Cynthia Changaris

Cynthia Changaris is an award winning storyteller, and has been telling stories to children and adults for the past 18 years. She has performed at such National Sites as the Nebraska Festival and the New Mexico Festival. She has taught storytelling at Nebraska University, at the National Storytelling Conference and the Kentucky Center of Arts, to name a just few examples of her work. She uses storytelling, music and instruments, including the guitar, the Native American flute and the dulcimer. She actively tells folk tales, personal tales and fairy tales and draws the audience in. People leave her performances feeling refreshed, entranced and thoroughly connected to the stories they have heard. She performs for all ages and stages of people and has a wide repertoire.

Cynthia is a skilled teacher, using "ah ha" methods to help students of story to delve into the work and learn from doing. She plans workshops and individualizes the workshops she leads by working with those who are hiring her. She leads them through the process to establish firm goals for the learning and to establish firm techniques for the teaching. She has led workshops for people ages 4 years old to adulthood, and has led family workshops. Her adaptable, active, hands-on techniques involve and excite her students as they participate in the learning process. She uses auditory, visual, kinesthetic and auditory techniques to teach and work with story.

Possibilities of residencies:

1. Story learning and Storytelling: Students are immersed in learning to choose and tell a story from the folktale genre. Various techniques are used to help students learn and present story. Final process is that students tell stories.
    
2. Personal Memoir Development. Students are given a process of work to help them discover, develop and present their stories from their lives or from the lives of their families.
    
3. Write a folktale. Students are presented with a variety of folktales and through work are taught to write a version of that folk tale.
    
4. Tell a story, Write a story, Act a story: a work experience for kindergarten and four year old children. Children tell a personal tale, have the teller write that tale down, have the teller provide the opening for the child to direct the acting out of their own story.