By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Everybody likes a good story, but not everyone has the ability or the know-how to tell one. A new storytelling workshop series through the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center is assisting the process from August 21 through October 2 where any aspiring storyteller can learn from beginning to end how to tell a good story. Workshops are held on Wednesdays through September 18 at $15 a workshop.

Teresa Muckala, volunteer at the Cultural Center, originally thought of the idea and has played a big part in organizing the series.

“I love a good story,” said Muckala. “Whether it’s told or whether it’s written, I’m a big time reader, but I also love public radio. This American Story has excellent storytelling and there’s also something called the Moth Radio Hour and those are short stories. I thought ‘would’t that be neat to have that skill?’

“I do a lot of talking in business and giving presentations and stuff, so I thought it would be great to learn how to do that,” she continued. “So I talked to Cheryl Bannes and Betsy Roder about that and they though ‘well, maybe something like that could come up,’ but we didn’t know anybody that could teach the classes, a lot of really cool stuff had to happen for something like that.”

Well, something cool really did happen when Mark Pagán applied for the Artist in Residence program through the Cultural Center. Pagán happens to have a background in film, television, writing and journalism, so when he applied for the residency, Bannes and Roder immediately thought of the opportunity to fulfill that storytelling workshop need.

“He was a producer of the Moth Radio Hour,” said Muckala. “It was like, ‘there’s a sign,’ so we started really pulling it together and Cheryl found several other instructors to make it a five-workshop series and then we also thought about in early October doing a storytelling hour.

“It could be a competition where there are prizes, but it just depends on whether or not there are people who want to go a little farther than writing stories and maybe wanting to tell stories,” she continued. “We’re hoping that we’ll see some interest, there were nine people at the first workshop and that was really good.”

Muckala said the importance of structure within storytelling along with the rhythm of the story. She said that we come across good storytelling everywhere, whether it’s a sermon on Sunday morning or a presentation at work, the craft comes in handy in many instances.

“It’s just that thought process around how we all can grow,” said Muckala, “Even if we’re old, we can grow and learn new things and using the Cultural Center is a great way to learn so much, whether it’s visual arts, or right now they have clay sculptures, they had woodworking arts, they’ve done painting…they haven’t really done anything with spoken word. So this was just another way to expand. Mark Pagán is an excellent instructor, there are some real structures to storytelling and some people are just talented because they just know that stuff, but some of us have to learn those structures and rhythm and those sorts of things.”

Pagán started his career in film and television, focusing on fiction and script writing to begin with. When he realized that it didn’t fit the style of writing he was most interested in, he made a change into nonfiction writing and transitioned into more of a journalist and documentarian.

“I found that I was really interested in doing work on gender and masculinity and cultural identity,” said Pagán. “Over the last 10 years I’ve been doing a lot of, I’d say memoir-based writing that has shown up in performances as well as essays. Then that moved into long form narrative work for institutions like New York Times and podcast companies like PRX. I really love finding a balance between nonfiction and fiction. I love doing research work and all that has shown up in the nonfiction.”

The first two workshops, held in August, were taught by Pagán, which centered around the basic rules of storytelling and structuring a story. He deeply enjoys working with people on different projects and their development as well as translating and idea to reality.

“I like being able to translate what I think somebody is trying to say,” he said. “I have a lot of patience and empathy for both the project development process that so many of us go through as well as what it takes to explain our ideas. We have so much that’s locked into our heads, so many insecurities that we’re bringing into things. We have so many blind spots when it comes to expressing what we want to write about.

“I love listening to ideas that people share asking them questions to get closer to what the truth of the idea is,” Pagán continued. “And then being able to point and say, that’s it. That seems to be what you are really trying to express here. That seems to be the bulk of the story. How can we develop that?”

One aspect of the “translation” process as Pagán calls it, is the fact that everyone has a story to tell, regardless of genre or topic, he enjoys being able to support that process and helping to put pen to paper and thought to page. He hopes that his storytelling workshops helps to support people’s stories coming to life.

“I hope that folks take home tools that will help their writing process in the workshop and outside of the workshop so that they can become more confident and diligent in writing what they want to write about over time,” he said. “It would be wonderful if all the participants had at least one story, one piece that they got a lot of input about during these five weeks. Whether that moved into them telling a story for the stage or writing a book or an essay. I’m less interested in the ends, but more so that folks will get the confidence and the guidance to believe in their ideas and see it though some next steps.”