Cantastoria (also spelled cantastorie, canta storia or canta historia) comes from Italian for "sung story" or "singing history" and is known by many other names around the world. It is a theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be painted, printed or drawn on any sort of material.
In 6th century India religious tales called Saubhikas were performed by traveling storytellers w...
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Cantastoria (also spelled cantastorie, canta storia or canta historia) comes from Italian for "sung story" or "singing history" and is known by many other names around the world. It is a theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be painted, printed or drawn on any sort of material.
In 6th century India religious tales called Saubhikas were performed by traveling storytellers who carried banners painted with images of gods from house to house. Another form called Yamapapaka featured vertical cloth scrolls accompanied by sung stories of the afterlife. In Tibet this was known as ma-ni-pa and in China this was known as pien or transformation story. In Indonesia the scroll was made horizontal and became the wayang beber and employed four performers: A man who sings the story, two men who operate the rolling of the scroll, and a woman who holds a lamp to illuminate particular pictures featured in the story. Other...
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