Photo by Rob Varela

Elaine Muray uses a mask as a prop and simulates riding a horse as she tells a story about King Arthur for students at San Antonio Elementary School in Ojai.

Photo by Rob Varela

Fourth-graders Olivia Adelman, left, and Kaitlyn Ramirez, both 9, laugh as they watch storyteller Elaine Muray perform.

As fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders filed into the auditorium at San Antonio Elementary School in Ojai, one of the children wondered aloud: "What's the movie?"

"There is no movie," answered the sole woman on the stage. "I am the movie."

The woman was Elaine Muray of Ventura, a professional storyteller. For the next 50 minutes, kids accustomed to rapid-fire computer games, texting and television listened to Muray tell four stories, choreographing her body to reflect the story she was telling.

"How many of you have studied anything about the Mayans?"

Muray asked, referring to the ancient Mexican civilization.

Several hands shot up.

"I'd like to go a little farther south to the Amazon jungle," she said, "and down at the bottom of the Amazon jungle there was a rat."

Some kids squirmed. Some held their curved hands under their chins and moved their heads in jerky motions, mimicking Muray.

It's this sort of involvement that Muray tries to inspire when she engages in the ancient art of storytelling, an art form alive and well in Ventura County.

In fact, seven of the nation's best storytellers will come to perform May 1-4 at the ninth annual "Village of Tales" Ojai Storytelling Festival. The event usually draws about 4,000 people.

"I think I speak for so many people when I say that in our high-tech society, it's refreshing that a simple story can have such power," said Brian Bemel, artistic director for Ojai-based Performances to Grow On, which sponsors the Ojai Storytelling Festival.

Muray and other local storytellers say they believe that the craft needs a bigger role in the current educational system. But with school funding being what it is, it's a challenge.

"It's hard now because there are all these cuts that are coming," Bemel said. "The first thing they cut is the arts."

Which is why it was particularly good news for Bemel to learn last week that his nonprofit agency won a $10,000 grant from the Green Foundation in Pasadena that will allow it to instruct a group of about six teachers from the Ojai Valley in some storytelling techniques.

Bemel said he believes storytelling can be a powerful teaching technique.

"I think it's a tool and a technique that is engaging for kids," said Bemel, a former teacher.

He said he also believes that the ability to tell a good story is a critical skill for kids. "Storytelling really improves literacy in general," he said. "Speaking, talking, writing, listening — it's all intertwined."

Muray agreed that storytelling is something that will help kids later in life. "It's a lifelong skill to be able to tell a story," she said.

It's helpful in any career, she pointed out, to be able to get and keep someone's attention with the information you would like to share.

Easter Christopher, Oxnard Elementary School G.A.T.E. testing coordinator, agreed. She is secretary for Youth, Educators and Storytellers alliance — or YES!

YES! is an alliance to promote the use of storytelling within schools.

"We are hard-wired for story," Christopher said. "Our brains for millions of years had relied on story."

Storytelling took a back seat to the written word later on, which is why storytellers work to keep it relevant, especially in schools.

"One of our projects is to lobby to get states to put storytelling in the state standard," Christopher said. "I would like to see everything couched in story."

Competing with a digital age

The kids at San Antonio Elementary School who heard Muray perform last month fidgeted some after about 40 minutes but, for most of the time Muray was there, their eyes were fixed on her.

There were no elaborate costumes. She wore a scoop-necked black leotard and used no props except a purple cape and a mask for one of the stories.

Among the stories Muray told and acted out for the students was the Greek fable of Arachne, the spinner who offended the goddess Athena and was turned into a creature that would spin for the rest of her life: a spider.

"Today, we see the descendants of Arachne in the darkest of corners, weaving, weaving forever more," Muray said, her voice moving into a melodic chant.

Muray also told an original story set in the ancient Mayan civilization in which a young man named Pik challenged a rain god named Lord Chok to a game of pokatok. Pokatok, she told the kids, is a cross between soccer, football and volleyball.

Called "Rain Player" by David Wiesniewski, the story told of how the scary Lord Chok threatened Pik with no rain unless Pik could beat Lord Chok at pokatok.

When Muray imitated Lord Chok, she stepped heavily, then paused as if moving a great weight, then stepped again, lowering her voice and adding a hollow, evil laugh.

"It made you feel like you were actually there," said audience member Jackson Day, 10. "I almost got crushed by the god!"

At one point, Muray pretended to lower herself down a rope into an underground cave with rushing water. She held one hand up over her head and the other in front of her, as if gripping the rope, then pivoted slightly to simulate hanging from the rope.

A pair of Jackson's schoolmates were as impressed as he was.

"It's the best I've ever seen. It's like, so cool," said Kaitlyn Ramirez, 9. "I pictured the whole thing in my head."

"It's the best," agreed Olivia Adelman, 9. "The sound effects sound like, so real. It was awesome!"

With all the digital and electronic competition out there, storytellers consider the ability to hold a child's attention with just words and motion a triumph.

"Kids' attention spans are less today," said James Donlon, a director, performer and professor of movement at UC Santa Barbara.

"There are so many sight bites they are bombarded with every day," Donlon said. "For that reason, it's very important Elaine is doing the work she's doing. It keeps the sense of a real human being in front of you without digital pyrotechnics. She's a real human being saluting the power of the imagination."

Once upon a time ...

Muray, who will be performing at the ArtWalk in downtown Ventura on Saturday, said that to the best of her knowledge, she is the only person in Ventura County who performs her particular brand of storytelling, which is called "kinetic" storytelling.

"Elaine is an actor of sorts. She's more than a storyteller who sits in front of the fireplace," Donlon said.

Donlon, who is currently appearing at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, travels around the world teaching theater movement. After seeing Muray perform, he agreed to coach her in the movement aspect of her craft.

"The visual is a very powerful part of a performer's presence," said Donlon, who grew up in Camarillo. "You try to create the marriage between language and physicality. Gestures come out of the language. It is not just an isolated act."

Muray, 53, was in marketing in Washington, D.C., when she first became interested in kinetic storytelling. She saw mime Marcel Marceau perform and decided that she wanted to pursue physical theater. But it was a later performance she saw by kinetic storyteller Paata Tsikurishvili that served as her career epiphany. The Russian-born performer does physical storytelling with narrative and dramatic musical scoring underneath.

"What he was doing in combining narrative with movement blew me away," Muray said, "not only characters, but abstract ideas. I went to see a number of his plays and became a groupie."

Six years ago, she began working with him.

She then started her storytelling business, which she transferred to Ventura when she and her husband of 15 years moved.

Growing up the youngest of four in rural Pennsylvania, Muray never really got into fairy tales. Her mom rarely had time to read to her or her siblings.

But the business her dad owned taught her all about different characters and mannerisms.

"My dad's barbershop was a mill for grinding out interesting characters," she said — characters like Tangles, a guy reputed to be a gangster, and Harlan, who swept up the barbershop. There were also offbeat characters with names like Jenny Boo Boo and Cokey.

The memories of all of these folks have been invaluable as she studied her art, she said.

What makes a good story

As ancient as it is, the mechanics of a good story can be elusive to some.

"There's the obvious beginning, middle, end," Muray said when asked what made a good story. "And I think the details are what bring a story to life."

Any storyteller can join the 2,500-member National Storytelling Network, based in Jonesborough, Tenn., network spokeswoman Kit Rogers said. But, she added, becoming a good storyteller takes practice, along with an understanding of what details to include and which to leave out.

"It's a special type of communication," Rogers said. "Not everybody's good at it."

A young audience, she said, is an immediate indicator of how good a storyteller you are.

"It's a cute thing to see, to get a child with a short attention span to really be drawn into the story where they're just staring," Rogers said.

"The wide-eyed wonder is a sure sign the person has already made it."

The NSN sponsors the granddaddy of all storytelling festivals, the National Storytelling Conference, which will take place Aug. 7-11 in Gatlinburg, Tenn.

One of the objectives of the NSN is to attract the next generation of storytellers so this ancient art form finds its way into the future.

Concern that media like video and computers erode the imagination and lure kids away from narrative storytelling is certainly valid, but it doesn't worry Easter Christopher of the Oxnard schools.

"Certainly, there's the argument that video is bad because you don't have to make up pictures in your head," she said. "But storytelling survived novels, radio, DVD players. It will survive YouTube as well."