Neighborhood-Kids All Local. All for Kids. All the Time.

My Trip to Tennessee

by Maya Norton2/29/2008 4:47:21 PM

A few weeks ago, we got to learn about Bellingham storyteller Maya Norton and her upcoming trip to the National Youth Storytelling Showcase in Tennessee. Maya, a teller at the 2006 Bellingham Storytellers Guild Tellebration, was selected as one of only four middle school age finalists for the national showcase. We're pleased to share with you a personal account from Maya about her experience at the Smoky Mountains Storytelling Festival.

It was a long plane ride from the farthest tip of Washington to mid-Tennessee, but somehow, my mom and I made it. We both arrived at the airport in Knoxville at about 12:30 am, where a man, a woman, and a girl of around my age were waiting for us. The man was from NYSS (National Youth Storytelling Showcase), and he would be driving us to our hotel. The girl’s name was Brenna, and the other woman was her mother. It turns out that Brenna lived in San Antonio, Texas, and it had been a much shorter flight for her. Finally, after about an hour of driving, we arrived at the Smoky Mountain National Park Lodge. When we got to our room, I fell asleep almost instantly.

Maya Norton

The next morning, we had breakfast at a buffet line (which made me very excited), and I got to meet some of the kids. After breakfast, we all went to a meeting room and took turns introducing ourselves. The kids there ranged in age from eight to seventeen—about half boys and half girls. Most of the kids there had a southern accent, which I thought was pretty cool. After we got acquainted with each other, we got to have a workshop with Bill Harley. It was amazing to be able to work with such a master of storytelling. It seemed as if he was just a kid in a fully-grown man’s clothes. He made us make up a story about our thumb on the spot in two minutes—that was a really fun challenge. Then, we gathered into groups and each shared a story about an experience from our life about us getting in trouble in some way. After that, we chose one person’s story from our little group, and all told the story as if it had happened to us. Everybody else had to guess which person the story had really happened to.

After our workshop, we split into groups and went to a couple different elementary schools where we told stories to the classes. The kids were, thankfully, a very good crowd—they laughed a lot, and at just the right times. It was really encouraging and exhilarating to have an audience, especially one of children. Then, we went to the American Jukebox Theater, and watched some professional storytellers tell, which was very entertaining. We had dinner, then went back to the Jukebox and watched some more tellers. Afterwards, we were all so tired that we went straight to bed.

The next morning, we had a workshop with Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, a husband and wife who had been telling stories together for a long time. We did some really fun exercises with them including telling your story to the wall as if it were an audience in different ways. Our next workshop was with Carmen Agra-Deedy—probably one of my favorite of the whole week. We mostly talked about storytelling and the importance of it, and she told us about herself, ending by telling the group a story. She also told stories from her childhood as a Cuban-American, growing up in the strict household that she did. All of those stories were very interesting (for some reason, it’s very entertaining to listen to stories of other people getting into trouble).

That evening our group went to a concert featuring Bill Harley, Carmen Agra-Deedy, Willy Claflin and Bil Lepp—all of my favorite storytellers of the week.  Early next morning, we had a puppet and voice workshop with Willy Claflin which made it fun to experiment with all of the voices that we are capable of using. Then, there came a workshop with Kim Weitkamp, a wonderful storyteller who told us a great story about her old childhood school and helped us to stretch our imagination. She emphasized that nobody could tell you that being unique or creative was a bad thing, because it really isn’t. But that afternoon was the showcase itself—the real deal that was the reason why we were there. Everybody had bonded really well, and I don’t think that anybody felt any competition, so it wasn’t that bad. We all shuffled into the Jukebox theater once more, though this time, it would be us performing.

I would be going third, after one tandem team, and one boy from the fifth grade. I really didn’t feel nervous when it was my turn to tell. When the spotlight found me as I walked to the microphone, I felt like some celebrity about to make a speech. Thankfully, I didn’t make any mistakes on my story, Fiona’s Luck by Teresa Bateman. I was glad to have my story over with; I could really sit back and enjoy the other kids’ stories. The stories ranged from the playground from a spider’s point of view told by an eight-year-old to a rapping nerd-prince who finds true love.

Overall, I think that the whole thing went very well, and though I didn’t get first place, I didn’t mind. It had been a really fun experience, and equally fun to cheer my fellow tellers on.

Neighborhood-Kids.com would like to thank to Maya, her parents Laura and Bob, and the Bellingham Storytellers Guild for all the stories they tell!