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Stories shared to keep up cultural connections

The Tampa Bay Storytellers' Guild consists of devoted listeners and talented storytellers .

By ABHA BHATTARAI
Published October 31, 2006

The storytellers jump and dance. They howl like hound dogs and gasp like the wind.

When it's Sula Donnolo's turn, she skips and jumps as the 11 other adults watch.

She twirls in circles as she "dances with the devil."

Donnolo, a member of the Tampa Bay Storytellers' Guild, is telling the story of a young girl who drops a pail of milk and then offers the devil her soul to reclaim the spilled milk.

The guild gets together once a month to swap stories.

The group of 30 ranges from "dedicated listeners" to professional storytellers, member Billie Noakes said.

This month's theme: scary stories.

Drew Willard, 52, told a story about "the hairiest, scariest monster you could ever imagine."

Willard, a pastor, usually tells biblical stories, but he needed something scary this month, something with monsters or spirits.

So he picked "Wally and the hairy monster" because, he said, it's "one of the few monster stories I knew."

Storytelling is about connections, Noakes said: generational, familial, cultural.

Several of the people in the audience are deaf. There's a sign language translator who interprets the stories for them.

Donnolo likes to tells African, Caribbean and Brazilian stories. Sometimes she scours through 20 or 30 books before she finds one she wants to re-create.

"I like the ones that are electric," she said.

"I like to jump and run and dance. Not all stories fit my style."

Noakes, a writer for Florida Health Care News, comes up with her own stories.

"A lot of storytelling is about preserving folklores and fables," she said, "but we also need to stay current and fresh so stories resonate with people."

Last Sunday, she told a story she wrote two Halloweens ago.

It started with a simple idea: "I thought, 'What would happen if there was no wind in a haunted house?'" she said.

Then she added her own observations about Florida's changing landscape.

What resulted was a story about haunted houses, Halloween and development:

"The wind turned herself around and went home, but not to Madeira Beach. There were too many condos there, and there was no room for her anymore."

Her stories won smiles from the audience.

"I love watching people's faces, watching them go where I want to take them," Noakes said.

Others personalize their stories in more subtle ways.

Emily Harris, who used to be a costume designer, often uses costumes and puppets.

She tweaks stories to make them interactive.

"Any subject - even math and science - can become like an episode of Masterpiece Theater," Harris, 56, said.

"You take the words off the page, add some characters and put yourself into the setting."

[Last modified October 30, 2006, 23:30:06]