What of the storyteller who stands before a live audience, to entrance, to entertain, to warn, to engage? What can we learn from the most ancient form of story making? Today we talk with acclaimed storyteller–and former psychotherapist–Hari Meyers about the art, archetypes and activism of the storyteller. In his latest project, Hari is resurrecting the reference for the goddess Isis away from the terrorist organization. We dig into archetypal understandings of character and mythical structure, the ways to tell psychological propaganda from a particular time versus deeper internal question in a story, and the necessity of exhausting a character’s flaws as you move toward empathy. The thrill of live theater, the amplification provided by a large audience, the purposes of story and even the failings of Freud as storyteller come under our examination in this far ranging conversation that gets to the ur-art under all story making: live myth telling.

Links Discussed:


From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler


Oedipus in Colonus


The Epic Gilgamesh


The Iliad and the Odyssey


The Great Gatsby


The First Bad Man


The 12 Labors of Hercules


Science of the Magical


The Mahabharata


Of Isis and Osiris

Joseph Campbell

King David and the story of David and Goliath

Medea the play 

Oedipus by Sophocles

Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama/ The Gospel at Colonus 

Johan Sebastian Bach

Walt Whitman

Tony Zhou video essays

 

Hari Meyers

Hari Meyers

 

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.