Story telling in drama
In her remark, UNESCO’s Rosemary Nwangui stated that April 23rd is a day set aside by UNESCO in order to pay “world-wide tribute to books and authors, and to encourage the habit of reading.” Storytelling, Robinso Crusoe’s kiddies favourite, The Adventures of Robin Hood was English Language teacher, Laura Elorriaga of the Combining Learning, Acting […]
In her remark, UNESCO’s Rosemary Nwangui stated that April 23rd is a day set aside by UNESCO in order to pay “world-wide tribute to books and authors, and to encourage the habit of reading.”
Storytelling, Robinso Crusoe’s kiddies favourite, The Adventures of Robin Hood was English Language teacher, Laura Elorriaga of the Combining Learning, Acting & Play (CLAP) group, Spain. Building up her cast by randomly picking from her audience, Elorriaga brought to life through her facial expressions, voice tones, gestures and words a new appreciation of Hood’s legendary style of taking from the rich to give to the poor as children repeated after her, “I collect from the rich, and give to the poor.”
The Embassy’s Cultural attaché, Eva Barta explained that the event organised in collaboration with RAW was staged this early because April 23, the original day set aside to mark World Book and Copyright, falls at Easter time. She further explained that the storytelling tradition in drama form is one that has grown with the Spanish oral traditions and is still well used in Spain as an effective teaching method.
According to Wikipedia, the connection between 23 April and books was first made in 1923 by booksellers in Spain as a way to honour the author Miguel de Cervantes who died on that day. “This became a part of the celebrations of the Saint George’s Day (also 23 April) in Catalonia, where it has been traditional, since the medieval era, for men to give roses to their lovers and since 1925, for the woman to give a book in exchange. Half the yearly sales of books in Catalonia occur during this time with over 400,000 sold and exchanged for over four million roses.”
The online encyclopedia adds that, “In 1995, UNESCO decided that the World Book and Copyright Day would be celebrated on this date because of the Catalonian festival and because the date is also the anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, the death of Miguel de Cervantes, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejía Vallejo and Halldór Laxness.
“Although 23 April is often stated as the anniversary of the deaths of both Shakespeare and Cervantes, this is not strictly correct. Cervantes died on 23 April according to the Gregorian calendar; however, at this time England still used the Julian calendar. Whilst Shakespeare died on 23 April by the Julian calendar in use in his own country at the time, actually he died ten days after Cervantes, because of the discrepancy between the two date systems. The apparent correspondence of the two dates was a fortunate coincidence for UNESCO.”