Since we were not allowed a television in our house until I was 12, all of my early exposure to storytelling came from being read to by my parents, from attending plays and movies, from school and weekly trips to the library, from attending concerts and dance recitals and from listening to my mother rehearse plays. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was slowly developing an awareness of the various forms of storytelling and tastes in the theatrical use of language.
I had barely figured out how to walk when I can recall hearing language like, “Nothing has changed, John Brown. Nothing has changed,” as my mother and her friends rehearsed Stephen Vincent Benet’s JOHN BROWN’S BODY, or listening to my mother running her lines out loud for Thornton Wilder’s THE MATCH MAKER. I was no more than five when my parents took me to see A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM performed in a local high school with a touring company from New York City, which just happened to be the APA-Phoenix with Ellis Rabb, Will Geer and Rosemary Harris in the cast.
I was exposed to and had absorbed the poetry of the theater, the rhythms of drama, the language of character and of storytelling and the glory of the spoken word while I was still learning how to read. I have always loved just listening to the spoken word. As an adult, I find nothing more inspiring than a room full of very young children sitting in a circle being told a story. Although I am an avid reader, I would still prefer to be told a story than to read one.
