A GROUP OF 23 seven to twelve-year-olds and six parents are spellbound as they watch storyteller Cassandra Wye, resplendent in a flamboyant green silk jump-suit, kick off her substantial walking boots and struggle and stretch as she mimics climbing a mountain that reaches to Heaven.
Her impish enthusiasm is infectious and soon both children and adults join in the fun, shouting out suggestions on how to thwart the hungry monster that lives there and acting out small sections of the Chinese folk tale during a short stay in Hong Kong as a guest of the British Council, part of a scheduled three-month tour of Asia.
Her career path is as unconventional as her animated performance. 'I was sitting in a cafe one day with a friend who noticed a leaflet advertising a course for learning to be a flying trapeze artist. She knew my fear of heights but still encouraged me. I was terrible and kept falling off.'
Her 'glorious' failure and her ability to enjoy it led her to train as a circus clown. 'You don't need a red nose to entertain people. My family had always told stories and my initial training as a research psychologist gave me a theoretical basis and an understanding that stories can improve things for people as well as be fabulous fun.'
She loves what she does and is passionate about the value of telling stories using more than just words. 'I started teaching stories to a group of hearing and deaf adults. This creative combination of verbal and non-verbal techniques that I now use came from them. They devised a way of telling stories that involved signs, mime, movement, gestures and symbols that grew from their need and desire to communicate.'
Real learning was taking place and people with learning difficulties might benefit most. 'Once again I was sitting in a cafe and in came a group of students with learning difficulties on a break from a drama course. I told them a story. They loved it and the tutor immediately invited me to work for the college.'
Her work soon confirmed that storytelling was a more lateral way of teaching language. 'People who have difficulty communicating need self-belief. They need to appreciate that they can have their own voice and have a right to be heard. I teach that using one's whole body and all the senses is an extremely creative means of self-expression and an enormously powerful way of creating, structuring and understanding the structures and purpose of language.'
