Oral History Program Alan Griffin Interviewed by Marina Kenner 22 March 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Alan Griffin Interviewed by Marina Kenner 22 March 2021 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The WSU Storytelling Festival was implemented by the Friends of the Stewart Library in 1992. The library sponsored and managed the annual festival until 1998, when the festival was moved to the Department of Teacher Education, with the Library continuing as a sponsor. The three-day festival entails storytellers from all over the nation, including youth storytellers. The events are made up of workshops and presentations, a fund-raising banquet, and a wrap-up of wonderful stories from gifted performers. This interesting collection includes oral history interviews with visiting storytellers, discussing how they became interested in storytelling and where they receive their inspiration. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Griffin, Alan, an oral history by Marina Kenner, 22 March 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Alan Griffin 22 March 2021 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Alan Griffin, conducted on March 22, 2021, by Marina Kenner, via Zoom. Alan discusses his life, his career as a storyteller, and his memories of the Weber State University Storytelling Festival. MK: Good morning, Alan. Who is our friend joining us? AG: This is just one of my puppet friends. It seems to be that most of my stories involve puppets. Puppet: Yeah, sometimes my voice is better than his. MK: Does your friend have a name? AG: Not yet, he’s brand new. MK: Okay, that’s exciting. Should we just get straight into the questions? Make sure we don’t run out of time. AG: Sure, that’s fine. MK: How did you become interested and involved with storytelling? AG: I suppose it relates to my occupation. I have been in education for the past 46 years. And in that time, I taught history and history was the main vehicle for telling stories. You tell stories of the past, I taught Utah History, taught United States History, I taught World History. Puppet: You taught a lot of history. AG: Yeah, I did. And in that time, I really became loving of the stories of history. And wanted to really impart to students the important things, the impact that history and stories have in your life. Then I kind of got involved with the Weber State 2 Festival in a round about way because I have a lot of grandkids. I have eleven kids myself and I have about 34 grandkids. As I got older and my kids started to disperse across the country and in different places, I wanted to maintain some contact with them. When I worked for the Weber School District, I got associated with the librarians and the media specialists at Weber School District, and they would tell stories all of the time. They would pull kids off to the corner and tell them a little story, and in that story, they often used… Puppet: Puppets! AG: Yes, they used puppets in doing that. We found a couple of companies that would sell us discounted puppets. I found a griffin puppet, my last name being Griffin. I brought that to a family gathering once and found out that all I had to do was hold up that puppet and all of the sudden the kids would gather around me and would want to know what the puppet was going to do. So we told some stories with that puppet, and I found out it was a great vehicle to communicate to my grandkids and so that kind of spurred it on. And I looked for opportunities and found the Weber State Festival and started to use my puppets to tell stories in there. MK: That’s super cool. How long have you been telling these stories? AG: I started education in 1975, so with the education, it's been quite a few years. With the Weber State Festival, it's been probably 10 years or so. But I... Puppet: You tell lots of stories. 3 AG: Yeah, I’ve even gotten several of them on the internet now. So it seems like I do it often. I've been telling them for a long time. Officially, for Weber State Festival, about 10 years probably. MK: What part of storytelling brings you the most joy and satisfaction? Puppet: It’s watching the kids. AG: Kids are great. Most of my stories are geared towards younger audiences. But, I think the thing I enjoy is kind of having them hold on to them. I love stories that have an ending that kind of wakes you up, an "ah ha" moment. My favorite thing is to tell the story and to have the kids at the end, go, "Ahh, how did that happen?" Kind of thing. It's connecting with the kids, and being able to see them get involved and enjoy a surprise ending. Or enjoy the process of going through the story and appreciating the unusual and exciting things that happen in the story. MK: Which type of audiences do you prefer? Children or adults? AG: I would say obviously I prefer children because most of my stories on the internet are that way. But I've found out that adults like my stories too. I guess there's a little child in most of us. We like to hear an unusual version, you know, with this last festival I did Jack and the Bean Stalk. And you'd think, "Well that's a kids tale." I have a little different take on it because I do it in rhyme and find out that the adults really like the story too. So, yeah kids first, but I like to do all ages and I'd like to broaden the things that I do so that I can get to adults. Puppet: Adults don’t really seem to connect with puppets all of the time. 4 AG: So, unless I get a sophisticated... I do have an old man puppet. He's probably older than me. And I've used that... I actually took that into nursing homes one time and tried to tell stories there. And found out that sometimes nursing homes are not always appreciative of those kinds of things. But, I'd try it again. MK: Appreciative of the old man puppets? Or the stories? AG: Well, I made a mistake of telling what I thought were old people jokes. I found out that some of those people don't think that they're very funny. But it was an interesting experience. MK: What are the qualities of a good storyteller? AG: I think the first good quality of a really good storyteller is that they have to be genuine. You have to be able to connect with them and feel what they feel. Puppet: Yeah, right! AG: And be able to understand where they are coming from and really connect with them that way. There's lots of storytellers and some of them you can really connect with. And some of them are good, but you don't really understand who they are, what they’ve done. And even though I tell lots of kids stories, I hope the kids understand that when I'm done, what kind of person that I am. And that I like to tell stories, I like to play, and have some good experiences that I can convey to them. So I would say genuineness first, and then the next thing would be... Puppet: Catching their attention. Doing something to catch their attention. You got to really grab their attention. 5 AG: And get them engaged in the story. So those two aspects, I think, make for good storytelling. But I do believe that just about anybody can tell a story. And one of the things that you've got to do is forget about all of the pressures and the stress and the anxiety of the moment, and just be real and tell the story. MK: What elements are required for a good story? AG: I think one of the things is you have to really believe in the story. I mean, even if it is a fantasy story, there's something in there that you want to get across. And so the first element I think, is belief or faith in the story itself and the content. And the next thing is enough faith and belief in it that you can characterize it. You know, you have to be able to translate it into and perform that you can characterize and convey. That's not always easy, but a good storyteller will illustrate the characters that are in the story. Puppet: Yeah, and they'll tell it in a way that the kids understand and they'll show that we have character too. AG: So, the idea is again, to capture their attention but to characterize the story, and have a story that you believe in. To vary the presentation, I think a really good storyteller can tell humorous stories as well as dramatic stories. As well as mystery stories. I mean you have to catch the mood or the feeling of the story that you are in. And that's another important element. But the genuineness is the main thing, I think. MK: Do you think our current pandemic environment has an impact on the importance of storytelling? 6 AG: Absolutely. I participated in the festival, obviously in a number of years, without the pandemic. I think a lot of people have a hard time telling a story when you don't have an audience in front of you. Because it presents a particular challenge, and the storytelling festival this year, I know, was all online. And I thought it was a wonderful festival. They did a good job again. But I know it took a number of us a little bit of time to adjust to the idea that if you tell a joke and you're on a virtual environment, you don't hear people laughing. So you don't know whether your joke went over or not. But you have to assume that it did. And so the virtual aspect changed it dramatically. But I think there's also some really good things about it. It allows us to kind of produce a compendium of stories, for one. We can record them and save them for other times. We're all going to have to adapt in a digital environment, if we haven't already. My goodness, we've been at it for a long time with all of this digital stuff. And I think it's important that we realize that we can communicate over several different kinds of mediums. Yeah, it's great to be in front of people and be able to see their reactions and hear their feedback. You know, those kinds of things. But a good story doesn't necessarily depend on that feedback. It can be put together in such a way that it will carry across a digital medium. MK: Where do you see storytelling in the future? AG: Well, I've seen a lot of different storytelling and what is done at Weber State Festival is really only one kind of storytelling I think. Puppet: I'm getting bored. 7 AG: [To the puppet] I know, you’re getting bored, I know. You don't have enough to say do ya? [To Marina] At any rate, the business environment, I see a lot of ads these days for storytellers in a business setting. That is people who can go through and explain things so that other people can understand them and give a little history behind it, so that they have more of a feeling of belonging to an organization and supporting an organization, and helping it out. But obviously the entertainment industry has exploded in the past several years. And everybody loves stories in movies and in other kinds of things. In a storytelling medium without the visuals necessarily, it takes a little massaging of the audience to get them ready for the fact that the story is in your head. You have to see the pictures in your head. And so, it's a little different medium. I think it's one that's greatly needed, especially with the youth of today because they are so used to getting entertainment so easily, and in such an impressive fashion. But that creates a challenge for storytellers because you have to compete against that kind of medium and sometimes it's hard to get students to tune in when they are used to seeing visual spectaculars all of the time. MK: What are some of your favorite memories from the Weber State Storytelling Festival? AG: Well, for me, I got a big buzz of performing on the Egyptian Stage a couple of times. That is an awesome environment. And it's really fun to go in there. I mean, obviously, we went there to hear stories as well. It used to be they would have cookies and milk in the evening for their evening stories, when they had families come in. And they'd tell some sort of spooky stories and then you'd go 8 out and get cookies and milk and then you'd come back in and they'd tell some very spooky stories. And it's a fun family environment. I liked going to those events, I like performing at those kinds of events. But it's really fun to get into a room or an auditorium where there's three or four hundred kids and trying to get all of their attention and trying to go through it. With my various puppets... Puppet: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. AG: It's been really fun to go through the attention getting process. So I have fond memories of the Weber State Festival. I've been doing it about like I said, ten years. But to hear the national storytellers as well as see so many of the local talents come in and do things, but it's just a great environment. I think that's the key to my recollection is just being there and feeling the excitement and being in those venues. MK: And then my last question for today is what advice would you give to future storytellers? AG: Well, I figured it goes back to something I said a little earlier. Be genuine, tell a story that has some meaning, and enjoy it. You need to get past the anxiety and get in and enjoy it with the kids. I think with all of the media going where it is, it's going to be increasingly challenging for new storytellers to master the medium in such a way that they can get attention. Puppet: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. AG: I know. I know. You haven't had enough to say, have you? Puppet: No, I haven’t. I'm just sitting here listening to you just jabber. 9 AG: Anyway, I guess that's why I use puppets. It tends to add a little more attention. Most of the time when I put the puppet on my hand, the kids are there. They're with it. So that's an aspect, and I know a lot of storytellers don't like to use props. They think they ought to tell stories without props. And that's okay for them, but most of those stories use imaginary props, they're always gesturing with their hands to do things or picking something up or they're doing something. So they kind of theaterize, if I dare say that. Theaterize the presentation to make kind of a little drama out of it. And that lends to it as well. I do remember one event that I went to where they were hiring a storyteller and come to find out, they really didn't want a storyteller because there were two or three of us that were from the storytelling guild that applied for the job and when I sat down with the interviewer after I had applied and showed him what I could do, he said, "You're part of the storytelling guild aren't you?" And I said, "Yeah." And he says, "That's not what we were really after." Because what we are after, we had dramatized the story, we had tried to illustrate and show them what the characters in the story were doing, and that's not what they were after. So it was kind of interesting as a business. But for new storytellers, they have to get into it. You have to get into it. You have to find the content that works for you. Be real. And after the story is over, I guess, I hope that the audience knows who you are. Knows what you do. Knows what you sincerely believe in. And that the story does not illustrate something that's not a part of you. MK: I think that's some good advice. Thank you so much for you time, and your willingness to participate.