Some of you may recognize Amy Friedman as a frequent commenter here on Extra Criticum. As such, we consider her one of the "family." So when the third in her popular series of Tell Me a Story CDs was recently released, Rolando Teco wanted to be among the first to interview her. Here is part 1 of 2.
First a brief bio of Amy:
Tell Me a Story writer and Los Angeles resident Amy Friedman received her B.A. in literature
from Barnard College and an M.A. in creative writing from City College,
City University of New York.
Crisscrossing the country - from New York to San Francisco, back to New York, then to Los Angeles and even to a sheep farm in a small eastern town of Ontario, she eventually settled back in Los Angeles. While in Ontario, she wrote a weekly column for Canada’s oldest daily newspaper, The Kingston Whig-Standard, and created the seeds of what would become, in 1992, Tell Me a Story. The first incarnation of Tell Me a Story, The Bedtime Story, won the 1991 Alberta Literacy Award for outstanding contribution to literacy.
Friedman has written four books, which have received critical acclaim: “Kick the Dog and Shoot the Cat,” a film-to-farm memoir; “Nothing Sacred: A Conversation With Feminism”; “Tell Me a Story”; and “The Spectacular Gift.” She continues to write and publish both fiction and nonfiction for newspapers, magazines and literary journals including, most recently, the New York Times Magazine.
Q:
Amy, your 3rd edition of "TELL ME A STORY" is about to be released. You have an eclectic background as a writer, an educator and a playwright. In fact I met you at a theatre conference in Alaska. Can you talk about how the various threads of your background all came together in this project? And also, can you describe how the idea first came to you for the series?
A:
Eclectic is a lovely way of putting it… but the truth is, in this case I hadn’t thought of the CDs as bringing together all the threads of the various kinds of writing I’ve done over the years, but now that you say it, I see perhaps they do. Here’s the long. Nearly 17 years ago (yikes!) I one day suggested to my brilliant editor at the Kingston (Ontario) Whig-Standard where I’d been writing a weekly column for nearly 8 years that we offer something for kids, and he told me to go figure out something to offer. I came up with what originally was called The Bedtime Story, a column of adapted myths, folktales, fairytales and legends. I found Jillian Gilliland who has been the illustrator all these years (she had illustrated over 20 children’s books by that time), and we launched the new feature. Within three months 9 other Canadian papers picked up the feature, and less than a year later, Universal Press Syndicate came to us with an offer. Long unhappy story short, the Whig let me and Jillian go and kept the column name (it died six months later); Jillian and I signed with Universal and our column became Tell Me a Story. Within months we were in over 200 newspapers around the world. (And I mean seriously around the world). (www.uexpress.com/tellmeastory is the website where you can read the column these days—it still runs, though as newspapers die, so do the number of papers in which we’re carried.)
Fourteen years after the first column, while awaiting an audio publisher to come along to buy our over 700 illustrated stories--two book collections were published and never promoted and are now out of print (on a libris for two bucks.)—I was in the class I teach at UCLA Extension listening to one of my students, an actor, reading her own story. When I heard her voice, I suddenly realized I could produce these CDs—I’d hire actors to read them…
I asked a director/actor friend, Lori Jaroslow if she would be interested in directing, and through Lori I met the amazing Laura Hall (composer/pianist all around amazing woman best known as the pianist from Whose Line Is It Anyway). At our first meeting I knew I’d found the team that makes them all work. (One of the reasons I love making these is because working with Lori and Laura and Laura’s two young daughters who help us select the stories to record is bliss—it’s that collaborative magic that sometimes happens.)
Q:
It seems that storytelling is enjoying a sort of renaissance lately. Do you trace this to the success of audio books like your own? And how do you place the importance of storytelling in American culture today?
A:
When I first began writing The Bedtime Story/Tell Me A Story, one of my fellow columnists cut piece out of a Toronto newspaper, circa 1940s; it was a column that had been popular back then and was, in essence, the same kind of column I had just “created.” Across the top of the page my colleague wrote: “Everything Old Is New Again.”
Yep! So I guess I’d answer that story telling has always been popular, but sometimes it hides in corners waiting to be noticed again. So I’m not sure which comes first—the audio book or the desire for such stories and story tellers. I’m a devout story teller, and an aficionado—it’s the reason I also love writing and teaching memoir and personal essay. I think people crave stories in every shape. I recently spent two years working with my aunt on writing her memoir. Just last night we had a big family book launch—all her grandchildren came. She read a few selections from the book, and it was silent in the room—and I watched all the kids. She was reading a story about something that happened to her when she was 5—nearly 80 years ago--and because this book so holds her voice, as she read, she became 5 again, and I saw awe in the faces of the grandkids, this amazement—“There’s our grandmother but she’s a little girl, I can see her/hear herl…” Everyone in the room (and there were 50 people there) sat on the edge of their seats, eyes welling with tears. Many transformations were going on all at once. And I think that’s what story telling does. It takes people somewhere else, and it takes them deeper inside themselves at the same time. It’s a tough thing to put into words, and I’m not sure what exactly the importance is for our culture, but I sense it. I think for instance that part of Obama’s (worldwide) appeal is his story—the complexity of it, the journey (a hero’s journey…), the fact that he knows how to tell it to us and that he does; we spent 8 years listening to a story that was utterly false, filled with holes and lies. I think it left us starved for a true story, something genuine, something genuine, something with some truth inside.
That’s possible, anyway. I do know that stories make me feel full and whole, and when I watch kids listening to stories I see the same thing happening. I wish I understood it completely, but it’s enough for me at the moment to just know it happens.
Q:
You feature some well-known actors in your series. Was it difficult to interest them in this project? Can you describe your process of attracting name talent to this important piece? Also, was it a challenge for you to assign specific stories to specific voices? How did you determine who would read what?
A:
Because I pay for these out of pocket—and my pockets aren’t deep—I pay very little to the talent and have a kind of “kindness of strangers” thing going on. Each of the name actors who have worked with us—Len Cariou, Lauren Tom, Jack McGee, Paula Poundstone, Charlayne Woodard, Bryce Dallas Howard, Yvette Freeman, Kathleen Wilhoite, Jessica DiCicco—have been beyond generous, passionate, excited, joyful even. Lauren Tom was the first—she was a writing student of mine, and a mom who became a good friend. Several of the others are friends of Lori’s or Laura’s or mine, and every one of them gave the work their all. They did it because they have kids and love audio books or because it sounded fun or because they love doing anything for kids or because they’re just plain great sports who love to work. A few we’ve asked who shall remain nameless blew us off when we approached—no return calls or acknowledgment of the request—but they only made me more grateful and aware of the fact that those who have worked with us are good not only because of the talent but because of the passion, devotion and generosity inherent in the work each person does. I think all that shows in the product.
Lori Jaroslow is the genius behind most of the casting. Lori, Laura and I decide before we begin on our general idea—first choosing the stories and an overall theme, then the kind of “sound” we want. For the first one, Timeless Folktales from Around the World, we decided to cast against type—that seemed fun—especially when Lori came up with Jack McGee with his gruff Brooklynese for a Japanese folktale and Lauren Tom (who is Chinese) with her mellifluous, chocolate voice for a lyrical Scottish tale. The second was entirely different; our first commitment was from Glenna Forster-Jones, a well-known British actress originally from Sierra Leone. When she read an African story and used her accent and rhythms, Lori decided to seek readers who came from each story’s place of origin—Australia, Guatemala, Native American and so on. As pure luck would have it, Len Cariou who is a beloved friend of mine was in town to do a play and he agreed to read AFTER we had already selected a French Canadian story. It was serendipity.
Our third which is coming out in a couple weeks is goddess and heroine tales, and so we looked for some of our goddesses and heroines to read. I kept hearing Paula Poundstone’s voice reading one of my favorite American tall tales, and so—we asked (even though none of us knew her). What a talent and what a generous human being, and on we went, seeking and finding goddesses like Bryce Howard, Jessica DiCicco (the voice of Nikolodeon), Yvette Freeman (of ER fame), Wendy Hammers, a brilliant comedian, and the sultry jazz singer Margot Rose. (Yum! She sings a song Laura and I wrote for an Ethiopian story, with words and music based on traditional Ethiopian tezeta.
The conclusion of this interview will be posted in a couple of days. In the meantime, to purchase any of the Tell Me a Story CDs online, visit mythsandtales.com.
