pairs, the workshop members tried through movement' alone to depict subtle ideas ranging from “Look at those little tiny things crawling all over the floor” to “The little boy was looking for his voice in a drop of water.” As the partners switched roles from speaker to mover, it became dear thafe the story rested not with either actor individually, but in the space between them.

With the encouragement and guidance of a musician from Ms. Poitman’s theatre company, the Golden Key Performance Group, and with the assistance of Trapezoid's Paul Reisler, the workshop partidpants had the chance to ex; periment> freely with a variety of tra"ditional instruments .— harp, dulcimer, pipes, drums, bells, maracas — to see the effects that can be created in accompanying a storyteller and actor as they weave their tale. Huge swaths of brightly colored silk were also provided, to be put to whatever creative uses the members found. When the day’s ex, plorations culminated in the participants’ choosing partners and creating their own depictions of tales, the fabrics worked themselves into the afternoon’s stories as gowns, a stone wall, Rapunzel’s hair, a layer of crackling ice, a donkey’s skin and the bedsheets of a dying woman.

As the storytelling tradition has its roots in the travelling bard who went from village to village sharing his tales, Ms. Portman and the members of the Golden Key, who tour with multi-media performances of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, are committed to working with as few sets and props as possible. The portability and versatility of fabric have made it