Mariella Bertelli
Curator
Stories… I love stories. Story-making and storytelling have been with us since the beginning of time. Curating this event has been for me a way to honour this human tradition, this human compulsion, this human need. Stories help us to connect, to understand and to teach. Sometimes we learn to forgive through a story or to accept ourselves, finding another way to move forward and transform and change our own story.
Many of our earliest stories that have come to us would have been forgotten if they had not been written down. Often in the writing, the scribes changed the story a little, to make it more authentic, in their own voices. And so it went. Then the stories were read and found again and sometimes retold. Listeners heard the stories and those that were loved best were told again…and again. Then they were printed again, reinterpreted, in a slightly different voice. It is this continuum that I want to honour, this centuries-long tradition that connects us to the beginning of our human time.
On Sunday, May 8, as part of the Toronto International Storytelling Festival, “words take flight.”
We will dive deep into the world of stories by listening to words — stories — told and printed and then told again. We will listen to storytellers who are also authors, making their books come alive; or authors/storytellers, their stories told by other storytellers. We will listen to stories saved in books centuries ago, like Kalila wa Dimna, in the voice of a contemporary storyteller. We will hear a story created by an author in a wordless picture book and interpreted by a storyteller. We will also hear stories from a children’s book about a person who really lived, and the stories she told as voiced by another storyteller. Finally, listen to two noted authors/ storytellers as they engage in conversation about the power of wordplay, creativity and imagination.
We hope that you will come and listen, your mind clear, your heart open like a child, for this event is meant for everyone, most especially children and their families.
Biography
Mariella Bertelli is a Toronto-based storyteller who believes in the power of stories to transform and inspire. She knows that stories are like links in a chain that connect us together, in the present but also to the past.
Over the years, she has developed stories from her background and life experience, including her own newcomer’s experience from her arrival in Canada as a teenager.
A versatile teller with a wide repertoire of folk, fairy and literary tales, Mariella adapts her craft to suit young and older audiences, sometimes using other arts, like Kamishibai, Bankelsang (Cantastorie style storytelling), Crankie, puppets and Toy Theatre. Her rhymes and tales enchant little ones, while her family sagas of migration and endurance captivate older children, teens and adults.
Mariella is also an advocate for children and young people’s rights to stories, literacy and information. For years she has strongly supported the creation of the IBBY children’s library on the island of Lampedusa. Through her work as a member of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People), she has developed and delivered training programs on reading with newcomers and refugees in Rome, and has participated in the IBBY Canada Reading & Young Refugees Program in Toronto. A former children’s librarian with a deep knowledge of children’s literature, she has just finished serving her second turn as a jury member for the prestigious IBBY International Hans Christian Andersen Children’s Literature Award, also known as the Little Nobel Prize.
Mariella has been storytelling at national and international festivals, events and conferences in Canada, the U.S., South Africa, England, Belgium and Italy. She has taught storytelling courses and has presented a variety of workshops to adults, children and families. She has been a speaker on storytelling and is active in the international storytelling community.
Mariella continues to be fascinated by the world of stories, both written and told. She loves to bring different voices together, weaving threads of stories from a variety of cultures. She has directed and performed in storytelling ensemble shows for the past six years for the Toronto International Storytelling Festival and for Storytellers of Canada – Conteurs du Canada.