Entertaining Pair have a Story to Tell

GWYNETH HYNDMAN/Fairfax NZ

Storytellers Bill Harley and Geraldine Buckley at the Cheeky Llama Cafe for the Celebrating Story evening.

 

'We make sense of the world through our stories," Grammy Award- winning singer-songwriter Bill Harley told a small crowd on the Meet the Storytellers event on Wednesday night, as he picked up a borrowed guitar and began to play.
In the event held at the Cheeky Llama Cafe at Queens Park, Harley offered more wisdom on the art of telling a good yarn and backed it up with a few touching tales of his own, as his fingers glided over the strings, all the while explaining "a story is different from a lecture in that a person enters into it the way that they choose to".
The American performer and author followed this up with stories about running the first few kilometres of a marathon and added a touching story about a king in search of happiness.
His performance came after the humorous tales of convent girl- turned men's prison chaplain Geraldine Buckley, who described her life from Britain to the largest men's prison in Maryland, in the United States, as a series of "very odd adventures".
Warm and charming, Buckley had the crowd laughing with her descriptions of some of the inmate's reaction to her spoken work, poetry, on the first night she performed for them, describing the experience as just one example of "the incredible power of creativity" to heal and unite.
"The shortest way between two hearts is a story." The pair will be holding a storytelling concert for adults at the Repertory House tonight at 7.30 (tickets $18/$12) and a family concert tomorrow at 11am at the Invercargill Children's Public Library (free).