Children and adults sitting under a banyan tree, listening to timeless classics and folktales were the most common sight in villages. Kathai Kalatta, a collective started by Jeeva Raghunath, Kanchana Manavalan and Kausalya Padmanabhan, is planning to replicate something similar with an international storytelling festival called Under the Aalamaram.
The event into its fifth year now features storytellers from across the globe. Renowned storytellers like Diane Ferlatte (US), Ariyo Zidni (Indonesia), Georgiana Elena Popan (Romania), Roger Jenkins (Singapore), Jackie Kerin (Australia) and Lindy Mitchell Nilsson (Australia) will be performing today at the Music Academy.
Roger Jenkins will be telling a story called Cake of Happiness. “It’ll be a very interactive story where the audience would get to suggest some ingredients. The series of events happening in the story can be related to our life events. I always speak from the bottom of my heart and I think that’s what the present-day audience enjoy as well.”
Ariyo Zidni loves to tell traditional Indonesian folktales and his storytelling style includes communicating with the audience and improvising according to their suggestions. “We can increase the audience’s attention span and we get to hear their perspective to the stories as well. There might be better storytellers among the audience. Storytelling. The impact of stories on young ones is huge and storytelling is one of the effective ways of teaching and it helps people to relate to one another.,” he chuckles.
