My Love Affair with Stories
I’ve always loved stories, real or fiction. As a child, I would read quaint fairy tales and novels about far away places. But I loved listening to my mother and aunts tell family stories even more. Strangely, the only folktale that I recall anyone ever telling me was Momotarosan. On maybe just two or three occasions just before my bedtime, I sat next to my father, who lay down on his resting mat in his bedroom, and listened to him bring to life that famous Japanese tale about a boy being born from a peach and his adventures fighting the onis with the help of his trusted friends: the dog, the monkey and the bird.
Perhaps it was my father’s influence that I began practising the art of storytelling. Perhaps it was a natural progression from all the solo theatrical performances that I had been doing previously. I attended a storytelling course in 2003 and have never looked back since. Together with the gorgeous Kamini Ramachandran, whom I met at this course, we formed MoonShadow Stories in November 2004 and have been delighting adults and children with stories at The Substation and other community venues since 2005.
In addition, I have been telling stories in my own right and under the umbrella of other groups. During the fall of 2007, I had the pleasure of telling stories for the first time beyond Singapore, thrilling both children and adults in upstate New York and New Orleans. In 2010, I participated in the Under the Banyan Tree: Darwin Storytelling Festival as part of the Darwin Festival (12 – 15 Aug 2010), telling Southeast Asian tales for Australian family audiences. To make my stories come alive, I use all of my vocal and physical theatre training. I choose my storytelling repertoire carefully, adapting folktales with strong characters or creating original tales with a twist. Where possible, I invest my quirky brand of humour, especially in my stories for adults, to delight and encourage my audience to appreciate a different perspective on life.
I have been conducting storytelling workshops as well, the best-received being Beyond Storytelling 101, an intermediate level course that I have been organising since 2008. If you wish to improve your storytelling skills, I look forward to sharing with you the finer arts of bringing a story alive.
Please click the following to download:
My storytelling resume
My storytelling repertoire