FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 1: IT PUSHES MY COMFORT ZONE

Three years ago when I first began attending Peterborough Storytellers, I was no stranger to telling stories as part of my job, with family and friends and occasionally to the nice, but bored lady at the local Tim’s drive-through window. In fact, my wife and kids would say that I rarely met a crowd or audience that I didn’t like and at the slightest hint of interest, would launch into an amusing anecdote or personal story!

I went along as the interested but curious guest of a relative to my first ever Storyteller’s meeting. It was held in the auditorium of the local library and about ten or twelve other people were already there. Chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around another chair that was facing the circle and on a swatch of fabric on the floor in front of the chair was a ‘talking stick’. Tradition in storytelling circles is that the teller of the moment holds the stick as a symbol that they have been given the authority by the listeners to talk uninterrupted.

That evening, several of the more experienced members of the group told tales they had adapted or taken directly from myths, folk lore or legends. I was impressed with how each of these women crafted their story, performing it with such energy and enthusiasm. Everyone listening, myself included, were drawn into the stories in such a powerful and often unexpected way. I just had to be part of this night, so unexpectedly I found myself picking up the talking stick and sharing a personal story from my time as a social worker. I was hooked. From then until now, I have held the stick at just about every gathering.

I quickly realized that I had a great deal to learn about choosing and telling an interesting story. Prior to this, I thought I was an exceptionally good teller of ‘real life’ tales and anecdotes to workplace audiences. But to translate those skills and that experience into the public storytelling venue would demand much more thought, careful selection of story theme and message, lots of practice followed by even more practice. And even some coaching.

As I watched my local tellers perform their stories not only with words but drum, flute, harp, song, masks and amazing character voices, I realized that if I was going to do well at this new activity, I had to get far more disciplined about my preparation and delivery. I had to invite both helpful and critical comments from my group members, take a storytelling course or two, attend other telling events with fresh tellers that I didn’t spend time with on a regular basis. Instead of reading only what my wife somewhat sarcastically calls ‘Who Shot The President’ type books, I had to make room for books, articles and videos on the art of storytelling by some of the best author-tellers in the US and here in Canada. It was all going to be a new and I admit, strange and unfamiliar genre for me.

I have been at it now for almost two and a half years. I’m a reasonably good teller but I know I could become even better with more focused learning and practice. Yes, I still often feel awkward in my new storytelling comfort zone, but I think that’s as it should be. What do you think?

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 2: YOU MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE

People have always fascinated me. Everyone has a story to tell and over the years I’ve heard many. All the way from the totally weird, gross and disgusting to exhilarating, marvelous and inspiring tales from folks I don’t really know at all to my friends and family with whom I share intimate moments.

Maybe that’s the main reason I became a counsellor, educator and consultant. I worked hard at it for over forty-three years. When my kids were teenagers, they often warned their friends who would meet me for the first time, ‘Watch out when you meet my Dad. The next thing you know, you’ll be telling him stuff that you’d never tell anyone else!’  Being a good listener, someone who listens with both head and heart, thankfully just comes naturally to me. And I treasure many of the personal life stories that were given to me over the years. It’s from that vast storehouse of shared stories that I create most of the ones that I tell at storytelling gatherings.

Attending these events, both as a listener and a teller, has introduced me to many others who share a strong interest in the art of storytelling. It always surprises me when, introduced through the shared experience of listening to a well told story, a person I have never met before, invites me into their private world of experiences, thoughts and opinions. Tragic stuff. Totally funny stuff. Odd stuff. Deeply felt experiences that are often unfamiliar to me personally but through what is chosen to be shared, I begin to gain a new appreciation, a helpful understanding that I would likely have never had if not for this moment with them.

In my limited but growing experience, the men and women who enjoy telling tales and do it as often as they can in front of public audiences, equally enjoy talking about their own journeys of self-discovery through telling and listening. While each story is unique, they all share the qualities of passion and excitement, sometimes wonder and often a burning desire to have meaningful, unspoken conversations with those that hear their stories.

This past summer, I spent a leisurely afternoon in the cool shade of an aging barn sharing favourite tales with tellers from slightly afar, most of whom I had never met before. As often happens, each teller preceded his or her story with why this story was being told and usually, what this story meant to them personally. The glimpse into personality, lifestyle and relationships that these mini-stories revealed intrigued me. During dinner, I moved from person to person, asking about their story or telling them how their tale resonated with me. Even though I was the most novice of tellers in this gathering, some enthusiastically offered encouragement and helpful insights about my stories and performance.

Recently I spent three days immersing myself in the stories being told at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. In its fortieth year, nearly twelve thousand enthusiastic fans of storytelling made what I can only now call an annual pilgrimage from all over the continent to listen to well told tales from all genres by some of America’s best and beloved tellers.

But it was the listeners from whom I leaned the most. Before or after presentations, spontaneous conversations would begin among strangers. Usually it started with an opinion about the story, the performance or the artist but then quickly moved into the sharing of personal telling and listening experiences.

I remember talking with a recently retired locomotive driver who had been a cop before that. He had stopped me in the street outside the tent about an experience he had as a cop in the mid-west because in the story I told in a Slam competition earlier, a cop character triggered a memory he wanted to share. With noticeable emotion, he told me of growing up in a Home for Boys from an early age. But since retiring a year ago, he was now avidly pursuing storytelling as a retirement activity that someday he hoped to turn into his third career. He shared some incredible stories of the men and women with whom he worked on the railroad and a few of the perils facing crews. I think he will make a compelling and passionate teller.

Or how about my brief conversation with an older woman I judged to be close to eighty sitting behind me in a huge tent? Like me, she was waiting for the next performance to begin. She was in a flamboyant style dress with striking jewelry accessories and an attractive wide brimmed floppy hat. We struck up a conversation and I quickly learned that she herself had been a teller at the Festival for many years but now she came just as a listener. so I hesitantly asked if she was still telling stories. ‘Why, my oh yes, young man. In fact next month I am doing a one woman show that I wrote to explore getting old.’ Her entire being glowed, she sat taller and her blue eyes sparkled with the pleasure and anticipation of it all. A snippet of a marvellous life story only hinted at that had started just with a casual encounter! 

Looking at me intently, she asked how long I had been coming to Jonesborough. I replied that this was my first time and in fact I was telling a story in the Slam competition later in the day. With this news, she smiled and offered me helpful words of encouragement while wishing me well in future storytelling projects. Coming from her, who I sensed was probably a legend among tellers, made me feel as if now I was really becoming part of a much larger community of storytellers that reached well beyond my local group in Ontario. We shook hands warmly just as the performance began. Even now, I find myself thinking about her and wishing I had heard more of her life story that day. I wrote down her first name on a slip of crumpled paper I found in my backpack. I hope that will be enough to track her down and learn more about her life. Maybe there will even be some videos of her telling tales and that would be a special treat for me.

So, the next time you attend a storytelling event, look around you, find someone who you would like to know more about. Then go over, introduce yourself and ask. I guarantee that you will indeed meet an interesting person.

And better still, you will both be richer for the conversation.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 3: IT AWAKENS MY CREATIVE SIDE

The stories that I like to tell are not usually from myths, legends or folk tales. I prefer real stories about the human condition that are drawn from my personal and work experiences. As a social worker for many years, I have been privy to situations that often show people at their very worst, in periods of great emotional stress, living with the consequences of decisions that may not have worked out well for them. At the other end of the scale, I been privileged to witness instances of great joy, triumph and love which provide reassuring evidence of the strength of the human spirit and intellect.  All of these experiences provide what master teller and author Jay O’Callahan calls ‘nuggets of pure gold’ that through my stories, I try and hold up for examination and admiration by my listeners.

I’ve always enjoyed telling stories. My stories have made people laugh, cry, gasp in surprise, nod their heads in recognition, pause and reflect or oftentimes say, ‘You know that reminds me of a story…’. While I also like to write about things that go on around me, most of the time I would be more comfortable telling than writing about it. But I never thought of myself as a true ‘teller of tales’.

Until I discovered Peterborough Storytellers. Ever since my very first, unrehearsed, spontaneously told anecdote, awkwardly holding the talking stick, my relationship to stories told and listened to has changed forever.

More than ever before I find myself listening much more carefully in conversations with family, friends and co-workers. I catch myself trying to listen in on the chatter going on around me in restaurants, the movie theatre, the gym, the barber shop, service centre rest room or on the street. I am always hunting for an interesting anecdote or fragment of whispered gossip, a unique phrase or word, a voice tone or body gesture that I can turn into a story. Some days I fear that I am becoming a tidbit junkie, deliberately hanging out in places where I just might get my ultimate fix for a potentially great told or written story.

Since I retired several years ago, I have more time now to examine my ‘story collection’ and decide what either goes on display to the public through my telling or writing or what stays hidden away on either my computer’s hard drive or in my memory, perhaps to be re-discovered later, polished up and brought out front for everyone to experience in their own way.

Telling ‘real life’ stories publicly has forced me to start writing them down before I tell them. I write short stories several times a week about life events that I think others would enjoy reading about. So far, thirty-seven of them have made it onto a personal story blog that I recently created. And I enjoyed blogging so much I volunteered to curate the Tales and Tips blog of Peterborough Storytellers where you are now reading this story. The more I write, re-write and then tweak a story just one more time, I am learning how to be a better craftsman of structure, situation, character and storylines. I know this would never have happened if I had not discovered storytelling.

Taking a written story and re-shaping it into a version suitable for telling has given me more focus and discipline as a teller. Watching and learning from a live audience reacting to my stories has led to unexpected insights into elements of the plot that listeners are connecting with which in turn sends me back to the written version to tweak it some more. Once done, I bring it back again to another audience and the process starts again.

Another benefit of storytelling for me is feeding the hidden actor in my nature. Many years ago, on a whim, I auditioned for a part in a community theatre production. To my surprise, I got a good part in the play but significantly under estimated how hard it would be for me to learn the lines as the author wrote them. I was terrible. It was three months of maximum stress and I am sure my struggling gave the Director and his crew many sleepless nights! It all worked out well in the end but I took a solemn vow after our last show that I would never go on the stage again.

But now with storytelling, I find myself back on a stage of sorts. Skilled tellers are also performers, assuming the roles and personalities, voice and gestures of their story’s characters. Watching and listening to them, gives me an aspirational goal to work toward. My creative side is getting a work out and once again I am back on the stage. That’s a cool thing for me.

Most everyone has their special, creative moments that sustain them from week to week, month to month, year to year. Right now, it’s the art of storytelling and listening that does it for me. What about you? What about giving storytelling a try to set free your creative Self?

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

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)

FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 5: IT IGNITES MY IMAGINATION

Writing the Five Reasons series for Tales and Tips has helped focus my thoughts about what, for me, are the key elements that combine to make story telling and listening such an exciting and challenging hobby. Without much effort, I teased out and wrote about the first four reasons. But number five was not coming easily. I decided to just let everything slosh around unorganized in my consciousness and from previous experience, I knew that a valuable insight would eventually float up to the surface for me.

Last March, I facilitated an ‘Awakening Our Imagination’ mini-workshop at Peterborough Storytellers. As part of the program, I projected randomly themed photographs onto a large screen that I hoped most members of the audience could relate to in some way. With each picture I asked this simple question: What’s the story you would tell about this picture? The responses were immediate as folks excitedly volunteered their perceived ‘story’ as they imagined it being represented in the picture. Every photo elicited several quite different story lines. There was a high octane flow of creative energy let loose in our group that was enjoyable and stimulating. We were all having a good time, telling spontaneous stories filled with humour, sensitivity and best of all, the products of very rich and even, some would say, ‘overactive’ imaginations!

Recalling that evening now, almost nine months later, I knew what my fifth reason just had to be. Imagination. Not just the plain old, every day, garden variety kind of imagination but imagination that is ignited in our souls and burns hot with energy, brilliance and creativity. That night, I not only saw it bursting forth but I felt it deeply too. Many of us were emotionally moved at the demonstrated power of  individual and collective imagination ignited by visual stories.

Told stories don’t usually come with a You Tube video playing silently in the background. Yes, sometimes there is music and movement, changing voices and moods in the story, but for the most part, it’s just a told story performed well with just enough detail of plot, location, character and take away messages, that our imagination gets a full workout, filling in the details unbidden.

I was listening to a story recently and had the sudden mental image that the teller was just putting random dots on a blank page for me and encouraging me to connect them in any way that I felt made sense to me. And just for fun, the teller would add a few more dots on the page when I wasn’t looking, creating even more possibilities for the story picture I was drawing in my mind.

Often popular told stories are about cultures, characters, countries, traditions and beliefs that I am unfamiliar with. My imagination adds the details, the colour and the subtle meanings into the story line whenever my mind sees the message ‘insert imagination here’.

What I love about telling stories is that I get the opportunity each and every time to set my imagination free and put my own vocal brush strokes of colour, form and feelings to it. As I said before, my imagination gets ignited by telling stories and I experience great delight in it all.

What I love about listening to told stories, is discovering how my unfettered imagination always enriches a story, sharpens the performance, and flirts with my gut reaction to the total experience.

Back on August 7^th, I posted a short reflection about Imagination on this blog. I’d like to end this one with some lines from the earlier post because they still speak to me about my relationship with imagination through storytelling.

‘Imagination is part of the software that is always running in the back of our daily lives. Without it, our lives would be mostly black and white images. Our dreams are playgrounds for our imagination.’

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

RECENTLY DISCOVERED THOUGHTS ABOUT STORYTELLING

Here are two wonderful perspectives on storytelling that I came across yesterday on the internet while researching ideas that storytellers have about the power of telling. Both perspectives are worth your time to reflect upon and perhaps each may prompt you to collect your own thoughts about why you tell stories or enjoy actively listening to them.

‘It is by telling our stories that we come to know ourselves, and whenever we hear another’s stories, we understand them. We come to appreciate their strengths and vulnerabilities, their joys and sorrows. Storytelling teaches us to listen and enables us to find our voice. It entertains us and challenges our thinking. Story continues to enhance our lives and bring us closer together.’ 

Annette Knowler in the Handbook of the New Zealand Guild of Storytellers (2004)

‘When I tell a story, an introduction of myself, I get in touch with my personal culture. In a sense I lay down a carpet so that others can come and sit on it. When I hear someone else’s story, I pick up something of their values, their beliefs, and the many wonderful things about them.’ 

Rebecca L. Copeland (2004) (Original source unknown)

THE SECRETS OF STORYTELLERS

When most people think of storytelling, they usually think of children.  But storytelling is an art form as old as mankind. And we’re all storytellers, young and old.

A story can be about anything – an event personal or worldly, real or mythological, trivial or epic, true or false, linear or not. And they don’t all have a happy ending. There is a magical thing that happens when a person tells a story to others, because storytelling is about listening as much as telling.

I suspect that storytelling lies at the heart of every artistic discipline.

The Peterborough Storytellers are one of 18 groups of storytellers in Ontario alone. Since 1992 they have met once a month to “listen, learn and tell.” A core group of members share their storytelling skills and perform, but all are invited to listen or participate if the spirit moves them. I was spellbound by Rita Grimaldi who told A Duppy Tale in mask and gripped by Hermione Rivison’s family ghost story.

Live storytelling is a fascinating study in language, as each storyteller shares the music of their own unique voice. I only wish this inclusive circle could happen in a location with a bit more ambiance. Although some of their events are child-oriented, many are only suitable for adults or children 12 and older.

If you’ve ever heard Stewart McLean on CBC, tuned into The Moth, attended a Digital Storytelling Workshop , been captivated by Native American stories of Coyote, listened to David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, delighted in the rhythm of Jamaican patois with Miss Lou or sat around a campfire telling ghost stories, you’ll know how many styles of storytelling there are and how deep our connection with oral literature can be.

Dare to suspend belief for an evening and engage your sense of wonder, fear, imagination and magic.

Posted with permission of A. Jaeger.

Author: Anne Jaeger, www.troutinplaid.com  (posted on November 3, 2012)

Our thanks to Anne Jaeger who writes of cultural, performance and literary events and reflections, for her recent blog post about us, The Secrets of the Storytellers. 

You can find this and other interesting and unique commentary in Annie's wonderful blog, www.troutinplaid.com. And as a bonus, there is a short video of our very own Hermione Revison telling the tale of Bel And The Dragon.

The Art of Storytelling

Keeping an Age Old Tradition Alive

 By Denny Manchee

Finding the grace and place of oral storytelling in a smart-device world.

Not so long ago in the hills of Northumberland, a group of travellers, old and young, bearing books and colourful hats and instruments and food, made their way up the steep slope from Lake Ontario, past the stone fortress of luxury on the hill, and further north along a leafy road to a tidy house in a grove of fragrant evergreens. It was the month of June and her name was June. The house was brown and her last name was Brown. And the old and young were there to listen and tell and learn.

“New Voices and Old Wisdom” was the name of the gathering, a weekend devoted to the art and craft of storytelling. It was conceived by host June Brown and her fellow teller Brenda Byers. Forty storytellers came from as far away as the Bruce Peninsula and Ottawa to swap tales and build community and momentum among their scattered numbers.

You may well wonder who these folks are who practice this ancient art form in an age where texting and tweeting are the twin peaks of communication. And how can storytellers, with their talking sticks, possibly compete for people’s fractured attention with something as simple as a single human voice?

There is magic in a well told story, a spellbinding quality that takes us back to our childhood and the intimacy of a parent’s voice, a gifted teacher, or the collective thrill of a ghost story around the fire. We are hard-wired for stories, just as we are for music.

“For all of our modern technology, we are drawn to the campfire,” says Cobourg storyteller Marg Kropf. “We are drawn as a group to form circles around fires, whether we sing, whether we tell, whether we share. That’s something that’s universal. And you see kids love campfires and they love to be scared,” she adds, her crystalline voice rising and falling with an actor’s skill. Yes, she does that too, and before that she taught French. Just ask for her rooster imitation from the story “Chanticleer and the Fox” – en francais, bien sur!

June, a bright-eyed former camp counselor and early childhood educator, came to the art at a young age. “I had been telling stories most of my life because I was a camp counselor, then I told to my children, then started telling in the schools with my grandchildren, and kept taking more and more courses. I didn’t know you could tell to adults till 10 years ago!”

Like many people in this business, June and Marg are ebullient women of a certain age with huge hearts, a passion for the spoken word and a background in teaching. Not surprising, for teaching and sharing lessons – big and small – are at the core of this ancient tradition, a tradition that takes much practice and hard work. Just as a musician must play scales and practise, practise, practise, so too must a storyteller. Consider how you might tackle memorizing a 35-minute story!

Thankfully, June has a fabulous memory, toned from her experience with dyslexia as a child – “I found reading and writing really hard but had a great memory.” Like some other storytellers, she creates a story map to sketch the main skeleton of the story. People also use a story line with characters and events branching off to learn a piece, or learn them like studying for exams, memorizing pictures and scenes in their heads. “Then you tell it over and over and build detail on your skeleton,” says June. “You don’t have to remember it word for word because it’s a living thing and will change subtly with each telling.”

What makes this different from the written word is that the story is very pared down, like this, for example: “She walked into the room. She was very beautiful. They fell in love.”

This bare-bones narrative leaves lots of scope for the storyteller to invent and adapt on the fly. But you still have to have your wits about you to remember the chronology in a 30- or 40-minute story.

Way back, way, way, back in the day, “Irish poet-tellers studied their art for 15 years, and had to be wise in philosophy, astronomy, magic and conversant with 250 prime tales and a hundred subsidiary ones,” according to American storyteller Jane Yolen in her book Favourite Folktales from Around the World.

“Medieval troubadours,” she adds, “were expected to know the current court and countryside favourite tales as well as recite the latest in court scandals, play two instruments well, and further, to be able to repeat the noteworthy theses from the universities.” The Twitter of their times, as it were.

Nowadays, smart devices deal with the scrolling ephemera of life, but there’s still a place and an appetite for the deeper breath.

“Storytellers can be tradition-keepers, teachers, entertainers and all of the above,” says Dan Yashinsky, who was at the June gathering, and is one of the leading storytellers in Canada and founder of “1001 Nights of Storytelling” in Toronto (held every Friday night at Innis Café at U of T). Clad in hip black T-shirt and jeans and looking ever youthful, Dan says the revival of interest in oral storytelling may come from a feeling of being disconnected from the things that make and sustain community: gatherings of neighbours, good listening, living voices.

“Storytelling is like the slow-food movement,” he says in his Jewish-Detroit drawl. “Just like slow food can’t compete with a quick burger and fries, slow literature needs its own time – the time to enter the reverie of listening – and brings with it its own unique pleasures.” (To hear Dan tell a short, funny story called “My Bubbe and the Police,” follow this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnJ9B6PtZwQ)

The storyteller’s relationship with the audience – be it kids, seniors, hospital patients, festival goers or corporate types – creates an energy loop that affects both teller and listeners. “You bring yourself to the story and draw energy from the audience,” says June. “You want to see their eyes, their response. The energy goes back and forth and you tell the story together.” Hence June’s particular interest in participation stories.

Back in Marg Kropf’s cosy living room in Cobourg, we’re having coffee with another storyteller, Enid DeCoe. Both she and Marg are members of the Durham Folklore Storytellers and both have been telling tales for years. Enid, a model of elegant grandmotherhood in a classic navy dress, has the measured, sonorous voice of a kindergarten teacher – which she was for many years.

The two are riffing on the relevance of this art form amid the deafening noise of contemporary life. “Stories can teach, explain and entertain, sometimes all at once,” says Enid. Where once the art of story telling was about transmitting knowledge and news, today it is more about revealing larger truths to offer context and hope in our crazy times.

One of Enid’s favourite stories to tell is “The Story of the Three Kingdoms”, by Walter Dean Myers. “At the end it says only people have their stories, and in their stories they find wisdom, and in their wisdom they find strength.

“And that to me is so powerful.”

Ah yes wisdom, universal truths, the kind you can’t find on “Grey’s Anatomy” or gawker.com, the kind that cross cultures and time, that offer perspective on today’s news-obsessed world. Point taken.

Enid goes on to talk about the value of storytelling in the school system, where she spent her career: “Stories develop listening skills, imagination, comprehension and an understanding of relationships and cultures.” That’s a good basket of skills worth promoting, and they seem to be basic tools for the culture of “presenting” that most kids will experience in the workplace.

But beyond the obvious pedagogical benefits of storytelling in the school system lies our collective need for stories to help us understand the larger human narrative. Archetypes of the trickster and fool, of love lost and won, of good and evil transcend time and place. When I asked Dan about folktales that speak to the greed of our times and the likes of Bernie Madoff, he said: “All of the world’s folktales teach us that greed, hoarding, self-interest and exploitation of others, particularly the poor, are destructive forces. In folktales, the perpetrators of such evil acts usually pay for their greed in satisfyingly extreme forms of punishment.” Like a lifetime in prison, for example.

Still, the audience for this art form is relatively small, so what does the future of storytelling look like in Ontario? As the “New Voices and Old Wisdom” gathering wrapped up at June Brown’s Rivendell-like property north of Grafton, she and Brenda were heartened by the connections people had made and were forging ahead with a plan to launch a travel-and-billeting program this fall to allow storytellers to move around the province at little expense and continue to learn from each other, share their wisdom and expand their audience.

Dan, ever the storytelling ambassador, would smile at this. “What I hold onto is the passionate belief that knowing good stories by heart and telling them to a circle of listeners makes a haven for the human spirit. I have seen a genuine renaissance of this art all around the world. I guess people are discovering they just can’t double click on wisdom.”

Reprinted with permission of Watershed Magazine (www.watershedmagazine.com)

Appearing in the Fall, 2012 edition.

Author: Denny Manchee (Fall 2012)

REFLECTIONS ON JONESBOROUGH’S NATIONAL STORYTELLING FESTIVAL 2012

I spent the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Jonesborough is the site of the annual National Storytelling Festival. This is the event’s 40^th year celebration. USA Today has described the Festival as “the leading event of its kind”. After attending many of the telling performances there, I can honestly say this is not an exaggeration. It is a total immersion in all popular genres, styles and personalities currently shaping American storytelling. The featured tellers are many and represent some of the best of the best among American tellers.

The Festival has four large performance tents spread around the small town. The largest tent holds 1,500 people! Jonesborough normally has about 5,000 residents but during this year’s Festival, that number swelled exponentially with over 12,000 avid and passionate fans of the art of storytelling flooding into the small downtown core. Organized by the staff of the International Storytelling Centre, located in Jonesborough, hundreds of volunteers ensured that all events, site logistics, visitor support and guest registration went very smoothly. Local and state police were in evidence, always friendly, helpful and courteous as they mingled with the visitors, coordinated complicated traffic management movements and even happily posed for the occasional picture.

Each day begins at 10am and continues with special storytelling events drawing enthusiastic fans to the tents and an intimate, indoor performance studio until almost midnight. By my count, there were 25 top premiere or ‘featured’ tellers and 6 new-comers to the Jonesborough stages, each of them having their loyal fans. Each event was emceed by one of six well-known tellers who kept the audience entertained and hyped for the featured performers. 

An event lasted one hour. Sometimes there were several tellers performing in one show while a few of the featured tellers were given their own one hour gig. Between shows, fans had a half hour to make their way to the next tent venue, visit the porta-potties, grab some food from the vendor tents while mixing and mingling with other excited and eager fans. Some of my most memorable moments in my visit were talking to other fans about specific tellers they had heard that day or more often, we traded stories about our own interest in storytelling and some of our telling adventures.

I was surprised to learn that for many who come to Jonesborough each year, the average number of Festivals attended by a fan is six. However, I met many who had been coming for 10, 20 or in one case, 30 years! Just as the featured tellers come from all around the US and two were from Canada, the fans often travel huge distances to sit at the Holy Grail of American storytelling. While Jonesborough is the ultimate event each year for many, I quickly learned that storytelling festivals are hugely popular all over the United States. I lost track of how many Festivals I saw displayed on the T-shirts and fleeces of the fans.

The weather in north-eastern Tennessee at this time of year can always be a bit tricky to predict with confidence and this year was no exception. Friday and the early part of Saturday started off sunny and warm but quickly changed to cloudy, colder, windy and rain for the rest of the time. While most Festival goers came prepared for the changeable weather, I am sure the sale of fleece and windbreakers in the Visitor Centre did a brisk business.

Would I make a pilgrimage to Jonesborough again, I am often asked now that I am back home? Absolutely, no doubt about it. It was an amazing learning experience, hugely entertaining and lots of fun. From where I live in Ontario to Jonesborough, it is a fourteen hour road trip. There is the cost of hotels or B and B’s, meals, Festival registration fee and gas but I don’t regret the expense at all. At least not until my Visa bill arrives next month!

In Part Two of my Jonesborough blog posts, I will introduce you to some of my favourite tellers at this year’s Festival and reflect on lessons learned for me as an aspiring teller.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

October 18, 2012.