Shonaleigh - Storyteller

April 2008
Just sitting here compiling stories for the book/ website (on the Touchwood Project). I’m feeling very guilty that I haven’t written this sooner.  Last year was a bit of a blur….. waiting for a major operation and having my car totaled by a drunk driver in December.  However, today the sun is shining, my scars are healing and I have a new car.  While sorting the stories to go with Graham’s ace illustrations, I realized just how good they are and remembered how much fun I had working with the students !

2 May 2008 – What where you before?
Working on Ferney Lee’s story about Fergus/Fungus the Tramp and the Alien Lights.  On the surface it seemed just a simple story about children having an adventure and helping an alien, when they should be in bed! At least that’s how I remembered it.  But combining it with Graham’s pictures and inserting the phrases that the students chose, I’m stuck by the depth of it.  It has some great ideas and questions about people and the circumstances that shape them. The joy and the sadness that can cause someone to loose their memories and forget who or what they were.  How we all make assumptions about someone from the way they look or act. I think they should be very proud of this story!

3 May 2008 – Pictures from the past
I was talking to my Mum today (I do that sometimes I’m 37 and she still tells me to put my coat on before I go out ) she was a Nurse so she’s used to bossing people about I guess.  Anyway I was talking to her about the Ferney Lee story and she told me a story from real life.  She said when she was a Matron (That’s the really scary bossy Nurse), if she had elderly patients in her ward she would make the relatives bring in a photo of when they had been young.  That was put up on the locker next to the bed.   It was for two reasons a) it was nice for the patient and b) it was to make sure that the nurses and doctors NEVER FORGOT that this fragile, confused person had had a life and they were to be treated as such.  It reminded me of Fungus!

4 May 2008 – PODS RULE!
Finished story and pics for Ferney Lee.  Just listened to the TodPod of their poems… brilliant…. Love the one about the apple!

5 May 2008 – Dyslexia is too hard to spell !
My favorite dyslexic joke to date is ……. Dyslexics of the world Untie !
Send me some if you have any.
When I start a story I always find it a bit daunting.  Blank pages and a bundle of ideas from the students ….. it’s the beginnings that are the hardest part.  Being dyslexic Pen and Paper make me slightly nervous (writing this blog makes me nervous, I’m sure the grammar and spelling are awful). A blank page sends my mind into freefall.  So I have developed my own way of “drafting a story”.  I take all the students ideas (if I’m working with a school) plus my own thoughts and I get pictures in my head for each idea.  I decide how the story will begin and how it will end and then I pace round my garden muttering, telling myself the story, making changes thinking about how to describe the word pictures.  When I’m finished the squirrels look worried and the cat has usually vanished and the birds couldn’t care less, but I have my story.  Then I record it and can transcribe straight from that.  So I never have to worry about the blank page because the story is already there….. well most of the time…. Sometimes I have to ask the cat for suggestions.

6 May 2008 –Flat Pack Is Bad For Your Health
Sorting story and graphics for St Josephs while trying to put up Argos flat-pack.    I never knew I could express anger, pain, desperation, frustration and loss of all hope, with such a colourful and varied dialogue!!!

	Shonaleigh comes from a Dutch Jewish family with a strongly ingrained tradition of storytelling. In 1998 she formed Tashbain, a group of young musicians performing Jewish Klezma music and traditional folktales, transforming them into a vibrant new artform.
	As a performer and workshop leader and feels strongly that stories can promote and enhance most topics. More recently, she has also used workshop situations to discuss issues of cultural integration and alienation (working with a group of Kurd refugees in Leicester) and issues associated with the Foot and Mouth crisis (working with Cumbrian farmers in 2001). .

"Shonaleigh is great but talks too much" Shonaleigh's Mum
"A witty, literate and engaging storyteller." The South Bank
"This performance breathed new life into my enthusiasm for storytelling…superb." Anthony Nanson, Storylines
" Shonaleigh is a great interpretative artist of her own culture." Derek Reid, Jewish Folklorist
"Shonaleigh has a quick and ready tongue attached to a quick and ready mind. On stage she has that rare mixture of confidence and physical ease." Ben Haggarty Company of Storytellers
"Shonaleigh is in a class of her own!" Mike Rust, Director, Festival at the Edge
"I have never seen the children sit so still...they were spellbound." Rosemary Telfer, Sheffield Libraries

Read more about SHONALEIGH at www.shonaleigh.co.uk