TELLING THE STORYTELLING CENTER STORY
One slippery thing about storytelling is its evanescence: You tell the story, and then it’s gone forever, never to be created exactly the same way again.
Unless, of course, you’re a storyteller communicating by email and hit the “send” button without thinking. There’s no taking that one back.
Such was the case with Laconia Therrio, former president of the Connecticut Storytelling Center, who was planning a meeting several years back with the powers that be at Connecticut College to discuss the possibility of paying rent after years of receiving space free of charge. The center’s executive director, Ann Shapiro, had sent her possible dates for the meeting, and Therrio suggested a time and then replied “It is time to suck up and kissy pooh butt.”
Ooops. Included in the reply-all response was the vice president of finance at the college whom they were about to meet.
Therrio’s story is just one of more than a dozen included in a booklet titled “Unfestival Pocket Book,” released a few weeks ago by the Connecticut Storytelling Center as something of a fundraiser in lieu of the cancellation last spring of its annual storytelling festival at Connecticut College. Susie Scheyder, who came up with the idea to create a book of stories about storytelling, said the idea was to offer a memento of the festival that just wasn’t to be.
“The festival that wasn’t was not inexpensive,” Scheyder, an East Lyme resident, said. “We plan the storytelling festival two years in advance.”
Shapiro said everyone was broken-hearted about the canceled event, since it was the first time in 39 years that the festival couldn’t run. But the storytelling center put together a Zoom event featuring three of the main storytellers spinning yarns from their homes, and people evidently enjoyed the evening in April.
“I couldn’t believe how happy everyone was,” Scheyder said. “It was a totally delightful group of people who were happy to be together.”
Scheyder’s subsequent “unfestival” booklet offered yet another outlet for regular attendees to connect with the storytelling center. Among the storytellers-turned-writers in the book are Mamie L. Bauduccio-Rock, a New London
native who recounted the remarable story of how a local church’s donation led a Ugandan girl to attend Connecticut College; “My Mother’s Toolbox,” by Carol Glynn of East Lyme, about a girl who learns how to deal with bullies, and “Yucky Fungi” by Jackson Gillman, a humorous anecdote about a slip of the tongue at a family-friendly performance.
“It really raised everyone’s spirits,” Shapiro, a Norwich resident, said of the “unfestival” booklet. “It really ended up being a lovely spread.”
Scheyder said she was bowled over by the response from the center’s usual cast of storytellers. She received so many pieces that there were a few left over, and thoughts of publishing a second edition in the future are currently rattling around. The books sell for $25, or $15 for those who attended the virtual festival.
The festival has been marketing the booklet via e-blasts to members and regular festival goers. And officials are trying to figure out whether they will be able to put on their annual Tellebration event in November that in a different, non-pandemic period would be held at various times and in several locations around the region. They also are having to figure out how to resurrect the storytelling center’s schools program that apparently will have to move onlin in the fall.
“People seem like they would like to do something but they don’t know what they can do anymore,” Shapiro said.
Because of the coronavirus shutdown, the storytelling center can no longer operate on the campus of Connecticut College, so the nonprofit’s staff is working from home and making up for lost revenue partly through Payroll Protection Program funding, Shapiro said.
There’s no issue with paying rent to Connecticut College now since the college is largely closed. But of course there was that little incident a few years back when the “kissy pooh butt” email mistakenly whizzed its way to the college official who would weigh in on whether the storytelling center could continue with its no-rent deal.
As Therrio recounted it in her story, she was full of trepidation as she entered the vice president’s office. And she was mortified when the officer’s secretary broke the ice as she ushered them in by announcing, “The Suck Up and Kissy Pooh Butt Man is here!”
Luckily, the vice president laughed it all off, saying the mistakenly sent message had been “the talk of the office for a week.”
As to the meeting, “It went splendidly,” she wrote. “The college negotiated with the Storytelling Center a gracious rental agreement.”
Since then, however, the incident has been immortalized with a song written by Tom Callinan, Shapiro’s husband, who concluded in the opening verse (also included in the unfestival booklet:
“When you’re dealing with the powers-that-be,
The last thing you want to do is act contentiously.
Swallow your pride and keep your big mouth shut,
Except to ‘suck up’ and ‘kissy poo butt.’”