that point. These were called "" (blind man stories). The singing bench migrated northward to Central and Northern Europe where it served as sensationalist quasi-news about murder, fires, death, affairs, sex and scandals. Performers of such controversial bench songs were seen as vagrants and troublemakers and were often arrested, exiled, or ostracised for their activities. In Germany itinerant balladeers performed or (bench song) banner shows for four centuries until the Nazis banned the practice in the 1940s. The German survives in Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera () and in the performance work of Peter Schumann. In Czechoslovakia banner shows were called . Most of them have disappeared, with the notable exception of a parody song Cannoneer . In Hungary the term is called . Elsewhere In aboriginal Australia storytellers paint story sequences on tree bark and also on themselves for the purposes of performing the tale. In the 19th century, giant scrolling moving panorama shows were performed throughout the United Kingdom and United States. The 20th century has seen cantastoria employed by the radical art, theater and puppetry movements to tell stories from perspectives outside of the mainstream media, especially by the Bread and Puppet Theater. Elements of picture storytelling can also be seen in the portable mural-posters of the Beehive Collective. See also Storytelling Murder ballad Oral storytelling Oral tradition References Sources Mair, Victor H., Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and its Indian Genesis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988. Too Many Captain Cooks, film by Penny McDonald starring Paddy Wainburranga Mariangela Giusti and Urmila Chakraborty (editors), , 2014, Visual arts genres Theatrical genres Puppetry Storytelling Performing arts in India Italian words and phrases Song forms