Members of Tellers without Borders e.V.
Naceur-Charles Aceval
is a very special storyteller. Born in a nomadic tent in Algeria and growing up there during the Algerian War, he has now lived in Germany for more than 30 years. He is at home in three cultures, Algerian, French and German. His warm voice builds a bridge from the Maghreb to Germany and France. His diverse storytelling – in German, French and the Arabic dialect of his homeland– has his own very particular charm and humour. In 2015 in Palestine, together with Micaela Sauber, Roana Falkenberg and Helga Petri, he told stories in schools, cultural institutes and at the Goethe Institute. He is a member of Tellers without Border.
Silvia Angel
is a passionate teller of stories that inspire, encourage and bring positive impulses to her listeners. She tells in small theatres, conferences, festivals, museums and in public spaces. She also passes on her experience in interactive and practical workshops and seminars, e.g. for social work students at the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Silvia Angel trained as a storyteller in 2011-12 at the International School of Storytelling in England. Later she completed further training in storytelling in business at the University of the Media in Stuttgart.
Silvia Angel has been with Tellers without Borders since 2017. In 2019 she organized a charity event with others for Tellers without Borders in Munich.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvia-angel/
If you have any questions or are interested in her newsletter, please send an e‑mail to: silvia.angel@web.de
➔ linkedin.com/in/silvia-angel
Martin Bernhard
has always told stories. Since early childhood, he has loved to open fantastic spaces through the spoken word. He also uses stories to create closeness and build bridges in his work with traumatized children as a special needs teacher.
Diving into the world of stories enables him to empathize with important themes such as love, closeness, care, farewell, grief or death. As a protagonist, mentor or magician, we remain able to review and evaluate the history of our lives.
Martin Bernhard worked as a juggler and musician on various stages for fifteen years. In 2017 he completed his training as a storyteller at the “Goldmund Narrative Academy” in Munich. He loves the intensity of storytelling so much that he also offers workshops and courses in the field of pedagogy and therapy, particularly for trainees and students at various academies.
In 2018, he founded the ensemble “Fabularis Mundi” with other storytellers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland who unite and complement each other.
His stories accompany him on his travels across Europe, by the campfire and wherever people like to meet. Martin always tells tragic and funny stories with his own sense of humour, opening up the fantasy, the bright eyes and the hearts of the listeners.
Emina Čabaravdić-Kamber
was born in 1947 in Kakanj (Yugoslavia, today Bosnia and Herzegovina). She is a freelance writer and painter.
Kamber was the only one of eleven siblings to leave her homeland – in 1968 at the age of 20. Since then she has lived in Hamburg. She is a member of the Association of German Writers in Hamburg, a member of the German P.E.N. , Member of the Exile P.E.N., in the “Authors Association Hamburg” and in the International Association of Journalists “Foreign and Foreign Press” in Hamburg. Kamber founded the International Literature Club “La Bohemina” in 1988. She has been working as a VHS-lecturer in exile literature & art in Hamburg, Lübeck, Münster and Bosnia since 1992. Multilingual publications have appeared in books, anthologies as well as on the CD “Emina” with SEVDAH – Bosnian love songs and lyric recitations. Kamber received the international poetry prize “Alberto Karpino” Naples/Italy in 1989. Numerous other awards followed. Kamber leads EU youth projects in the fields of literature, art and theatre at the Edmund Siemers Foundation. Her work with European youth covers the topics of international understanding, integration, languages.
In 1996 she was awarded the Medal of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her literary work on peace and the ending of the war in her native Bosnia. In 2008 she was given an award for her life’s work by the publishing house “Das Bosnian Wort” at the Book Fair in Sarajevo.
Johanna Gerosch
studied acting at the Hamburg State Theatre Academy and theatre pedagogy at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
In 2018, she won the young talent award at the Gute Stube Narrative Festival. Since then has been telling stories – modern, traditional, personal – for people of all ages throughout Germany, on stage or in their own homes. What matters is the need for stories because stories have the power to move people – and people can change the world.
Katharina Lange
comes from a family where stories were always told. She also heard many stories of all kinds at school. All this spoke to her vivid imagination from the very beginning. When in 2002 she took the course “Storytelling as a Healing Art” with Nancy Mellon and Ashley Ramsden at Emerson College, International School of Storytelling, she immediately had the feeling of having arrived at home. In 2012 she completed her training as a fairy tale storyteller at the “Goldmund-Narrative Academy” in Munich. From 2014 to 2016, she continued her education in the field of “Artistic Storytelling — Storytelling in Art and Education” as a narrative artist in Berlin at the University of the Arts. She lives in Hamburg and London and is a member of Tellers without Borders e.V.
Yifat Maor-Tanuschev
was born in 1972 in Hamadya, a kibbutz in northern Israel. Actress and puppeteer, playwright and director, primary school and kindergarten teacher and teacher of early musical education. After studying at the School of Visual Theatre Jerusalem and the David Yellin College of Education, postgraduate studies at the Academy of Dramatic Arts “Ernst Busch” Berlin in the Department of Puppetry. Direction, staging and participation in numerous theatre productions and international guest pieces, among them the play “Days Of Shdunna“
Member of Tellers without Borders, Narrative Art e.V. Berlin and in the Association of Narrators VEE.
John Rogers
is a native Englishman who has lived near the Brothers-Grimm town of Steinau in Hesse since 2007. After studying music and acting, he worked in theatre in the UK during the 1980s. At the beginning of the 90s he discovered storytelling in Wales. He now tells stories in both German and English, wherever people still appreciate a freely-told tale: in schools and libraries, a Frankfurt tram, castles, at conferences and in retirement homes. In 2018 he was the first winner of the Niederzwehren Storytelling Competition (in German). When the social and professional crisis erupted in 2020, he launched two digital projects together with tellers from different countries in order to overcome the new ‘digital frontiers’: “INS NETZ GEGANGEN” (since August 2020 as a YouTube livestream: http://geschichtennacht.de) and the “European Storytellers Collective” – first project “7 x 7 Stories”.
Member of Tellers without Borders, and Verband der Erzählerinnen und Erzähler VEE.
Micaela Sauber
was born in Ahrensburg near Hamburg in 1945, during the last bomb alert of the war. Her first school report in 1951 said: “Micaela digs around, packs her bag, chatters and walks off. M. can tell well.” She was a secretary at the German Press Agency, journalist at STERN magazine. She turned her life upside down in 1979 by completing a pedagogical training based on Waldorf pedagogy and anthroposophy, then studying at the theological university of applied sciences of the Christian Community in Stuttgart. Since 1985 she has devoted herself to the art of storytelling, the field of folk tales and large epics such as Parzival and Kalevala. She made her passion her profession in the early 1990s and founded the Fairytale Forum Hamburg e. V. (www.maerchenforum-hamburg.de). Micaela Sauber is the founder of the Tellers without Borders network, and a VEE-certified professional storyteller.
Karin Tscholl
has been a full-time storyteller for adults since 1995. She has made numerous appearances in fourteen countries, published seven fairytale books and two story calendars. Her main focus: fairy tales about war and peace. Since 2010 as Frau Wolle, Karin Tscholl has been volunteering several times a year in a retirement home for people with dementia. Karin Tscholl is a founding member of Tellers without Borders and a member of the international network.
Arna Vogel
has told at Berlin primary schools since 2015. Every week she inspires about 200 to 300 children with traditional fairy tales and stories. Narrative events and narrative projects in health resorts, shelters for refugees, nursing homes and libraries are also part of her programme. She loves to connect with people of different backgrounds and ages, to create community and to resurrect old knowledge in the stories. She received her training in 2013/14 at the UdK Berlin, following an earlier theatre pedagogical training at SPI Berlin. Prior to that, she studied theatre studies and worked as a theatre dramaturge and radio play director.
She is also a member of Narrative Art e.V. Berlin and the Association of Storytellers (VEE).
➔ erzaehlkunst.com/mitglieder/arna-vogel/
Sabine Wandelt — Voigt
Storytelling Theatre Sabine Wandelt & Freunde, announcer / Breathing Therapist / Therapeutic Eurythmist.
After three years of permanent theatre employment, in 1987 she decided to become a freelancer. As a eurythmist in hospital kitchens and textile factories, people trusted her with her stories. The storytelling theatre Sabine Wandelt & Freunde was founded in 2000. Since 2010, she has collaborated with the accordion virtuoso Ivan Sentyshchev in cooperation with Stuttgart and Karlsruhe job centres in projects with the long-term unemployed. From their life stories individually true hero stories were developed, played and performed by the whole group. After the projects, most of the unemployed managed to get out of the Hartz IV conditions. Teaching assignments at the universities of Tübingen and Stuttgart give the opportunity to approach storytelling with students.
From 2010, projects with Spoken Arts students at the Hmdk Stuttgart. Since 2017 she has worked in primary schools during the school holidays in social flashpoints, setting up a fairytale tent for a week. The aim is to draw the children into storytelling through fairy tales and stories, to maintain the space for them find their own joy of speaking.
Sabine Wandelt Voigt has been a member of Tellers without Borders e. V. since October 2020.
Margarete Wenzel
is a freelance philosopher (Dr.in phil.), fairy tale and storyteller, storytelling expert, workshop and seminar leader. She has conceived and carried out several of her own projects, including a storytelling project with refugee women. For Tellers without Borders, she has initiated a collection of true stories told out of experiences with storytelling and published them together with Micaela Sauber in a book (Im Auge des Sturms, Erzaehlverlag 2019). She is a member of Tellers without Borders, a member of the Association of German-speaking Storytellers (VEE) and chairwoman of the Association NarrARE, Vienna.
➔ storytelling-wien.at
➔ von-mund-zu-ohr.at
➔ maerchenakademie-wien.at
Britta C. Wilmsmeier
has been telling stories and fairy tales professionally since 2006 – in London, throughout Germany and internationally. She researches various narrative formats for her performances or engagements with foundations such as the DKB Foundation. She is also active in various long-term storytelling projects in schools and provides further training at home and abroad.
In her Applied Storytelling workshops, she works with children, adolescents and adults, as well as refugees at home and abroad. The development and sustainability of these projects are based on her wide experience and qualifications, and bear fruit through cooperation with other colleagues and networks.
She is a founding member of Tellers without Borders, of the Association of German-speaking Storytellers (VEE), is a board member of Narrative Art and Tellers without Borders and a member of the Federation for European Storytelling.
Britta C. Wilmsmeier studied English, German and Cultural Studies in Leipzig and Leicester, UK. While looking for ways to apply her training, she met storytellers in England – and from then on knew what she had to do.
Network across Borders
Neben Micaela Sauber, Britta Wilmsmeier und Katharina Lange, die Mitglieder des deutschsprachigen Netzwerkes und Vereins Erzähler ohne Grenzen e.V. sind:
Dorothee Greve
has been interested in fairy tales from all over the world ever since she can remember. Being taken to live in Nigeria, Thailand and the USA as a young child, she heard, saw and felt quite a bit of it. This triggered her longing to understand what is beyond the visible and strictly material. With the discovery of Sufi literature and dervish tales 20 years ago, she started to seek consciously some understanding of the more subtle and finer energies working for and on us. She regards active storytelling as an important tool in this seeking. She is a member of Tellers without Borders (international) core group. Dorothee Greve will present the wisdom of Sufi stories.
Jasna Held
(Dubrovnik, Croatia): has been working as a storyteller since 1994 in schools, kindergartens, orphan’s homes, homes for old people, places for handicaped people, hospital, clubs, theatres, pubs, book stores… She has also worked and performed in Austria, Switzerland, Netherland, Germany,
Alexander Mackenzie
is a storyteller, and Master of Fine Arts.
Areas of Expertise: Spontaneous Storytelling – Biographical Storytelling – Storytelling in Business – Therapeutic/Healing Storytelling.
Experience/Education: DipEd Education (1991) Qualified Waldorf class Teacher – Founder of Unicorn School of Storytelling for adults (1992–1995 – director of Spontaneous storytelling for national Society for Storytelling (1993–1995) – Made a national Winston Churchill Fellow for research into the contemporary significance of aboriginal storytelling – Storytelling Tutor at Ruskin Mill college (1991–2008) – storytelling in Consultancy skills and change management post – Storytelling consultant to Cranfield Post Graduate Business. His picture book „Humbert Bear likes to doze has been translated by Tellers without Borders into Croatian, Spanish and German and published as donations to children hospices.
Alexander lives in Edinburgh with his wife Kristine and youngest son Finbar. He is coaching Tellers without Borders core group in ist social and organisational development.
Gauri Raje
is an anthropologist and storyteller who works in the UK and India with adults and vulnerable groups especially asylum-seekers, refugees and migrant groups. She performs regularly in the U.K, India and Europe. Her performance projects include directing ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon’ a collection of stories for adults from around the world translated and told in 3 different Indian languages, ‘Badlands’, a storytelling of folk stories of the land and rivers of central India and ‘Tales of Exile and Sanctuary’, stories from around the world exploring themes of exile. She ran an Arts Council funded biographical storytelling evening series in Birmingham (UK) for migrants called ‘Long Journey Home: True Life Migrant Tales’ in 2016. She is currently working with biographical and traditional stories of South Asian migrants to the West of Scotland with AwazFM, a South Asian radio station in Glasgow. She is a member of the Tellers without Borders (international) Core group.
Ifor Rhys
Raised on the cliffs of Cornwall Ifor developed a natural interest in the magical and potential of magical transformation. His interest in Sufi and dervish stories began when he was about 18 following an introduction to the writing of Idries Shah. He has not looked back since and particularly looks for stories which open paths to greater understanding for us which enhance our potential and develop perception and understanding. He is a member of Tellers without Borders (international) core group.
Maria Serrano
(Finland/Spain) is a multilingual professional storyteller, chairperson of ALBASuomiFinland (in the Nordic Alliance for Healing Storytelling) and an active member of Tellers Without Border’s (international) core group.
She performs in Swedish, Spanish and English. Her repertoire includes traditional‑, true-life- and improvised stories, the latter at which she’s particularly comfortable and adept. As a storyteller she has mainly trained in South Africa with the International School of Storytelling. She performs in a variety of settings ‑from schools and libraries to stages and streets, in several countries. Because of her background she has a passion for creating spaces where different cultures can meet.
María was born in 1967 to a Spanish photographer and a Swedish-speaking actress from Finland. Reared in Spain and Finland, she also travelled all over Europe (East and West) and North Africa as a child. She grew up among the community of
Chilean refugees and is currently working with newly arrived refugees in her community in Finland. María has also worked extensively as a conference interpreter and trained as a class teacher. She is married and a mother of four. Maria is member of the International Core Group of Tellers without Borders.
Further members of the network
Martin Ellrodt
➔ ellrodt.de
Maria Magdalena González
Soogi Kang
➔ theater-salpuri.de
➔ soogi-kang.de
Mohammed Kelo
Jesper la Cour
➔ thetellingtheatre.com
Dirk Nowakowski<
➔ nowakowski-erzaehler.de
Hamid Saneiy
Supporting members
Peter Amsler
is a teacher and educator. In 2018 he founded Erzählverlag, a Berlin publishing house
whose teaching materials and books for free oral storytelling support the aims of Tellers without Borders. In 2019 Erzählverlag published the anthology In the Eye of the Storm:. Key Stories of Tellers without Borders”, edited by Margarete Wenzel and Micaela Sauber.
Tamara Spitzing
was born in Hamburg and grew up hearing fairy tales and stories from her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother. She studied archaeology and then became a trainee journalist at SWR. As a documentary filmmaker, she tells stories in words and images. This profession has brought her into contact on many journeys with a wide variety of people and their traditions. A few years ago she returned to the original form of storytelling and trained at the Dornrosen fairytale centre and took impro theatre courses at the Sterntaler fairy-tale centre. Since then, there has been nothing more wonderful for her than the direct personal connection of storytelling.
We mourn the loss of three wonderful people, members of our network and storytellers Brendan Nolan, Ivanir Sibylla Hasson and Helga Petri:
Brendan Nolan
Brendan was a storyteller and author from Dublin. To our great sorrow he departed this world on 24th February 2018. Our memories of him and his stories live on when we tell them. As a member of the international core-group which forms the heart of Tellers without Borders, his wide experience as a storyteller, journalist, author and member of various governing bodies was a great encouragement and support.
Some of the stories in our book „Im Auge des Sturms“ we owe to the Tellers without Borders International newsletter, which Brendan published three times a year. His last book is a collection of Irish love stories from the oral tradition.
Ivanir Sibylla Hasson
was a professional performing artist for 30 years. On 7th November 2020, our dear Ivanir Sibylla Hasson had a severe stroke in the morning and passed the threshold. Ivanir, a lovely storyteller, clown and children’s circus teacher had been a member of Tellers without Borders International since its founding in 2015 during a conference about storytelling and refugees in Hamburg. She was an extraordinarily fair and skilled supporter and colleague.
From 2005 she had been deepening in the field of Storytelling as a Healing Art. She was holding workshops about healing and reconnective Storytelling internationally. Since 2010 she had been working with asylum seekers in reception centers all over Norway with storytelling, theatre, clowning and circus schools. As the leader of the Healing Story Alliance, Nordic ALBA Norway, she has arranged two international Symposiums on Storytelling as a Healing Art; The Way Of The Heart 2012, and Stories in The Wild 2016. She was also a core member of the European Storytelling Peace Council and Tellers without Borders International.
Thank you dear Ivanir for your faithful companionship!
Helga Petri
Helga was a Swabian storyteller, performing since 1998. On 6th December 2020 Helga left this world.
It was on St. Nicholas Day, so fitting to our Helga, who herself made no big deal of all she gave. She was a founding member of our association, served as a committee member since 2016 and wholeheartedly supported all developments with her generosity. Together with Micaela Sauber, she told in Palestinian schools and the Goethe Institute in the West Bank. A year later she returned there with Micaela, Charles Aceval and Roana Falkenberg.
Helga was a profoundly supportive and wise woman of great integrity. She had her own particular way of telling, and of listening when one spoke to her.
Although she fought a long battle with her health, she was always cheerful. In October 2020 she attended our general meeting, where she handed over her committee obligations. There, as so often, she delighted us with a tale told in dialect: so refreshing, so witty and with such a playful look – that was our Helga.