Telling Tales

By Alex Hanson

Valley News Staff Writer
Published 8/21/08

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Like a lot of storytellers, Simon Brooks came upon his vocation in a roundabout way. He always told jokes as a schoolboy growing up in Worcester, England, and in college the tales grew longer and longer. But that was just telling stories, not storytelling.

Brooks, who now lives in Orford, studied photography and worked as a professional photographer, but it was at a job at the United Kingdom's Youth Hostel Association in his mid- to late-20s that the idea of becoming a storyteller took root. He saw a storyteller named Eric Maddern at the site of the Battle of Hastings (where the Normans finally conquered the Saxons in 1066, which is another story). "He completely brought history alive in his storytelling," Brooks said. "I thought ˜Oh, that's a cool job, but I couldn't imagine getting paid for it."

Hostel guests were the audience for Brooks' stories, many of which were from the Native American tradition.

Years later and an ocean away, Brooks, 44, is celebrating five years as a professional storyteller. He's releasing his second CD, More Second-hand Tales, at a reception this evening at Hanover's Howe Library. The free reception, which starts at 6:30, is also a way for Brooks to thank the libraries that he said are responsible for launching his career.

Brooks' journey to his chosen profession and to the Upper Valley is a story all its own. He met his wife, Sarah, when she came to England from America to work for the Youth Hostels. They moved to Portland, Ore., where Brooks managed a coffee shop. He later worked for WorldCom and arranged a transfer to the company's Boston office. The search for a home for their growing family (son Aidan is 8; daughter Perry is 3), led them to the Upper Valley, where Sarah found a job at Dartmouth College and is now head of finance and administration for the college's Institute for Security and Technology Studies.

"I became a stay-at-home father," Brooks said, but it wasn't long before he applied for a job as children's librarian at Thetford's Latham and Peabody libraries, on the condition that he could tell, rather than merely read, stories to children. Before long, Brooks was telling stories at other libraries in the area.

He has since told stories in more than 80 venues, ranging as far afield as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the annual Three Apples Storytelling Festival in Bedford, Mass. Much of his work has come to him through word of mouth.

"I haven't actively marketed myself," said Brooks, who has a Web site, www.diamondscree.com, and a brochure to send out.

"Right now, I'm in this good place where I've got enough work that I can be a storyteller, a stay-at-home dad and a children's librarian, and bring in some money, he said.

When he started out, Brooks charged $25 an hour. Now he makes $200 to $700 per engagement, depending on its length and intricacy. Last summer he worked five days a week, thanks to his inclusion on a roster of performers chosen by the New Hampshire State Library to perform at libraries throughout the state.

Brooks has learned a repertoire of around 140 stories, about 60 of which he can tell with little or no preparation. If he's working on only one story at a time, he can commit its performance to memory in about a month, he said. He's learning Beowulf right now, a long story that's taking him a long time to pull together.

When he first started telling tales at the Youth Hostels, he told Native American stories. "The Native American philosophy, belief system, spoke to me a great deal,"he said. "I was reading a lot about their history and culture."

As his early interest in Native American tales suggests, Brooks favors folk stories and fairy stories, myths and legends from around the world. On his new CD, Brooks tells stories set in Latin America, China and Norway.

"I think there's a lot of power in those stories," Brooks said. "They speak to us as people at a primordial level. You know, it's what we did when we ran around in animal furs with our flint knives."

While Brooks' life as a storyteller got started only in the past few years, his upbringing coincided with a resurgence in the ancient art form.

When the celebrated storyteller Odds Bodkin moved to Bradford, N.H., in 1982, "There were no storytellers in New Hampshire that I knew of," Bodkin said. "During that time there has been a true renaissance in storytelling."

Founded 25 years ago, the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling now has around 300 members, said Tom Brillat, a member since 2000 and the organization's first executive director since July 1.

"What's happening, I think, is that our cultural impression of storytelling as what you do with children in pre-school and elementary school, that is shifting," Brillat said.

Although it doesn't get the attention of theater or live music, storytelling combines elements of both. Universities are beginning to offer degree programs in storytelling, and the construction of an oral narrative is a skill prized in professions as diverse as the law, medicine and counseling. Both Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., and East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tenn., offer programs in storytelling. Nearby Jonesborough, Tenn., is home to the International Storytelling Center and the National Storytelling Festival.

Storytelling started its comeback in the late 1960s and the 1970s, when folk music, street theater and other democratic forms of performance were on the rise. In the past decade, storytelling has ranged from the work of such personal monologuists as Spalding Gray to storytellers like Bodkins -- a bardic storyteller who uses music and multiple voices.

Bodkins called storytelling 'the opportunity for a person to be a single-point media source; without cameramen, writers, producers or actors. There's something very brave and significant about that."

One of the aspects of storytelling of most importance to Brooks is its effect on literacy. Brooks didn't become an avid reader until he was 12 or so, a fact he shares with his elementary and middle school audiences. "If there's one person in that audience that hears one of my stories and says, 'Wow, I want to find another story like that,' then I'm a happy guy."

 

 

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