If you want to explore new dimensions of your stories and experience new insights into your careers, an investment in Kevin's "Permission To Play" workshops will reward both you and your audiences for many years ahead.

As a working artist and the director of Storyteller.net, I have seen and created coaching methods and styles for nearly a quarter of a century. Dr. Kevin Cordi is one of the true voices of leadership in the craft of storytelling and its application across disciplines.

With "Permission to Play," Dr. Kevin Cordi has created a coaching method where anyone, from the seasoned world-class performer to the just-starting-out public speaker, can explore and create dynamic new stories in a freeing and supportive environment.

— Sean Buvala, Founder of www.storyteller.net

Sometimes I take my storytelling a bit too seriously, so I'm so glad I went to Kevin Cordi's workshop. His "Permission to Play" program was well worth the two hour drive it took for me to get to Avondale, Arizona on a Sunday night.

Instead of being tired during the drive home, I was energized just thinking about all the storytelling information and ideas Kevin shared with us. The workshop group was big enough to provide variety, but small enough to make the entire experience a personal and meaningful one. This is particularly good in an experimental atmosphere, and during the two hours we played at our work Kevin had each of us under his spell.

I, for one, felt like a kid in a drama class as we were given permission to create, expand and rethink the story line, situation and characters in a story. 

Kevin understands how the right side of our brain works, and he is gifted in engaging the imagination of even the most reticent participant. I watched with awe as members of our workshop began to improvise and "play" in a story. One person pounded on a chair, another crawled under the arms of anther who had spontaneously become "the hole in the fence." What fun it was to allow a story to unfold in such wild and delightful ways without the usual restraints. But do not be misled with all this abandon. Kevin was in charge all the time, but subtly so. He is a superb group collaborator/coach/mentor/teacher.

Whenever I feel stuck as I struggle to make a story "mine," or I start to take my work too seriously, I will recall what I learned that Sunday night and give myself permission to play and breathe new life and vitality into the tale to make it worthy to share. Thank you Kevin! I'm glad I went to your workshop and I hope to have other opportunities to participate and learn more about "Permission to Play" - one of the most useful storytelling methods I have encountered to date.

— Glenda Bonin, Arizona Storyteller

I am writing in support of Dr. Kevin Cordi as a storyteller professional of significant benefit to organizations, particularly university settings.

Kevin joined the Ohio State University Multicultural Center (MCC) for the school year 2008-2009 as the Storyteller Artist-in-Residence, to help the center launch a storytelling year as a way of communicating our newly updated strategic goals. The MCC had begun a What's YOUR Story? campaign, to encourage all students, staff, faculty and community members to understand that "everyone's story is critical to intercultural relations." Kevin's StoryBox Project capped the year, bringing people together all through the year around stories. He also facilitated the visits of a cast of multicultural storytellers through winter and spring quarters, and an end-of-the-year storytelling festival to globally launch a year's journey of the Ohio State StoryBox.

Kevin was engaging and professional as a colleague among colleagues, in our office, on campus and in the Columbus community. He is an active listener and ally across differences, important qualities for our intercultural work. He was helpful in managing the visits we had from the storytellers, and in facilitating the story ambassadors across the nation and world who participated in the global journey of the Storybox. This was a hosting job that required flexibility, patience and warmth. He did an effective job marketing the MCC wherever he spoke about the Ohio State StoryBox Project.

Kevin values empowering people he works with. He chooses stories that are tailored to the needs of the audiences. In addition to co-creating community storytelling events in collaboration with the MCC, Kevin worked with our staff specifically to help us share our own personal stories with each other, so that we could deepen our understanding of what each of us brings to our work together. Our year with Kevin was rewarding to us as a staff and as an office of student life reaching the campus with our intercultural vision, mission and values.

I am happy to recommend Kevin Cordi for any work with people engaged together in support of educational impact or community enrichment.

— Christina Cappelletti, MSW, MA
Coordinator of Communications
The Ohio State University

I wanted to thank you for taking the time to coach me after the conference. It was great to dust off my attempt at a one person show, work on it a bit, and feel the excitement of finding new moments.

Your coaching is so intuitive, it is right on. I always felt really seen and respected as a talented and creative artist. You were right there with me, seeing the slightest possibility of something that might increase the dramatic moment or clarify something that was confusing.

Thanks again.

— Lily Silver, California

Your workshop was the best at the conference! It was fun. I couldn't believe how much I learned in a short amount of time. I loved all the games that really kept my creative juices flowing. It was high energy! What I really loved was the coaching. With your coaching, I experienced my story like it was happening right now. I have had story coaching before but your "story mediating" was a new experience.

I relished in traveling new directions that I had not considered. The side by side direction helped expand my imagination. It helped free me from my scripted language and allowed me to play with it, rediscover it, and ultimately unlock the mental blocks.

The story we worked on has been a story kernel for years and I have never been satisfied with it. However, I knew it had possibilities. When I saw other people represent it for me, the light bulb turned on. With your guidance I could see what my story needed. Story mediating offered me a new innovative way to just play with the story and not be controlled by it.

Thanks for all your help. One day soon there will be a storytelling version for me to share with you of this tale!

— Katie Nutall, 2nd grade teacher, Utah

Kevin Cordi, A Man With Good Seeds.

Whether he is working with professional storytellers, young children, or people of any age Kevin Cordi is spreading the exciting seeds of a form of Process Drama that he calls Ensemble Storytelling. Stories are a powerful way to encapsulate and transmit human experience both real and imagined. Ensemble Storytelling as conducted by Kevin empowers groups of people to live a situation and work cooperatively to solve problems.

I played a small role in an ensemble storytelling program with Kevin for 3 – 5 year-old children at a learning center in Bloomington, Indiana in August 2010. Kevin tapped into the children's natural interest in animals to develop a two day vivid journey into what it would be like to have a monkey for a pet at the school. Starting with his own short story of how he cared for pets as a child Kevin turned the query over to the young children. Using their own questions and sense of excitement Kevin unleashed the children to find information in books, create lists of things the monkey would need and assess the school room and outdoor play area for monkey readiness.

Children followed their own interests and abilities. One little girl made diapers from paper. Some of the boys found branches to fortify a fence to make it a better enclosure. All of the children happily dove into a pile of monkey related books Kevin brought. They found information and developed new questions. When Kevin revealed a soft monkey doll the children cooperated in its care with a very real sense of responsibility. The children took turns changing diapers, feeding the monkey and carefully carrying it in their arms.

Kevin used a variety of stories and creative activities throughout the process based on what the children needed. He tapped into other adults to assist the children and to play roles as mail carriers, government officials, and an actual primate expert to flesh out the drama.

This experience was much more than a story about taking care of a monkey. The children actively participated in the drama and influenced its direction. They lived it together as a cooperative group. This is what makes Ensemble Storytelling so exciting.

Kevin's Ensemble Storytelling is not just telling stories and improvisation. It requires careful preparation, a wide variety of possible information resources and materials, sensitivity to the needs of individuals in the group and the ability of the leader to empower the group to step outside of themselves for a while in story and drama.

You can learn to do it too. Are stories powerful teaching tools? Do you want to empower groups to learn together and solve problems? Get some of these seeds from Kevin and then just imagine what you will grow!

— Ken Oguss, Professional Storyteller, Anthropologist, Librarian.
Indianapolis, Indiana

Permission 2 Play tickled my telling. While I was laughing my story was getting better and better. Kevin Cordi took one moment, one scene and had me dive deeply into it. It's amazing how playing with this one scene strengthens the whole story. This playing builds a stronger foundation for the tale. I took Kevin's workshop at the National Storytelling Conference in Los Angles, CA on July 30, 2010. I want to take it again. Kevin is so in the moment, so in the tale, that each time he leads this workshop I bet ten donuts to your dollar that more of his playful storytelling wisdom will be revealed. Everything Kevin says is always in service of the story. Every word he spoke was full of respect for the teller and their tale. Every fifth word he said got me laughing in ways I wasn't expecting, and thinking about my story from a new perspective. Permission2play with Kevin Cordi was jumping rope with my story, bouncing with it on the bed and ultimately making it fly. Thanks, Kevin.

— Tony Toledo, Storyteller

Tony Toledo has told stories to pay his rent since 1990. Tony tells tales for elementary students, library patrons, birthday party people and for the folks at folk music festivals. Tony is the EMCEE at Speak Up Spoken Word Open Mike every Wednesday in Lynn, MA. Tony lives in Beverly, MA on a massive one tenth of an acre estate with his wife, her basil, his books and their Corn Museum. Tony is 53 years old but reads at a 64 year old level.