Sennockian Stories: An Eight Week Storytelling Workshop

Multiple Olivier Award winner Phelim McDermott (My Neighbour Totoro, Tao of Glass, Satyagraha) will explore with you personal stories, local stories, myths, forgotten histories and entirely new tales that emerge in the moment. Through improvisation, conversation, games and creative exercises, you’ll learn to notice the stories already present in your life and the places you live it…

An invitation from Improbable’s Co- Artistic Director, Phelim McDermott

Stories are one of the most powerful ways we make sense of ourselves, each other and the places we live. They help us remember, imagine, connect and dream. Some stories are ancient, some are deeply personal, and some only come into being when people gather to play together.

Sennockian/Senokian Stories is an eight-week workshop that explores storytelling through improvisation, play and listening. Drawing on the work of Keith Johnstone, Matthew Dicks’ Storyworthy, and Arnold Mindell’s Process Work, we’ll discover that stories are not only invented—they are remembered, uncovered, caught like minnows in a river and shared.

Together we’ll explore personal stories, local stories, myths, forgotten histories and entirely new stories that emerge in the moment from place. We’ll enjoy the freedom of spontaneous storytelling while also learning the craft of narrative: how stories are shaped, how they surprise us, and how the simplest moment can be the seed for a compelling tale.

The workshop itself becomes a way of catching stories. Through improvisation, conversation, games and creative exercises, we’ll learn to notice the stories already present in our lives, our relationships and our surroundings. Inspired by Mindell’s idea that with the right attention the story that is already emerging can reveal itself. We will practice the arts of paying attention to what story wants to be told.

We’ll also venture beyond the workshop room. Through walkshops and mini vision quests, we’ll use the local landscape as a creative partner, discovering how nature, streets, buildings and forgotten corners can awaken memory, myth and imagination. We’ll gather fragments, overheard conversations, dreams, local histories and chance encounters, allowing place itself to become part of the storytelling process.

We’ll move between the intimate and the epic: from the precise detail of a remembered moment to the great patterns of myth; from stories rooted in everyday life to stories that could only exist in dreams. Along the way we’ll develop confidence, deepen our listening, and discover that storytelling is not simply an individual skill but a shared human art.

Whether you’re an experienced performer, writer or storyteller, or someone who simply loves stories and is curious to explore your own imagination, you’re warmly invited to join us. Together we’ll create a living culture of stories rooted in people, place and possibility.