Harvey Heilbrun's Page

In searching out new story material for my performances I came across a great collection of stories. The stories are in the book Le cercle des menteurs: Contes philosophiques du monde entire by Jean-Claude Carriére. My difficulty as you can see is that the book is written in French. The English translation of the title is: The Circle of Liars: Philosophical tales from the entire world. There is also a Spanish translation of the book. Of course I neither read nor speak either language.

It is a w… Continue

This is an extended story I wrote based on a translated story from the book:

Le Cercle Des Menteurs Contes Philosophi (The Circle of Liars, philosophical tales from around the world) by Jean Claude Carriére

Once upon a time there was a beautiful city on the outskirts of a great forest. In the city lived an extremely rich man and an extremely poor man. Each had a son; by chance, the two young men had been born on the same day in the same year.

If I told you that both of those boys grew up in t… Continue

I was preparing to perform at an elementary school the other day when I noticed in my equipment bag an old blank journal that someone had given me on my retirement from teaching. Since the PTA organizer was there with me and was planning on staying through my performance I asked her if she wouldn’t mind writing in the book, her impressions of my performance. I also asked the Physical Education teacher who’s gym I was borrowing to do the same. Both gladly said that they would.

My performances (I… Continue

I've either seen or heard a number of storytellers use a Call and Response technique to keep the audience focused on tales that you are telling. Joe Bruchac and some Native American storytellers, use Ho and Hey. I heard Baba the Storyteller use what I assume is and African version of that. Johnny Moses, uses one also as does Eth-No-Tech. I'm sure there are many more of you out there.

I like the idea of incorporating a Call...Response in some of my storytelling, but am concerned about treading o… Continue

This is a blog entry that I wrote on my Blog: www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog, back in November of 2007, following a Tellabration performance near where I live. Debbie and I have not decided what to tell this year yet, but we are leaning towards doing another tandem story. Following the writing of that entry, I did purchase a computer that has a webcam built-in. To my knowledge she hasn't.

Telling stories on my own requires a lot of work. I have to find the story I like, decide for what audie… Continue