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Institute Library “Tellabrates” The Power of Story

Leah Andelsmith | November 9th, 2018

Institute Library “Tellabrates” The Power of Story

Downtown  |  Institute Library  |  Storytelling  |  Arts & Culture

 

Margot Camacho was following a man on a search for peace, love and faith. Cindy Leffell found herself on the wrong side of town, locked out of a running car.  Anna Bninski went off road to get to the DMV.

 They were just a few of over a dozen storytellers who took the stage at the Institute Library (IL) Wednesday and Thursday nights, for the library’s sixth annual “Tellabration,” a celebration of storytelling and personal narrative held each fall around Election Day. Hosted in collaboration with the Connecticut Storytelling Center, this specific “Tellabration” was one of over 30 performances and workshops across Connecticut this month. More than 60 attended over both nights.

The two performances marked the culmination of four storytelling workshops this fall aimed at helping veteran and novice storytellers alike prepare one story for a live audience. On stage, surrounded by the library’s biography collection, each performer’s story transported the audience. There may as well have been a campfire in the center of the room with the way each teller activated the primal magic of story, drawing the audience closer in and closer together.

Arnie Pritchard 1
Pritchard : Trying to build community. Leah Andelsmith Photos. 

They are part of a burgeoning storytelling scene in the city, anchored by storyteller Arnie Pritchard at the IL as well as Rebekah Fraser at Lotta Studio, and Karen DuBois-Walton and Kevin Walton at ConnCAT. In addition to “Tellabration,” Pritchard leads the IL’s monthly “Story Sharing” workshops.

“We try to support everyone while letting them tell their own stories,” he said at the event. “We’re trying to put on a good show here … But we’re also trying to build community.”

Community with members like Camacho, who retold a Jewish folktale titled “The Search.” As the evening’s cool pressed in on the drafty IL, Camacho warmed the room with the story of a man who searches the world for the most beautiful things—peace, love, and faith—only to find he had them at home all along.

“You’re all that I’m missing; you’re all that I lack,” she sang sweetly at one point in the story, the audience in her thrall.

Each stop on the hero’s journey was like a verse, and Camacho wove it together with lines repeated like a refrain. The silent audience followed the thread of her story like a song, recognizing the familiar patterns that kept them captivated.

While Camacho chose a folktale, most performers told personal experience stories, such as Anna Bninski’s “Off-roading to the DMV.”

“When my alarm went off at 6:15am, I was a woman on a mission,” she began. Listeners tromped with Bninski through the wilds of East Rock Park on a rainy morning, carried along by the cadence of her storytelling. She varied the speed of her lines, breaking for pauses and answering her own questions.

“Why are you going to the Department of Motor Vehicles? You don’t own a motor vehicle,” she asked herself as the audience laughed. Even after carefully mapping her route, Bninski wound up at the Eli Whitney Center across town. Faced with the specter of arriving late to the DMV, Bninski abandoned the path and braved the underbrush, cutting directly through the park. She made it to the DMV, sodden and triumphant, only to find out she was one letter short of proper proof-of-address.

Bninski lost to bureaucracy that day and went home without updating her out-of-state license—but the madcap story kept the audience laughing.

Jim Moran 1
Storyteller Jim Moran at Thursday's session. 

Cindy Leffell’s story “The Rough Side of Town” was also an adventure, but one fueled by tension and fear instead of humor. On a work assignment in an unfamiliar area, Leffell thought she should lock her purse safely in the car, or leave the car running in case she needed to get away quickly. Thoughts muddied by paranoia, she did both.

Leffell was waving at passing cars for help when a man claiming to be an off-duty state trooper stopped and said he had a tool at home that could help her get into her car.

“‘Why don’t you come with me?’ the man said.” Listeners gasped aloud.

“I thought, ‘An off duty state trooper, how lucky for me,’” Leffell said. Throughout the room, the tightening of knots in stomachs was practically audible.

From the car window, Leffell tried to make eye contact with passers by, in the macabre hope that she would have at least been seen with this man if anything happened. Nervous laughter and groans of worry rippled around the room as Leffell was greeted by a “giant grey pit bull” in the man’s kitchen.

When the Leffell described how the man went down to the basement, retrieved a “slim jim” and brought Leffell safely back to her car, the tension that had congealed in the room broke up, to the audience’s deep relief.

Safe in her car, Leffell recalled “a slurry of emotion—anger and shame” that washed over her as she “ticked off all the bad decisions” she had made. But there was also “gratitude at the good fortune I had in meeting this man,” she said.

“It could have been a very different story, right?”

Dana Savo 1

For veteran storyteller Dana Savo (pictured above), the diversity of experience in the IL’s storytelling workshops earlier this fall was a major draw to the event. She said she relishes the opportunity for self-expression.

“We all come from all different walks of life,” she said, before explaining that her goal as a storyteller is to “write” a new story every month. Currently she’s dredging up family secrets to craft a story about her grandmother, which she plans to tell at next week’s story sharing session at the library.

“I feel an overwhelming burning urge to be in front of people on a stage and to try to make people feel better by offering my generous heart,” said Savo, who also works as a medical clown.

While Prichard leads all aspects of the Institute Library’s storytelling program—both the fall workshops leading up to the Tellabration and the monthly Story Sharing Group—Institute Library Director Valerie Garlick noted that the work ties into the IL’s broader mission of diversity, inclusion and outreach. She explained that the content of the stories is never edited or filtered through a theme.

“It’s a glimpse into the voice of our people, the people,” she said. “Voices that make up who we are.”