Note: This article was originally published in the Spirit of Jefferson on June 29, 2022.
People who tell stories are carrying out an activity probably as old as humans themselves. A story told aloud can make details and events come alive in a way that readers have to imagine for themselves. We get not just the words, but gestures, facial expressions, sound effects, and a cadenced delivery.
This is what happens at the Speak Story Series in Shepherdstown, a program with a growing national reputation for bringing in accomplished storytellers from around the world to a loyal and growing audience of listeners in our community. Carolyn Rodis of Shepherdstown, the secretary of Speak, mentioned that the Series is now in its tenth year of hosting monthly performances both online and at the Shepherdstown Opera House.
Adam Booth, the founder and artistic director of Speak, became a professional storyteller by way of showing better than average skills at lying. He’s won multiple Best Liar awards at the Liars’ Contest held at the annual Vandalia Gathering in Charleston and went on to tell his tall tales with the West Virginia Storytellers Guild and elsewhere around the country.
Mr. Booth is also the Storyteller in Residence in Shepherd University’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities. Dr. Sylvia Shurbutt, who directs the Center, believes the Center’s storytelling component is foundational to all its goals, because in her words, “Our stories define who we are.”
The Center’s outreach efforts target local schools, hospitals, churches, and community groups. These efforts help build understanding and appreciation of West Virginia heritage and culture and make it personal. For example, the Center organizes guided tours of historic Scotland and the Orkney Islands to directly acquaint students with the essential underpinnings of Appalachia’s Celtic heritage, the basis of much West Virginia music and storytelling.
Another program, the annual Teachers Institute jointly sponsored by the West Virginia Humanities Council, brings together teachers from across the state to explore stories of and about West Virginia. The teachers then can adapt and incorporate the stories they experience into their own classroom instruction.
Another way the Center makes its mark is through a tie-in with the national StoryCorps project. StoryCorps has accumulated between its start in 2003 and now over one million stories from individuals throughout the country. The Center contributes to this effort through the ongoing Shepherd Speaks StoryCorp project which recruits Shepherd students to record their own stories.
One of these students, William Prudnick, a junior in chemistry and a recipient of the William Pringle Scholarship, recorded a story in which he traced his own storytelling roots to his grandfather in Logan County. His grandfather still entertains his family and community with the humor and events of his 80 some years of living. His telling of West Virginia stories produced in his grandson a deep appreciation for our state and a commitment to invest himself in its future. He says, “Storytelling gives me a deep personal connection to the community. I feel a part of it.”
One storytelling group that understands this connection to community is the Read Aloud program operating across West Virginia. Volunteers for Read Aloud go to local schools and read to students works available in the school library. During the pandemic they video recorded readings of illustrated books for young pre-readers and made them available online.
Brian Ellis of Charles Town is one of these volunteers. Mr. Ellis has for several years volunteered with Read Aloud West Virginia to read stories to Kindergarten students at South Jefferson Elementary. Mr. Ellis, now retired, worked with developmentally disabled students and taught Sunday school, so he has the power of voice to get young, preliterate kids to sit still and lose themselves in an illustrated book. In his own words, he transmits his enthusiasm in reading to the kids in his audience, “allowing their imagination to expand.”
Stories have power, and storytellers understand how to wield that power. It’s what drives storytellers to perfect their art and what drives us listeners, young or old, to want to experience it.
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