The Delightful Marriage of Old World Storytelling and New Technology
© Misty Mator

Normally I would start a blog for January with “Happy New Year!”

But instead, I will say what everyone is thinking: “Thank God 2020 is OVER!”

2021 is beginning with extra reason for hope and rejoicing for a better year. Hope for an end to the pandemic and restrictions. Hope for seeing loved ones again. Hope for a return to employment. Hope for a return of students to their classrooms.

And there is hope for storytelling.

Many tellers are hoping venues reopen and are looking forward to returning to coporeal/in-person audiences. I know I have missed being able to perform in front of children (other than my own!) and seeing StoryShare’s guild members in our local library. I share this hope of being in the same physical room as my audience this year in 2021.

Most storytellers who live in a temperate climate zone are accustomed to January being in the middle of the storytelling “off” season. It’s hard to predict whether a winter storm will render roads unpassable, so most venues request gigs beginning in March and culminate with Tellabration in November. I typically work on my set for that year’s summer reading program and enjoy snuggling in with a good book for the month of January.

In traditional cultures around the world, however, winter was the storytelling season. With so much to do the rest of the year – hunting, planting, and harvesting – stories were reserved for the long dark nights of winter. In Northeastern Native American tribes, children were told that if the pumpkins “heard” stories being told in summer, they would stop growing, for they would believe it was winter – the storytelling season. The girls of the Yup’ik people of modern day Alaska would use a yaaruin, a “storyknife,” to draw pictures in the snow to illustrate the stories they were telling. Icelandic peoples have used stories to warm up winter nights for centuries, handing down folkloric beliefs to present day. Even in places such as Morocco, storytelling was the choice way to pass the lengthy winter nights, snow or no snow. 

But January this year is different. I and other oral storytellers are preparing for programs while record-breaking snows fall outside our windows. These programs are nearly all virtual – a venue the majority of storytellers had never done before 2020. I have met and befriended a host of storytellers across the world that I likely never would have before the quarantine; this is a silver lining many storytellers have mentioned. January and February will be filled with storytelling for me, from the convenience of my living room or attic office, without having to miss telling my children goodnight.

I don’t believe this will be the first and last January with virtual storytelling shows. Far from it. When the world has reopened and we return to corporeal audiences in the same room as us, I think virtual storytelling will continue. I think it will fill a void….particularly in the winter months. Through new technology we will be returning to some worldwide collective storytelling roots, completing some odd hero’s journey after slaying the pandemic monster.

I hope for many things in 2021, as do many of you. I think it goes without saying that chief among them is that we will leave the worst of 2020 behind. But I hope we will bring the best into 2021 and the years beyond: storytelling in winter.

Joyous blessings, and many good stories to tell, to you and yours this 2021 year.

Bio:

Misty Mator is a storyteller from the Greater Pittsburgh Region. Misty draws on her study of traditional myths and her experience as a mother-of-four to entertain, educate, and amuse audiences of all ages. She is co-chair of the StoryShare Storytelling Guild and a member of the TELL: Pittsburgh Storytelling Series production team