More Mainers are taking the stage to tell their own tales

Yahoo

7 days ago

May 28—Although he was simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the idea of telling a personal story in public, Greg Tulonen found himself on stage talking about his father.
Tulonen, a pharmacy operations manager from Auburn, has been a fan of The Moth Radio hour on public radio for years. But he recently decided he wanted to be a storyteller instead of just a listener. He signed up for Stories Told Live, a monthly storytelling night at Blue in Portland. He talked for twelve minutes, about the time his father sped down the road chasing someone who had just thrown a Burger King bag out the window, about a father-son kite flying adventure involving 10,000 feet of string, and about his father's struggle with early-onset Alzheimer's, among other things.
"It was a challenge to myself, because I knew it was the kind of thing that freaked me out," said Tulonen, 55, about his public storytelling debut on May 1. "I'm very happy to have done it, though. It felt really good. It was so satisfying to get immediate audience reaction."
Storytelling has been growing and changing in Maine in recent years, with new events starting up and organizations using it to get their message out or make community connections. Stories Told Live at Blue, a nonprofit music and performance venue in Portland, is in its third year. The nonprofit group Community Plate in Gray, started in 2023, organizes regular potluck and story-sharing suppers around the state. The improv group Yes & Co. invites people to tell their stories at monthly shows at the Portland Media Center, then improvises sketches based on them. There's also a monthly story night called The Corner at L/A Arts in Lewiston that's been run by various volunteers for about a decade.
The University of New England in Biddeford held its third Health Care Story Slam, focused on stories of empathy from students and community members, on April 16. Suitcase Stories, created by Maine native Cheryl Hamilton, organized two sessions of stories by Portland-area immigrants at the Portland Museum of Art on May 8. The Maine State Breastfeeding Coalition held a Patchwork of Parenthood storytelling event on May 17 in Brunswick.
Though Maine has a long tradition of storytelling, featuring dry wit and Down East humor, the new popularity of storytelling seems to be fueled by people's desire to connect personally with each other, especially since the pandemic. Storytellers and event organizers say that live storytelling appeals to people because they can share their challenges, failures or traumas and get reassuring head nods and applause instead of the mocking replies often elicited by personal social media posts.
"I think social media has disrupted the fabric of how we communicate, of how we engage with one another, and people want to have a feeling of community and engaging again," said Nate Eldridge, 51, one of the organizers of Stories Told Live at Blue and executive director of the nonprofit Portland Media Center, which operates two community TV stations. "I think we are so alienated and lonely and distanced. But when you get 60 people together to hear one person tell a story about their divorce or how they lost their husband or some funny anecdote, it helps us connect to another human being. It makes you realize we're all living this shared experience."
TAKING THE STAGE
Many of the people who are volunteering to tell their stories at live events around Maine say they are fans of storytelling on podcasts or radio, including TED Talks and The Moth Radio Hour. The Moth began as a nonprofit storytelling organization in 1997 and its live show — Moth Mainstage — is coming to Portland's State Theatre on June 6. Tickets for the live, unscripted show sold out in about a day.
The Stories Told Live series at Blue was started by two people with backgrounds in various kinds of storytelling who were looking for a new project, and noticed there wasn't a regular storytelling series in Portland. Eldridge had worked as a producer at Maine TV stations, including for the popular News Center Maine TV magazine show "207." The co-founder of the series, Tim Ferrell, runs stand-up comedy workshops in the Portland area and coaches speakers.
Some of the people who tell stories at Blue are solicited by the organizers, and maybe have a passion or background in writing or performing. Sometimes people come to watch a story session and end up asking to get a spot on stage, which is what Tulonen did.
SallyAnn Gray, 45, of Portland, has been drawn to various types of storytelling for years. She works as a marketing strategist, but she also writes, sings in a band, and does a podcast with some of her friends. On May 1, she told her first story on stage to an audience, at Blue. On Ferrell's recommendation, she recorded a draft of her story, then it sent to him, listened to his feedback, and then practiced enough to do it live on stage. (Ferrell and Eldridge coach the storytellers, for free.)
Gray's story includes an exchange with her 13-year-old daughter, upset at the requirement that she eat dinner with her family every evening, calling the dinners "so boring" and telling Gray that she and the other members of the family are "all so cringe." It continues with Gray consulting ChatGPT about how to handle the family dinner dilemma, and a realization of why family meals mean so much to her now — because she almost never had them as a child herself.
"That was my first opportunity to dig into the dark a little, because I often feel like I need to entertain people," said Gray. "People love to laugh, and I do too. But I was really excited about this opportunity to share something that meant a lot to me."
NEW WAYS TO CONNECT
Lewiston native Cheryl Hamilton started a series called Suitcase Stories in 2017, after years of working in jobs that provided help to immigrants. The idea was to create public storytelling events where immigrants could talk about their own experiences, as a way to "counter the negative rhetoric" about immigrants that became prevalent during President Trump's first run for office. The series, based at the International Institute of New England, has hosted events featuring more than 500 people from 80 countries, including the one at the Portland Museum of Art on May 8.
Hamilton has also started Stellar Story Company, which works with businesses and organizations to "develop a culture of storytelling." That includes better communication within the organization, and using storytelling to make the organization's mission or message easier for people to relate to. She says there are many jobs in most businesses that require storytelling skills, from raising money, to getting staff to buy into a concept to public speaking.
The Maine State Breastfeeding Coalition uses a storytelling event, called Patchwork of Parenthood. It does raise money for the group, but the event is more about "friend raising," said Kara Kaikini, the coalition's executive director. The event features parents telling stories about a huge range of joys and struggles, and helps attract new volunteers and allies, Kaikini said. The University of New England in Biddeford used its Health Care Story Slam in April as way to foster empathy in the field of public health, said Isabel Ryan, a UNE student who coordinated the event.
One of the storytellers was Grace Stults, director of Health and Wellness for Special Olympics Maine. Stults, who has also worked as a special education teacher, thought that telling stories would be a good way to help other people see Special Athletes "as whole people" and understand how important good medical care is to them.
"I think often people with intellectual and and developmental disabilities are painted with a very thin brush," said Stults. "So these kind of speaking opportunities help raise awareness and paint a more full picture of their lives."
Karl Schatz and his wife, Margaret Hathaway, launched Community Plate in 2023 as a way to build community and combat loneliness statewide, but it also fits into the couple's interest in food and story telling. They run Ten Apple Farm in Gray, where they raise goats and hold cheesemaking workshops. They also both have worked in story-based mediums, Schatz as a photo journalist and Hathaway as a writer. They have collaborated on several books on food and farming. They've run more than 30 free pot-luck suppers with stories all over the state, so far. The most recent scheduled supper was this month at the Fairview Grange in the Central Maine town of Smithfield.
Schatz said as many as 100 people have attended a single supper. People are encouraged to bring a dish that has a story behind it, and are given prompts to help them share stories with other guests, things like "Share a story about a food that reminds you of a specific person or place," Schatz said. Besides the stories told at the table, a few other storytellers — seasoned ones and first timers — are invited to get up and share their stories with the larger gathering.
Gail Gross, a interior designer from Brunswick, said she was excited when she heard about Community Plate because she was looking for something creative to do in her spare time, and she loved the idea of combining food with meeting and talk to new people. So she decided to tell a story about the "circuitous route" she took to really loving food — cooking and eating. Her parents had been killed in a car crash when she was 19, and she didn't enjoy eating or much of anything for a while. At some point, she found the last jar of tomatoes her mother had ever canned, and used them to make her mom's chili recipe.
"My mom was not a good cook. She wasn't even allowed to become one, in a way, because my father was so meat and potatoes. And so I made her chili out of her last jar of tomato sauce, just hamburger, a can of beans, Minute Rice and her tomato sauce," said Gross, 64. "It's so simple and so basic, and was always a comfort food for me. But it wasn't until that moment that it became more, because it was the last bit of her."
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