HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DO, AND WHY DO YOU DO IT?
As a parish pastor in 1980 I began performing Mark's passion narrative as a "dramatic monologue" (as I then described it). The response was electric. People were excited that "the story came alive!" The next year I took a continuing education course in biblical storytelling with Tom Boomershine (he's a professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary and the founder of the Network of Biblical Storytellers). I was so inspired by Tom that I began to learn the whole Gospel of Mark.

As opportunities increased for me to perform and the word spread, I began to grow my repertoire. In 1992 I left full time parish work to devote myself to this itinerant ministry of story. My ministry is my art, and my art is my ministry.

So for five years now I have performed and led workshops, seminars and retreats in biblical story. I have worked with Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, United Methodists, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites---all denominations (and some non-denominational churches) that value the sacred stories of the Christian tradition.

I have performed and taught from Seattle to Tampa, from Toronto to San Francico and even in Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Israel! I undertake this travel because I have a strong sense of vocation to help pastors, educators, church leaders and all believers everywhere experience the power of the biblical stories told as though life depended on them. Can you imagine better work than this?

YOU SAID THAT YOU USED TO CALL YOUR PERFORMANCE "DRAMA," BUT NOW YOU CALL IT "STORYTELLING." WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Well, to shrink what could be a lecture series into two words: eye contact. The aesthetics of theater require that the audience and actors make believe that what is happening in the drama "really is" happening (in some wink-of- the-eye way).

The task of an actor in a theater performance is to sustain that illusion. Actors do not look at their audiences in the eye because to make eye contact would break that illusion.

Storytellers, on the other hand, are always massaging their audience with their eyes---at least as they are narrating. This intimacy, and its implicit invitation to enter the story is what sets storytelling apart from drama---though obviously a lot of acting is employe d in the process.

YOU SAY YOU WORK MOSTLY WITH CLERGY, TEACHERS AND CHURCH LEADERS. I TAKE IT, THEN, THAT STORYTELLING IS NOT JUST FOR CHILDREN?
Heavens, no! Not even PRIMARILY for children! I think it a measure of the dis-ease of our culture that people automatically associate the word "storytelling" with children. We have not been very intentional about creating a society in which story is valued, but the fact is that we live in stories.

Story, after all, is how we learn most of what we know.

Frequently on airplanes fellow passengers will ask me, "What do you do?" When I reply that I am a biblical storyteller, they are inevitably surprised to learn that only a fraction of my work is with children. When I tell my curious seatmates that many of the biblical stories in my repertoire are too intense for children, many of them "R-rated" at the very least, confused throat- clearing often ensues.

They often express genuine surprise that anyone could make a living at such "work" as this. I must confess, that I am daily struck by that same realization!

YOU MENTIONED A REPERTOIRE. WHAT BIBLICAL STORIES DO YOU TELL?
My bag of stories continues to grow and now consists of over 10 hours of biblical stories---some whole books (Mark, John, Galatians, Revelation, Jonah, half of Genesis), some thematic programs (such as the Christmas narratives, the four resurrection stories) and some individual stories, parables and psalms.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE "BIBLICAL STORYTELLING?"
Well, it means many things to many people. In the general sense it includes everything from first person monologues to creative expansions of narrative themes found in the Bible to puppetry to dance. But all these various expressions of biblical storytelling spring from that core activity which I define as biblical storytelling in the specific sense. And here is my definition: Biblical storytelling is the lively interpretation, expression and animation of a narrative text of the Old or New Testament that has been first deeply internalized and then is "remembranced" (a word I borrow to mean "recalled in all its vitality as a living reality in the present moment"), breathed, voiced and embodied, by a teller/performer as a sacred event in community with an audience/congregation. That's a definition I've lived with for a few years, and it seems to bear the test of time.

YOU TELL THE STORIES WITHOUT ADDING ANYTHING OR CHANGING THEM. SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT LIMITS THE CREATIVE PROCESS.
I am happy to have people use the gifts God has given them to tell the story in any way that is appropriate for them and for their audiences. But I would challenge any who denigrate the practice of performing the story as it is found in the text (as it has been traditioned to us): Must we add our own extra scenes to a good play in order to interpret it creatively? To perform a Bach partita, must we change it, add notes, "improve" on Johann Sebastian's work?

These stories have survived for centuries, for millennia. Maybe we should ask ourselves why. I know that some people think of telling the scripture word- for-word as "rote recitation," but, believe me, that's not what I do! Remember that the stories of the scriptures were, for the most part, first experienced as stories---full of sound and fury, red meat and bubbly---not as dead ink on silent paper.

We DO have many translations, of course. And I think it important to choose one that is responsible to the text at the same time that it "sounds" right. Some translations are better for silent reading than aural performance. And don't get me wrong, I don't think that every performance needs to be slavishly word-for-word. Biblical storytelling takes place within what I call the "orbit" of the text.

We know that oral cultures did not have the same obsession with verbatim transmission as literate culture has. (That's why there are four different sets of "words of institution.") But we DO have a text, a text that we value and revere. So when I engage in that art form that I have called biblical storytelling in the specific sense, I do have an obligation to be responsible to its music, to stay within the orbit of the text.

SO PEOPLE RESPOND TO HEARING THE TEXT MORE OR LESS JUST AS IT IS?
You bet! It blows them away! They can't believe it! People often say to me something like, "I've been going to church all my life, and I never heard the gospel before now!" Sometimes people actually say, "I can't believe that's in there; I'm going to go home and look it up!" The reaction reminds me of the response that Jesus encounters over and over again in Mark's story, "We've never heard anything like this!"

When people tell me that I make it come alive, I respond, "It already IS alive; I just try not to KILL it!" The problem is that since the Enlightenment the church has become adept at storycide: the killing of the story. We have actually institutionalized as normative an expressionless performance (reading) of scripture that seeks to expunge every bit of emotion and non- verbal communication. In short, we have ordained that it shall be performed as "spoken print."

My goal is to play the stories like a Stradivarius in order to provide an alternative experience to that typically associated with the hearing of the Word, an experience of that "aliveness" that motivated the downloading of the stories to paper in the first place! To hear the stories as they were originally heard is an experience of incarnation! The teaching component of my ministry has as its goal nothing short of the transformation of the way the stories are performed for worship, education, spiritual growth and social action.

SO YOU SEE A NEED FOR THIS IN TODAY'S CHURCH? IN TODAY'S WORLD?
We have a church that is story-starved, fed a meager diet of lectionary scraps once a week if that often. If we do not know our story, we do not know who we are. People want to know the story, but they are put off by reading the Bible.

I ask, "How did people come to faith before literacy was common?" I answer, "Through the telling/hearing of the story." This seems like a no-brainer to me. We have a tremendous opportunity for evangelism here---beginning with the evangelization of those who already profess faith in Jesus Christ, but who only know the Cliff Notes version of the story---if they know any of it at all. We can find ways to introduce these stories to a culture that is no longer steeped in the narratives and metaphors of scripture.

This past summer I performed on a public beach as part of an experimental program of several Presbyterian Churches in the South Fork of Long Island. A crowd of the curious gathered around and listened to the stories of Noah and Jonah and Jesus calming the sea, and they licked their slurpies and laughed and called the kids over and HAD A GREAT TIME! In this post-literate age our task should begin not with the problem of biblical literacy but with the people's story poverty. If our people start to become rich in the stories, I believe that that will lead naturally to biblical literacy!