The Project Decamerone 2020 is a storytelling initiative born during the global Covid 19 crisis 2020. In Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decamerone" a group of ten young people flee from plague-ridden Florence to a deserted villa in the countryside and pass the time by telling stories. During ten nights 100 tales are told that still belong to the world's most important works of literature.
During the Covid 19 crisis in 2020 storytellers worldwide have to pass their quarantine in individual isolation at home. Covid 19 turns the "Decamerone" into a "deCAMERAne": Stories are shared via videos recorded in the tellers' chambers (= camere in Italian) at home, with mobile phone cameras, iPads or computers.
The Project Decamerone 2020 is intended to be a sort of global House of Stories and a Home of Hope: a platform on which storytellers from all over the world share video recordings of the 100 tales of the "Decamerone" as well as other stories to cheer people up in times of crisis.
Project coordinator is TrobadOra, an association for storytelling, based in Vienna, Austria. The project was inspired by the Project Grimm that was initiated by the Federation of European Storytellers FEST in 2011 to celebrate the 2012 bicentennial of the first publication of the Children's and Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
The aims and goals of the project are:
- To spread hope with a work of world literature dealing with a similar crisis
- To stimulate the sense of global community
- To create a multicultural project for storytellers all over the world
- To promote live oral storytelling as an independent art form in the world
The process / rules of contribution:
- Every storyteller wishing to participate in the project selects one of the 100 novellas of the "Decamerone" by mailing the three numbers of his/her preferred tales to the project coordinator (projectdecamerone2020@gmail.com). First come first serve. The numbers already chosen will be marked on the Blogspot.
- Recordings of the telling have to be recorded at home (with a mobile phone camera, an Ipad or the computer) and to be uploaded on youtube. The youtube link has to be mailed to the project coordinator by the end of june 2020.
- This "House of Stories" also has „windows“ for stories that are not part of the "Decamerone": tales to cheer people up in times of crisis. Storytellers can contribute one or two tales from Boccaccio's "Decamerone" or/and for a „window“, but not more than two stories per teller.
- Whereas the novels of Decamerone are for adults only, the window stories can also be addressed to a younger audience.
- Whereas the novels of Decamerone are for adults only, the window stories can also be addressed to a younger audience.
- Stories can be told either in English or in the tellers’ mother tongue.
The project coordinator:
- will create and update the list of tellers participating in the project and what tales of the "Decamerone" they are working with
- will put the video recordings on the Blogspot by uploading their youtube links
- will help connecting participants
- will help making the project visible (in the media and on platforms of storytelling associations etc.)
