Storytelling career fulfills dream

Debbie Rauch to perform, lead workshops at Kingsport Fine Arts Center and to be in concert on Feb. 2

Friday, January 26, 1990, Kingsport Times-News

By BECKY WHITLOCK Weekender Editor

For Debbie Rauch making a living telling stories is a natural progression from her childhood.

"I've been telling stories all my life. When I was little, they had a different name and they weren't received positively," said Rauch, who will perform Friday, Feb. 2 and lead workshops Saturday, Feb. 3 at the Kingsport Fine Arts Center. The event is sponsored by the Kingsport Theatre Guild.

After Rauch became an elementary schoolteacher, she used stories .to teach her students. Then in 1987 she left teaching to get her master's degree at East Tennessee State University.

"I took everything ETSU offered in storytelling," Rauch said. Because of the popularity of storytelling as entertainment for club and organization meetings, Dr. Flora Joy, ETSU storytelling professor, often receives calls asking for storytellers.

So, Rauch, on Joy's recommendation, started traveling around performing stories. After giving one of these performances, Rauch came home and was "bubbling about this to my husband. He said, 'Why don't you do this for a living?' I said, `You mean I could!' I had never considered it."

Though performing stories does not have the potential to pay as much as a successful teaching career can, doing it for a living fulfills a dream Rauch had when she was a teacher.

"I taught in Kingsport for three years, in St. Louis (before that) for two years and in Hawkins County for one year. While I was in Hawkins, Anndrena Belcher would come, and in Kingsport I heard Jackie Torrence. I'd sit there and listen and think, 'I'd love to be up there doing that,"' Rauch said.

Rauch seems to have a knack for storytelling. Once she hears a story, it's in her head, she said.

Though she is writing some of her own stories, Rauch also uses stories from other tellers. She likes audience participation stories in which the audience gets involved in helping to tell the story.

She also is beginning to tell historical fiction stories. Recently when she performed in some San Francisco schools, the teachers asked her to perform some stories about Martin Luther King Jr.

To do that, Rauch took an incident in King's life and created conversations and a story around it.

Her favorite stories to tell, though, are ghost stories.

"You get a positive response, you get applause before you begin telling the story," she said.

On Friday, Feb. 2, Rauch will be giving two separate performances. At 7 p.m. she will perform a Family Story Event.

"It's for the whole family. It's appropriate for young children. It will be mostly audience participation stories," she said.

The second performance at 8:30 p.m. will be Spine-tingling Stories.

"This will be all ghost stories. It's not recommended for children under 6. Some of them will be funny, but some of them will be kind of gross and scary; it sets the pulse to pounding," Rauch said.

Admission to each performance is $3 for adults and $2 for students.

Then on Saturday, Feb. 3, Rauch will lead three workshop sessions for children, youth and adults. Admission to Friday night's performance is free for Saturday's workshop participants.

To get the participants comfortable, Rauch will give them a story they have to act out through role playing.

The first workshop, from 9:30-11:30 a.m., will be for children in grades 3 to 6. The children will make puppets to go with the stories and help them act out those stories. Because of the materials needed to make the puppets, the cost of the children's workshop is $10.

The workshop for youth in grades 7 to 12 will be held from noon to 2 p.m., and the adult workshop will be held from 3-5 p.m. Cost for each is $5 per person.

Both those will include lots of role playing," Rauch said.

That Saturday night will be concert time for the workshop participants and their families.

"I would really urge people who teach school, in Sunday School, parents, anyone involved with children get involved in this," she said.

"It's such a neat way to foster literary skills, and it's a nice way to teach lessons without being preachy."

For more information or to make reservations, call 246-9351.