Storytelling: The oldest profession
Terrell Shaw says, “The stories I most enjoy are the real things in real people’s live.”
‘I think storytelling is the oldest profession. In fact, it’s older than the one that’s usually thought of as the oldest profession.’ Terrell Shaw
English author Phillip Pullman once said, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
One of the people who help to fill that need in Northwest Georgia is Rome’s own Terrell Shaw.
“I think storytelling is the oldest profession,” Shaw said. “In fact, it’s older than the one that’s usually thought of as the oldest profession.”
Storytelling is not just for children, though that is the first audience people usually have in mind when someone talks about the craft. It is much more than fairy tales and fables. Many of the most entertaining stories are those from everyday individuals’ own experiences as they encounter the ups and downs of life.
“The stories I most enjoy are the real things in real people’s lives,” Shaw said.
“I come at storytelling from an acting background,” he said. “So there is sometimes a misunderstanding that stories are memorized or recited.”
Shaw explained that it is important that storytellers “know the bones” of their stories. They
need to know their stories backward and forward, not as a memorized piece, but as a story they relate to an audience without the story coming from a script.
“The key is learning to see the story — tell the story from the pictures in your head,” Shaw said. “Get the pictures that are in your noggin in the noggins of your listeners.”
It’s been a family tradition for as long as he can remember. He and his siblings would crowd on the bed with their mom and listen to her tell Bible stories. Shaw loved
going to his grandfather’s barber shop and sitting in one of the barber chairs so he could listen to his grandfather and the men tell stories to each other. His grandmother
would sit on the porch, crocheting and telling stories.
“Shoot, I was born a storyteller,” Shaw said, smiling.
His used his ability to tell tales and relate experiences as part of his teaching career, which began in 1969 as an elementary school teacher. He uses it now during his part-time work at Arrowhead Environmental Education Center located in Armuchee. Shaw travels to different schools around the county, showing off various animals and telling stories related to those animals. And he goes around to different churches, civic groups, senior groups and storytelling events to share this particular form of entertainment with others.
He even travels around the state telling stories and entertaining audiences.
One of Shaw’s passions is the annual Big Fibbers Festival, which has its roots in one of the area’s most popular attractions.
From time to time, Shaw would attend events to tell stories at Chieftains Museum. Debby Brown, programs director at Chieftains, wanted to do more with storytelling.
“She got a bee in her bonnet about a storytelling event,” Shaw said. It was the Big Fibbers Contest. Shaw went to the first one and listened.
The next year, 2012, he participated and won the contest. He won again in 2014.
Brown had passed away in 2012. To honor her memory, Shaw and other local storytellers formed the
Ridge Valley Storytelling Guild.
“We wanted to give national, state and local people and children a place to tell stories,” he said. “Our first thing was we said, ‘Let’s just jump in and make the Big Fibbers Contest a festival.’”
They then held the 242nd annual Big Fibbers Festival.
“Lawyers and politicians have been around since 1776,” Shaw said. “So (fibbing) is nothing new.”
Another storytelling group Shaw is passionate about is the Story Corps, which came to Rome almost a year ago. The group — which formed in New York City in 2003 with a storytelling booth — partners with the Library of Congress to record stories of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life.
Participants are typically asked questions about their life, to tell their own stories, by a family member
of close friend. The session is recorded and a copy is sent to the Library of Congress and a copy is sent to the participant. The recording is indexed at the Library of Congress for future generations to hear directly from people who lived in a different time.
Shaw said storytelling ties in with his educational philosophy — that “learning is done in the real world around us.”
“There is no one who loves technology more than I do,” he said. “I love it, but we don’t have a deficit of screen time for our children.”
Storytelling has the capacity to bring people in as participants in the story, not just onlookers.
“In theater, there’s that wall,” Shaw said. “You don’t have that [wall] in storytelling. The lights are up and the audience is part of the story. It’s a big high and you feed off that audience.”