subscribe | advertise | about | contact | home

Seattle Storytellers Guild Reviving One of the Oldest Performing Arts by Ellen Hastings

They aren’t writers crafting a literary story and reading from a page, nor are they actors performing a play from a memorized script. They are storytellers, carrying their stories in their hearts and minds, and passing them along as they look into the eyes of each member of their audience.

Seattle has a seasoned community of storytellers who network through their own nonprofit organization, the Seattle Storytellers Guild. The guild was founded over 25 years ago by Clare Cuddy, whose goal was to promote storytelling as an art form for adults. She put up fliers, placed ads in the paper and offered a class on storytelling at the UW Experimental College. People responded, and her community of “tellers” created a base that continues today.

The guild was at a peak in 1993, boasting 400 members and a regular performance space at the Burke Museum. The decade to come saw a slow and steady decline in membership and event attendance waned, leading to the loss of the Burke Museum space. During those years the local theater scene was also in decline as funding issues and technology-driven entertainment put many of Seattle’s live performance events at risk.

In the late ’90s, the guild was offered a regular space at All for Kids bookstore in the Ravenna neighborhood. The bookstore initially became the home for “Teller’s Night Out,” but now hosts the guild’s “Story Swap” on the second Friday of each month. Santoro’s Books in Greenwood also has regular guild-sponsored storytelling the fourth Thursday of every month, and the annual Northwest Folklife Festival at Seattle Center is another reliable arena in which to see storytellers shine.

The guild has cycled through highs and lows over the last 25 years, but the current feeling is that it is on a steady upswing. Membership and attendance at events have been rising in the past year, and the guild had a strong showing for its “Tellabration” in honor of its 25th anniversary in 2007. Busy promoting and supporting storytelling throughout the year, the guild sponsors storytelling events and offers workshops for beginners and continuing education for established tellers. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what is driving people back to this more intimate art form, but local storyteller Lesley Creed suggests “the biggest boost to storytelling may be the saturation of television and the sound bite… people want something more.”

Libraries, museums and schools are other common venues for storytellers to find gigs, but today, all sorts of organizations, including mainstream corporations, are using storytellers to inform their audiences. As national storyteller Susan O’Halloran states in a recent article in Storytelling Magazine, “Stories work. They create connection, because it is hard to argue with someone’s personal experience.”

Naomi Baltuck is a nationally known storyteller and the current president of the guild. She started out as a teacher and a puppeteer and found storytelling through the UW Experimental College. She has been involved with the guild almost since the beginning and from 1980-81 hosted Cracker Barrel Mornings, a regular Saturday morning program in Edmonds. Baltuck's passion for storytelling is contagious, as evidenced by the fact that her husband and two teenage daughters also have become accomplished storytellers. They have been known to perform together at the Northwest Folklife Festival since the youngest was in kindergarten. Naomi is careful not to pressure her children into performing, but recognizes that since her children have grown up with the tradition, storytelling feels very natural to them. She recalls how her daughter turned to her one day and exclaimed “Mom, I want to do stories for Earth Day!”

“Stories are a wonderful medium to reach people,” says Baltuck. “I think humans are hardwired to hear stories.” Baltuck is a revivalist storyteller, discovering stories that she hears or finds in books and reviving them. Her repertoire is broad and varied, with some stories only sticking with her for the particular event or occasion it was fashioned for, and others having been told so many times they're committed to memory. As a published author of story collections she has also preserved many of her stories in written form.

Pat Peterson is another storyteller in the guild who has a long and renowned career. Unlike many of her peers, Peterson considers herself strictly a teller, not an author, and none of her stories are written down. She admits she is chastised by some for not preserving her stories in this way, but that is not how Peterson works. She talks about ”seeing” her stories and carrying them in her mind’s eye. Audience interaction and response influence the telling of her tales, and she often discovers new things along the way. “It’s the curse and the blessing of the work. It’s never the same twice…” states Peterson. Although she was a theater major in college, she never pursued acting. “What I like about storytelling is we don’t have that 4th wall …,” she explains. Unlike actors who try to create their own reality as if the audience isn’t watching, “I always try to make eye contact with everyone there.”

A pure love of performing, connecting with community, sharing stories and opening minds is what drives many a storyteller, especially in the revivalist tradition. However, there are also the traditional storytellers who are more personally connected to their stories. They tell the stories they grew up with that are an integral part of their heritage. The rise of radio and television left much of the oral tradition in our Western culture behind, but many native communities locally and around the world still embrace their storytelling traditions. Vi Hilbert is an upper Skagit elder revered internationally for her storytelling, as is her nephew Johnny Moses.

Guild member Leslie Creed is committed to preserving stories of the Makah Nation. A self-described “skinny little white girl,” Creed had the unique opportunity to apprentice with Helen Peterson, a Makah elder who devoted her life to the well-being of the tribe and preservation of its oral tradition. Creed finished her degree work in 1994 in performing arts and Northwest native world tradition. She was encouraged by a Native American professor of hers to pursue storytelling and to meet with Helen Peterson. Peterson was at first unwilling to take Creed as her apprentice because she wanted to find an apprentice within the tribe. Eventually, though, with Creed’s persistence (and the lack of any native apprentice), Peterson agreed to share her stories with her and to impart the ancient oral tradition and the “sacred breath of the ancestors.” Creed remembers literally sitting at Peterson’s feet as she told her the stories. She has no notes to refer to, but carries the stories in her mind and heart. It is an honor for her as she maintains her commitment to Helen Peterson (who died in 1998) to keep the traditional stories alive until she can pass them back to someone in the Makah tribe or at least another Native American.

Teacher and librarian Debra Harris-Branham is an African American storyteller who found storytelling in college in the 1980s. She did not grow up with the stories of her ancestors but focused on African American folktales as a way to connect with her culture. Noted for the dancing and singing she incorporates into her performances, she gets a lot of audience participation. She also teaches a storytelling class in the information school at the UW.

The range of focus within the storytelling community is astounding. Some storytellers focus on children’s stories or humor, others on folklore and ethnic preservation. Some want to bridge communities and even nations, while others aim to help heal people and bring comfort. Their backgrounds are also as varied as their styles and specialties, although some former experience in teaching, writing or performing is not uncommon.

Storytellers are all around us (and perhaps still undiscovered in many of us). They have the power to bring us together, make us laugh, help us heal and break down walls. They hold our histories as well as our dreams. They sing and dance and look us in the eye. They connect with us personally, to entertain and inform us. Baltuck captures the storyteller’s art well in quoting fellow storyteller Ruth Sawyer: “We touch the heart that the mind may understand.”

Ellen Hastings is a Seattle-based writer, businesswoman and proud mother of two.

©2008 Caliope Publishing Company