Stop in the Name of the Story

Spinning their tales, just for the love of it
Thursday, September 27, 2007

By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

Rivka Willick's father could stop the wheels on the bus from turning.

[Left: Rivka Willick, courtesy of folkproject.org]

After retirement, the old man had a habit of going on bus tours to faraway locales. Every morning when getting on the bus, he would walk himself down to the second-to-last row, sit down and begin telling stories.

The other passengers would initially clamor for seats at the front of the bus as usual, but as his story got into its stride, their ears would start to bend backward. They would begin gathering at the back of the bus, trying to get as close to the storyteller as possible.

One day as he was telling a story, the driver stopped the bus with no warning. The man pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road, parked and walked to the back of the bus.

"I've been driving all week," he said. "But I've got to hear this story."

"If you meet a teller, they can do that," said Willick, who lives in Passaic. "They can pull people in. Half the people in the National Storytelling Network are hobbyists."

Unlike her father, however, Willick is a professional storyteller. She will be running a workshop at the 15th annual New Jersey Storytelling Festival this Sunday and has been turning her passion for tales into a career for four years.

There might be only the finest of lines between storytelling and other performing arts, but Willick sees it as a distinct art form.

"The simplest explanation is, a teller does not memorize or read, but passes over a story from themselves to the audience," she explained. Various performers might have specific methods, including the use of puppets, props or music, or they might rely on nothing other than charisma.

"There is an interaction between the teller and the audience that just brings everyone to a different place," said Jack McKeon, a teller from Teaneck. "A connection is created."

McKeon first experienced that connection as a teacher at Ridgewood High School, where he began telling tales in his class on myths. It would be only appropriate, he reasoned, to introduce that sort of material in storytelling form.

He has never regretted that departure from the curriculum.

"The first story I told them was Jack and the Beanstalk," said McKeon. "Once they realized what the story was, they didn't know whether to take me seriously or not." But soon they began to pay attention.

"It ceased to be school, somehow," he said. In the year that followed, McKeon would take a sabbatical to learn the craft from, among others, Julia Della Torre from Glen Rock, a co-founder of the New Jersey Storytelling Festival. He would go on to teach storytelling at his school and find new source material in myth.

Now retired, McKeon has made storytelling into a second career. "It's just not a full-time thing yet," he said ruefully, admitting that he doesn't get to perform as often as he would like.

That may be because the ancient performance art isn't as developed in our part of the world as others.

Born in Michigan and a former resident of Atlanta, Willick came from areas of the country with much more storytelling culture. "In New Jersey when you say you're a storyteller, people look at you like, 'Huh?' " she said.

"Storytelling isn't an important cultural thing here in North Jersey," agreed McKeon. "There's always a sense that these stories will fall out of circulation. I like the idea of bringing them back and retelling them."

At the Storytelling Festival, tellers of various stripes will be doing their best to keep their stories in the hearts and minds of listeners. Some, like McKeon, may draw from folklore. Others, like Willick, may draw from real stories of acquaintances and historical sources. Tellers may even draw from literary sources, embellishing on tales made famous by the likes of Mark Twain.

Five stages, including a children's stage and an adults-only venue, will be open simultaneously.

But "even with a big audience, there is an intimate connection," said Willick. "I always say it's the most intimate thing people can exchange without body fluid."

E-mail: shih@northjersey.com

Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.