Storytelling as a Fundamental Form of Acting

Acting is a process of pretending to be someone whom the actor is not. Whereas acting is often considered to be a specialized skill of trained professionals, a simple and perhaps universal form of acting occurs during oral storytelling, in which the storyteller acts out the characters of the story during the moments of dialogue and self-reflection. To examine this skill experimentally, we had both trained actors and novices read 4 fairy tales …