FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 4: IT’S LOTS OF FUN

Can you imagine fifteen hundred fans sitting under a big top tent listening to a professional storyteller telling imaginary stories of turning his old Jeep into a sailboat cruising down the highway or three boys at Halloween scaring themselves silly while lost in a cornfield maze? All of this delivered in a down home, ‘aw shucks’ country style delivery while wearing a baseball gap at a jaunty angle, looking just like your neighbour or the fellah you buy apples from at his farmyard stand every fall! I was in the tent that morning and joined in the rolling waves of laughter that went on and on for a full hour. When it was all over, there was a standing ovation that lasted as long as your average tv commercial. I haven’t had so much fun at a storytelling gathering in a long time.

Later the same day, two professional tellers, reunited after many years as solo performers, tell a wonderful mixture of their own stories and others they had adapted from folk lore, a children’s book and real tales told to them by strangers and friends. First cousins, these two women pooled their life savings, bought a beat up, old yellow Datsun camper and hit the road for many years, stopping in small towns all across America telling their stories, sharpening their craft and in the process collecting material for future stories from folks they met along the way.

In their reunion performance, it was magical to see the story characters taking shape before our eyes, each with unique voice sharing their stories of life, love won and lost, domestic abuse, difficult parents and a child’s primal fear of the monster under his bed. Once again, it was an audience of many hundreds of fans held spellbound by the women’s stories and performances, enjoying the poignant moments being shared on the stage while marveling at the chemistry that still exists between these two tellers. A different kind of telling to be sure but just as much fun to be involved in as with the fellow in the ball cap.

A woman enjoys a folk tale so much, she decides to make a Coyote mask out of paper mache, cloth and yarn, learn the story, and then sit down in mask and perform a story so absorbing in content and theatre, you find yourself imagining trotting alongside Coyote and sharing in his adventures. Thirty minutes later, when she removes the mask, it takes several racing heartbeats to shake yourself free from Coyote, return to the telling circle and realize you have just experienced a master teller at her best. If your definition of having fun is being caught up in the power of a story well told and performed, you realize you have just experienced it at its finest.

Or the time that I was telling a real life story of an elderly man, recently widowed and grieving mightily, who turns to what has always given him deep pleasure and calms his troubled spirit, re-building a rock wall, stone by stone, day after day, dawn until dark. His teenage grandson, drawn to the loneliness, silently joins the old man on the wall and they work quietly together. Hushed conversation sometimes passes between them and it is obvious to the distant observer that each is getting from the other as much as what each is giving to the other.

In front of me, listeners are connecting with this story. Some smile at the images the story is painting while others turn inward, perhaps to revive a personal memory long buried but now re-awakened. Many wonder who the elderly man and his grandson really are. Are they only a creation of my imagination? The unspoken question remains unanswered as I set the talking stick back into its waiting place, and quietly move back to my chair in the circle. My fun came in sharing a poignant moment in the lives of two individuals while experiencing my listeners hearing and seeing the story unfold so movingly in their imagination.

Moments like these four vignettes are many in storytelling and at the end of such performances I find myself thinking that this is what storytelling at its best is all about. Fun can wear many faces it seems.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)