Pat Spalding helps first-time storytellers discover their voices and refine their tales
Words and photo by Craig Robert Brown
Pat Spalding thinks the older woman is wearing too much lipstick.
“You got to figure out how to keep her classy,” she says. Spalding is sitting in an armchair flanked by a group of burgeoning storytellers, leading the True Tales Radio Boot Camp workshop at the Rye Public Library. But the woman with too much lipstick isn’t there. She’s a character, one who’ll make her first appearance before an audience on Thursday, Jan. 29, when Spalding’s students will share their tales at the library.
“It’s an involvement in sharing experience,” said Spalding. “And, whether I’m listening to a story of someone telling of their experience as an audience member or a listener, I identify and say, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ve been there. I get that.’”
Though the venues and media used for sharing stories have changed, the fundamentals are the same — Spalding believes that storytelling helps us relate to one another through commonalities. On the Seacoast, the art of storytelling is alive and well. Spalding’s True Tales Boot Camp is an offshoot of True Tales Radio, a monthly live storytelling broadcast on Portsmouth Community Radio. The Moth, the national touring storytelling series based on the National Public Radio show, returns to The Music Hall in Portsmouth on March 21.
This storytelling resurgence, aided with the popularity of podcasts, has given rise to a number of local storytelling and reading series, like I Could Just Diary and A Winter’s Tale, which ran from 2010 to 2014, and which Spalding also participated in.
“For me as a storyteller it was good to look at the themes and write a story,” she said of the area’s diverse storytelling series. “But I also went to most of them as an audience member.”
Spalding says the rise in storytelling’s popularity feels like pop-culture finally caught up to what she has devoted more than 30 years of her life to.
“That’s what we’re hoping to encourage, to open it up so people can have the experience of telling their stories.” — Pat Spalding
Since the early 1980s, Spalding has told her stories in front of audiences throughout the region. Today, she focuses more on helping new storytellers develop their voices and sift through their lives for material.
In her own life, Spalding used storytelling as a means to work through difficult events that shaped her. In doing so, she has been able to release herself from memories that haunted her, like that of her first love who died in Vietnam.
“I’m just kind of interested in the process right now. I’m interested in trying to encourage stories from others and try to understand better the techniques of what I’m doing. I’m looking at the skills of it rather than the catharsis,” she said
At the library, a conversation breaks out over one of the storyteller’s pieces. Advice and healthy criticism are given out: structural suggestions, ideas about the storyteller’s body language, and, of course, what to cut out.
Each storyteller is given just 10 minutes to speak, and they can’t use notes for the live event (though they can for the radio program). This can be restrictive as they unpack decades or a lifetime of emotions. But Spalding is on point, balancing a three-ring binder on her lap as she leans forward, intently listening to every word and pause, making notes on a typed copy of each story and offering suggestions on clarity and delivery.
As the workshop group discusses their stories, an electric fireplace, with floor to ceiling bookshelves on either side of its mantle, warms the room. Each storyteller cradles a short stack of typed pages with scratched-out sentences, notes handwritten in the margins, corners dog-eared and pages creased. It’s reminiscent of ancestral storytellers gathering around an open fire, telling stories and passing down traditions.
“Truly listening to what someone is saying has become a rather rare opportunity today. Storytelling nurtures and fills that void that we are missing in personal contact.” — John Lovering
Modern storytelling series, according to John Lovering, True Tales’ co-founder, reinforce those traditions and build connections between storytellers and their audience.
“Truly listening to what someone is saying has become a rather rare opportunity today. Storytelling nurtures and fills that void that we are missing in personal contact,” he said.
Lovering, along with Amy Antonucci, both long-time volunteers at WSCA, started the radio show in January 2014 and developed its style and parameters. An hour-long episode features six storytellers from outside the local arts scene — they aren’t actors, performers, or writers.
“We want more regular people who don’t have experience but have interest. That’s what we’re hoping to encourage, to open it up so people can have the experience of telling their stories,” said Spalding, who also serves as the show’s emcee.
These storytellers are nervous, often questioning whether or not their story is any good, whether people will listen to them, if the audience will laugh or cry. But the amateur storyteller is who Spalding looks for when she casts her net for each episode.
Beth Boynton, one of those new storytellers, stands in front of the other students, the fire glowing behind her. It’s her turn to speak. “Anyone ever wonder where your voice, or the power of voice comes from, and what happens when you give it away?” Boynton recounts the moment, when, at 17, she first “gave away” her voice. Her story focuses on the adversity she faced in a world where women were seen rather than heard. But this moment led her to a career in nursing and helping others communicate effectively.
As the evening winds down, a librarian comes into the room with a remote in her hand, points it at the fireplace, and extinguishes the flame. The fire is gone, but the stories remain.
The True Tales Boot Camp storytellers share their tales on Thursday, Jan. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Rye Public Library, 581 Washington Road, Rye. Call 603-964-8401 or visit ryepubliclibrary.org for information. True Tales Radio can be found online at portsmouthcommunityradio.org.