The Toronto Star February 28, 1992, Friday, UNAVAILABLE EDITION Let me tell you a story BYLINE: BY BARBARA TURNBULL TORONTO STAR SECTION: LIFE; Pg. D14 LENGTH: 800 words THEIR AIM is to keep alive a dying art.Armed only with stories, they have devoted their careers to enthralling audiences with fables from the past and present.They are storytellers, part of a growing group who make a living from the magic that words can create.Joining in the revival are those flocking to listen to and take courses from the vocal magicians - more than 100 hopeful tale-weavers take classes at the Storyteller's School of Toronto each year. This weekend the 14th Annual Toronto Festival of Storytelling is expected to draw more than 1,200 to its concerts and workshops.An American festival celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Association for the Perpetuation and Preservation of Storytelling is planning a "small" gathering of 10,000 in

Tennessee this fall.Dan Yashinsky, one of Metro's best-known storytellers, says there is a revival, but one that has a lot going against it.Much of today's generation has lost interest in personal memory, he laments. "Storytelling is an art that depends on memory. When you're living in a society that can record everything on a microchip, what value does memory have to people?"Yashinsky, who bills himself as a "reteller of traditional stories," says he grew up with family members who survived the war in Europe and lost everything they had. Memory kept loved ones alive."Just about all they had were their stories . . . storytelling was pretty important," he says.Yashinsky co-founded the storyteller's school in 1979, a year after starting a weekly "coffee house" where people meet and share stories. Open to the public, the group still gathers every Friday night at St. George the Martyr Church, usually filled to capacity.Storytelling brings people of diverse cultures and ages together, Yashinsky says, and "finds common ground for people."In the society we live in it's a good thing to do," he says.Marilyn Perringer, a storyteller who specializes in French-Canadian folklore, says the craft offers something for everyone."Folk tales are kind of a clarification of human experience and they really speak to human emotions . . . people at all levels of education can understand them," she says.Storytelling has also been gaining popularity in schools in the last 10 years. Four non-profit organizations in Metro act as referral agencies for storytellers. Most tellers get their "bread and butter" school jobs from agencies.A teller can make $ 200 to perform for an hour to a group of about 150 students. They also hold

workshops with individual classes to teach students some of the craft's finer points.But annual salaries end up pitifully small. Few can survive doing only storytelling - which is exhausting - without a second income or spinoffs, such as writing, teaching and conducting workshops.Yet something keeps them in the field."The love of the spoken word," according to Yashinsky.One Toronto teller says her salary was cut in half when she decided to pursue storytelling theatre full time.Helen Porter, whose group puts on three theatrical storytelling shows each year, organizes a festival in April and runs workshops, says the craft can be applied to most professions.Among her current crop of students are a judge, a lawyer and an actor.Porter says her father thought she was "absolutely ludicrous" when she gave up her teaching job to become a storyteller, but she had a profound belief she was needed elsewhere."I just felt that storytelling had been lost - we had lost our sense of inner story and (that) storytellers were needed," she says."Because we've become so dependent on media and on external images, there's a real need for people to be fed in an inner life," Porter says.The practice fills a void that other forms of recreation leave empty, she says. "It feeds your soul and your spirit and it gives you, I think, the things you need today to cope in a world like this."Her most interesting offshoot from storytelling has been her volunteer work in prisons getting inmates to deal with their own experiences through story, Porter says.People can't help but relate to the fables, they are almost healing, says 10-year veteran Leslie Robbins."These tales . . . are deep and have to do with the conflicts and problems of life and how they

get resolved," she says.Stories deal with truths, poverty, hardships, dreams and fears in life and how we get through them, she notes."Storytelling triggers one's own personal responses and stories. It invites a storytelling response," Robbins says.The storyteller in everyone can find a feast at a variety of concerts and workshops at the Toronto Festival of Storytelling, running Saturday and Sunday, at the North York Central Library, 5120 Yonge St. LOAD-DATE: February 29, 1992 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Star photo (Pickett): Dan Yashinsky Copyright 1992 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.