[Bards] Situations That Ruin Bardic Circles

[Esther]

Like I said, it's about skill. It's also about interest, courtesy, and knowing your audience, matching the piece to the situation and mood of the crowd.
   
  So, it's down to good bards and bad bards, and at the end of the day -- how do you deal with that? Any length of story badly told is deadly, as deadly as me trying to sing would be.
   
  And I agree with you, someone reading badly is a killer. BUT, reading aloud is as period a  bardic skill as any, and when done by someone who is skilled at it, and who has practiced, is damned entertaining.
   
  Bad bards and an uninterested audience will kill any bardic circle, no matter HOW well organized. It's really, really hard to pick up an audience who has just endured a bad performance, and almost impossible to do so after two in a row. So unless you have a known show-starter up your sleeve....
   
  Yeah, I have a headache, I am being unduly pessimistic and old arthritis auntie misery by the fire.
   
  Esther
  

Gerald Norris <jerryn at houston.rr.com> wrote:
      See my reply before your reply, Esther.
   
  It oft depends upon the skill of the teller or poet.  Finnagen had us enthralled with his story of the guardian of the keep.  There is a merchant who does a wonderfully entertaining job of telling of a time he taught latin to foreign troops.  Both of these were at least ten minutes long.  Thomas and Cedric's piece was almost a half hour, but it flew by due to the setting and the weather, which really made you feel as if you were in a long hut, and the skald spoke with the tongue of the elders.
   
  Longer pieces are period, but if their recited as one would hear from a grade-schooler with Mary Had a Little Lamb, it's painful to watch.  Master Kief has no trouble with keeping an audience for a long story, but he is masterful in his telling of a tale, and his use of voice and words to draw his audience in.  I have seen the opposite, where someone drags a book and reads by halting firelight for fifteen minutes, and ready to go another fifteen to the end of the pages if not for a quick interjection.  These I would avoid at all cost, and have only occasionally had to interrupt one fellow and request that he finish his tale on the next round.  He wasn't happy, and left, but the energy level of the group was quick to rise back to a level of cameradery rather than comisseration.
   
    In service to the dream with a song in my heart, I am,
HL Gerald of Leesville
A bard of Stargate 


    
---------------------------------
  From: bards-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org [mailto:bards-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Esther
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:30 PM
To: Ansteorran Bardic list
Subject: Re: [Bards] Situations That Ruin Bardic Circles


  
    You know, I'm a story teller, not a singer or a musician. Most of my stories run over ten minutes. 
   
  So I guess bardic circles are out for me. See you at the Hafla!
   
  Might I suggest, it's not the length of the story, it's the skill of the story teller. Perhaps short pieces are better for bardic circles, but I ask you, when are the long pieces "acceptable"? The long pieces are more period for most of us, after all. A bard/skald/minstrel was supposed to be able to hold the attention of his audience for longer than ten minutes, a feat stand-up comics and story tellers seem to have no problem with in the modern world.
   
  Well, what the heck. To each their own, better to have short pieces and a popular bardic than a dead bardic. They can always go to the movies to see Beowulf.
   
  Esther
   
  
> 2. Problem: Stories that are 20+ minutes long!!!! Reason: Hogging airtime.
> Solution: If you have a 20 minute story, serialize it into 10-minute
> increments and do one increment per turn. Circle leader must state a
> 10-minute (or some other agreed-upon time) rule up front, and periodically
> thereafter. 
> 
anything over 10 minutes will kill an audience. If they don't get up 
now, they likley just wont even come back next time.

    
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