Oral History Program Sam Payne Interviewed by Kandice Harris 18 March 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sam Payne Interviewed by Kandice Harris 18 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: Payne, Sam, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 18 March 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Sam Payne 18 March 2021 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Sam Payne, conducted on March 18, 2021, by Kandice Harris, via Zoom. Sam discusses his life, his career as a storyteller, and his memories of the Weber State University Storytelling Festival. KH: Hello, my name is Kandice Harris. Today is March 18th, about 9:45 a.m. and I am speaking with Sam Payne about the Storytelling Festival and storytelling in general. How did you become interested and involved in storytelling? SP: You know, long ago, I was mostly a singer-songwriter. And I found myself kind on stage talking about the songs as I performed them—telling the stories behind the writing of the song. And those stories, that pattern kind of became a bigger and bigger part of my act really. And people began to kind of enjoy the storytelling as much as they liked the songwriting. And finally somebody from the storytelling community, this community of people who is telling stories on stage for a living, sort of took me by the hand and said on the other side of this door there is a whole world of people who are doing what it is that you are doing. And let us open that door for you, you know. And that's kind of how I got involved. KH: How long have you been telling stories? SP: My very first storytelling gig ever in my life, was 25 years ago at the Weber State University Storytelling Festival. In those days, I was working at the very wonderful Treehouse Children's Museum in Ogden, Utah. And I think because of my association with the Children's Museum, because I worked often with children and families, sometimes in an on-stage capacity, somebody just tapped me to 2 come and play a set at that very first Weber State University Storytelling Festival. That festival is now 25 years old, but that was kind of my introduction into on-stage storytelling. I don't pretend to have been good at it all 25 years ago, but it did again, open a door for me through which I stepped with a lot of gusto. KH: What part of storytelling brings you the most joy and satisfaction? SP: You know, I think when you've been able to successfully transmit through a performance, a thing about life. I mean sometimes we come to think that the stories are more important than the things that the stories are about, which is not true. The stories are simply pictures of the things. And when you are able to transmit an accurate idea about the things about which the stories are, then that's really really satisfying. As I talk to storytellers, and of course as I think about it myself, I think we are all of the same mind that the most satisfying thing about a storytelling performance on stage is watching an audience leave the concert hall or the classroom or the tent, in the case of a big festival, turn toward each other, telling stories to each other about things from their own lives of which they have been reminded by the performance on stage. That's really where the satisfaction is. KH: What are the qualities of a good storyteller? SP: I think a good storyteller is to some degree comfortable on stage, in front of people, can communicate well. Has a degree of stage presence, a degree of voice in terms of communicating effectively, like a performer does. But really, I think a good storyteller is also simply an observer. A storyteller is diligent in his 3 or her attention to research, with regard to the stories that he or she tells. And is also a good observer, like a good writer is or a good actor is. Those crafts are all dependent upon a detailed and accurate observation of the world. I think those are qualities of a good storyteller. KH: What elements are required for a good story? SP: Well you know, we learned this in our high school English classes, didn't we? We drew sort of the shapes of stories on the board, you know. Elements like an inciting incident or a call to the journey or a call to adventure for the main character and then a series of you know, ever escalating conflicts that the character tries to overcome. And a climax where the deciding events of the story take place and a denouement where we get to see how the world is different after the events of the story. And you know the thing is, our English teachers were right. Those are the elements of a good story. And you know, people who tell stories a lot come to kind of recognize those things in their own stories. That story shape that is so time honored. KH: Do you think our current pandemic environment has an impact on the importance of storytelling? SP: Very much, you know, not only has it impacted the importance of storytelling, not only do we find ourselves hungry for the connection that comes from storytelling, but it has also been kind of a double edged sword, in terms of keeping us away from each other physically. So in some ways it's more difficult to share stories with one another, but in other ways it's easier to share stories with one another 4 because we've discovered and implemented all of these technologies. Like the technology through which we are communicating now. And we find ourselves more able than ever to reach audiences. And as audience members, to hear stories that are going on at a distance from us. So again, it's been a really two edged sword, we all I think hope to get back as soon as we can to being able to getting in a room together. But we also have discovered some real opportunities for storytelling that have been real blessings for us. In a pandemic like this, it's very very easy to feel isolated and alone. And so as we reach out to one another and tell our stories and hear the stories of other people, we find that we are not in fact alone. That we are all experiencing things that are... we are having parallel experiences. A moment ago you asked what makes a good story, and I've often thought that one of the things that makes a good story is that a good story takes you outside of your realm of experience. In other words, takes you to a place that you are unfamiliar with. But shows you elements of yourself and your home in that place, you know. Takes you to a place that you are unfamiliar with and demonstrates to you that it's home. And that's storytelling during the COVID-19 pandemic, is so vital because we find that again, we think we are alone in our experiences and we find that we are not as we share stories one with another. We find that we are not alone and need not be lonesome. KH: I like that. Where do you see storytelling in the future? SP: You know, one of the things... and this is such an interesting time to be dealing with that question, right? There has been kind of an evolution in storytelling, particularly in this country, I think. About 50 years ago there was what people 5 often term the storytelling revival of the early 1970's where places like the national storytelling festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee and other places began featuring storytellers on stage, mostly telling traditional material, folktales and fairytales and things like that. And that culture gave rise to this kind of explosion of festival and other performance opportunities for storytellers and a renewed interest in storytelling all over the country. And then a couple of decades ago, there was another evolutionary step in which people became interested in telling personal stories on stage—coffee house performances, and things like that and sharing...there's of course like radio programs, like The Moth, you know which have this real sort of cultural foothold based in that impulse of people telling their own stories on stage. And now, we reach this new evolutionary step and it has to do with technology, you know. When the time comes that we all kind of get back on the live stage telling stories to people who are in the same room with us, none of this kind of communication will go away. This will remain. And so this will kind of become integrated into the way in which we tell stories, it's not like now we are doing it this way over zoom calls mostly, and when this is over we will go back to the old way. It's after this era that we will have both, you know. And we'll utilize all of the new tools that we have found for storytelling, as well as going back to some of the ways in which we have always been comfortable telling stories. So it is kind of an exciting evolutionary time. KH: Yeah. What are some of your favorite memories from The Weber State University Storytelling Festival? 6 SP: You know, I will always remember...I came aboard the festival... and again as I mentioned, in its first year. I performed at the festival in its first year and its second year. But then, largely went away from it, went away from storytelling for a long time and did other things—had a career as a singer/songwriter for example and a jazz musician. And then in recent years, have kind of come back to it. And one of the real delights for me, is that when I performed at the very first Weber Storytelling Festival, I again, totally green, had no idea what I was doing. But, opened for the venerable storyteller Ed Stivender, who lives in Philidelphia, and who has been kind of a pioneer in storytelling for decades and decades and decades. The next year, I had a similar experience. Still pretty green, still didn't really know what I was doing, invited to perform at the festival again and opened for Heather Forrest. The wonderful, musical storyteller who lives in New York. And then of course, went away from it for a long time. But when I came back to it as a career person, as somebody who was interested in telling stories as my livelihood. I found myself in really wonderful relationships with those same people, with Ed and Heather and other people who of course, were telling stories 25 years ago, and are still telling stories now. Still vibrant and vital performers and now they are my colleagues. And having been inspired by them 25 years ago, and now sort of coming around to often working with them on festivals and in other performances. That's been a real delight for me. The Weber State University Storytelling Festival laid a lot of the ground work for what would become the central focus of my career. I am myself a Weber State University graduate, and now have the great honor in recent years of holding a 7 fellowship. I am the Weber State University Storytelling fellow, which is a real delight for me. And I have an opportunity to sort of shape and influence and contribute to some of those things that yielded such dividends for me 25 years ago, when I was really on the receiving end, you know. So that's a delight. The Weber State University Storytelling Festival is really one of the grand old festivals. And bears a lot of distinctions. It bears the distinction, for example, of putting more kids, more youth tellers on stage during their festival than really any other festival in the country. And that's really quite a marvelous thing. This year, the Weber State University Storytelling Festival in this time of pandemic was all online, but one of the things that it meant is that you got to sort of see all of that really showcased. Because you have access to all of these zoom video performances of all of these storytellers and seeing how many of them are local and regional tellers. And seeing how many of them are kids. It really gives you a kind of a perspective on some of the things that are very magical and unique about the Weber State University Festival. Things that make that a festival with which I already really loved being involved for a long time. KH: Great. Congratulations on the fellowship, that's awesome. SP: Thank you. KH: How many years have you been associated with the Storytelling Festival? SP: Well, again associated is a pretty broad term. I performed at it for the first two years. Now for about the past oh maybe seven or eight years, I have been closely associated with the festival first as a teller. You know, I sort of returned to 8 the festival after an absence of many years as a regional teller, as one of the tellers from the area that they have come aboard and tell at the festival. And then as I have had other opportunities a little further field opportunities at the National Storytelling Festival and other places, and as my reputation and body of work has grown as a storyteller, then I've kind of come back to the festival again in a more official capacity and that's been a real pleasure. So it's just been within the last decade or so. Maybe even the last maybe seven years. KH: What advice would you give to future storytellers? SP: Everybody is a storyteller. And I think a lot of people find that they have storytelling goals. That they want to find themselves on some of the big festival stages or things like that. And they measure their success, or can sometimes measure their success, tend to measure their success in how close to that goal they are. When in reality, there's a lot of work that storytelling can do in the world. And everyone is a storyteller, and everyone has an opportunity in a particular sphere to do great work. Storytelling is being looked to these days to do a lot of heavy lifting, you know. There's storytelling going on in business applications and in prisons even. I mean I know people who spend a lot of their storytelling energy going to prisons and recording women who are serving sentences in prison... telling bedtime stories to their kids. Those recordings are then taken and delivered to those kids and that's something that is outside of kind of the big festival platform performances. But it is doing a heck of a lot of good. Some might say more good than some of those large scale performances. And so there are all kinds of applications for storytelling that are 9 really vital in the real world. And that's my advice to people who want to get into storytelling, is find a place where you can serve and serve there. You know, there's a lot of good that can be done in a lot of different ways. KH: Wow that’s good advice and I hadn't heard about the prisons and the recording of the stories. That's amazing. SP: Sure. And that's just one tiny little corner of a whole world of storytelling applications that are really, again, doing a lot of heavy lifting in the world for people who need it. KH: Yeah, that’s great. So that's all of the questions I have. Is there anything else you'd like to share? SP: No, I'm very happy to have been asked to engage in this interview. Very happy to be featured in this archival collection of conversations that you are having. I think the world of storytelling and particularly the world of storytelling in the environs of Weber State University is something that's very exciting and I'm thrilled to see it being preserved in this way. KH: Great. Well, thank you so much for your time. SP: Of course, thank you.