Karen Eve Bayne talks about the importance of storytelling during her childhood in the Appalachian Mountains, and how years later while living in England she pursued training at the Unicorn Storytelling School and Emerson College before becoming a professional storyteller. She mentions teaching storytelling classes in the UK to different groups of people from priests to single parents and in the US working with the Arts Council, and storytelling in schools, private parties, libraries, and museums. She states that her stories are about faith, frolicking, food, and questions of the soul.

• Creator
  • Bayne, Karen-Eve
• Contributor
  • Lansford, Laura
• Format
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Text
• Date
  • Date interview: 2009-11-19
  • Date: 1990s; 2000s (Decade);
  • Date digitized: 2014-12-04
• Extent
  • Duration: 8 pages
• Subject - Topic
  • Autobiography
  • Bayne, Karen-Eve
  • Storytellers -- Appalachian Region, Southern
  • Storytellers -- Great Britain
  • Storytellers -- North Carolina
  • Storytelling -- Appalachian Region, Southern
  • Storytelling -- United States
• Location
  • Henderson County (N.C.)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Oral History Collection - HIST 474/574
• Identifier
  • HL_HIST474_Lansford_Bayne_2009-11-19_transcript
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library

Interview with Karen Eve Bayne Interviewed by: Laura Lansford November 19th, 2009 Karen's home, Mountain Home, North Carolina Laura Lansford: Okay this is Laura Lansford interviewing Karen Eve Bayne and it is November 10, 2009. Okay, we'll start out with the basic stuff. Where are you originally from? Karen Eve Bayne: Well, I'm originally a Henderson County native, so I'm one of the few people that did grow up here that is still here. I lived away for 25 years, but I'm back! Laura Lansford: When you were growing up, did you grow up your entire child here or did you move out before you left home? Karen Even Bayne: No, I was real Appalachian family; grew up way up in the holler of Green River, which is in the south part of the county, and we literally lived at the end of the road. And so I spent eighteen, nineteen years here, and then I went off to college. Etcetera. But, yeah, grew up in a really strong Appalachian family, my family has been in Henderson County for 260 years, we've got a family graveyard with some graves going back to the 1800s-to 1760, I think-and it's just been a really cool thing for me because when I came back in 2006 after living abroad, I really started to get into my own character. So, well, you know, I'm a native! LL: When you were growing up here, was your family, was it a large family, did you have a lot of extended family that was around, or was it kind of a small ... KEB: No, we had a lot of extended family, the first seven years we lived in Etowah, which is a portion of Henderson County, we lived under my grandparents, and every Sunday we would go down to my grandmother and grandfather's house, and fifty or sixty of my first cousins would show up. There were ten kids on my mom's side, and they all reproduced quite prolifically. And, and my father had six or seven-six brothers and sisters. And many of them weren't here, but the first ten years of my life was spent with a lot of aunts and uncles. LL: How old were you when you started to tell stories? Was it a thing that started in your childhood, or was it later in your life that you started telling stories? KEB: Well, I guess there was-l've been telling stories quote, professionally, for ten years; ten years this month, November of '09, of '99. But when I was a kid I listened to the storeies that the growups had told. I heard a lot of stories about World War II, about the old days and what people used to do and I was always hovering in the background or under the table, or somewhere listening to the adults tell stories. I remember clearly a woman that came to my house and read fairy tales, because I had never heard fairy tales until I was about five or six. We were a real working mountain family, so there wasn't a lot of sitting around reading books. But we heard a lot of stories. When did I start telling stories? I was in 4H, 4H was a really big part of my life, and 4H public speaking. I don't know if I was telling stories then, but I was doing public speaking through 4h. But I've always been a pretty big talker and exaggerator. I imagine, I mean, you know, there were definitely some stories that I've told that were bordering on bald-faced lies as a child. [laughter] to get myself out of trouble! LL: Yeah, I think everybody does that. Did anybody teach you storytelling when you started to professionally tell stories? KEB: Yes. Two, a couple things happened, and you may be asking me this question later, about how did I start, but. Two things happened. I went to Jonesborrough, a storytelling festival twenty-five years ago or later, I mean it was like a-or earlier, it was very early on. And I • thought, "This is really cool," you know, I never really thought that storytelling in itself was an art form. But I was quite young and went off to college and went around the world, etcetera. And I was living abroad, I worked in England for a long time, and I had a regular business job, etcetera, and I came home in 1995, home to here, Hendersonville, and I had just had a baby. And I was meeting with some friends, and my friend was saying that she had just gotten a masters degree, or working on a masters degree, at least, from Tennessee State. And I thought­in storytelling, and I thought, "Woah! I've heard of folklore MAs, but I'd never heard of that. And, so I said, "Well, okay, so, you know, tell me a story, show me!" And she stood up and told the story of the Wife of Bath, Canterbury Tales, and in there, there's a question which is, "what do women want", what do they really want? And I was 38, I'd had a career, I'd just had a child, all that. And I was at this crux of thinking, "Well, what do I want, because I've done twenty years with the company, practically, etcetera." And the answer is to make their own choices. And I went away and thought, "Yes! Yes! I like that." But I, she was telling the stories and I thought, "I can do that." And I was really moved by her story, and I went back to London with my husband and child and I was just really touched by the fact that I was so moved by this story. And I was working full time, so I took a class, a night class, at one of the Universities in London on the Psychology of storytelling, and I thought it was just amazing how stories working in our brain and what they do, and it really stayed with me. And then a couple years later I took a career break and moved out to the country and my late husband said, "Hey, there's a storytelling school up the road, you've always wanted to do this, why don't you go check it out?" It was the Unicorn Storytelling School, and I called up and there was this incredibly brilliant Scottish lad, and I talked him into letting me start the class, because it had already started, and I went in and it was this 400, 500 year-old mill, and the class was in the basement, and there was this big, roaring fireplace, and there all these, there were like 20 students, and they were all standing up and telling stories in these beautiful Brittish accents, and I just said, "This is it! I've come, I've come home. This is it." I mean I just knew that was the thing for me. So I studied with this man, Alexander McKensey for over a year, and that was great. And he encouraged me to go to Emerson College in Sussex, England. And Emerson is one of the few places that specializes in storytelling as an academic course, and they train waldorf teachers to do storytelling, and I did a number of courses there. And that was about 10 years ago. I launched doing storytelling with another woman, Chloe Leas( spelling approximated) In the UK and so for-we are the Midnightstorytellers.com, you can look us up, Midnightstorytellers.com, I've got a website. And it was just a very powerful experience, really powerful experience for me, and it has seen me through a lot of good times and bad times. LL: That's good. Have you considered teaching anyone else storytelling, like informally? KEB: Yeah, and part of my career has been in the UK I did a lot of teaching, I did a lot of courses for teachers. And I taught priests that were in training how to tell stories and how to effectively use them in their sermons. And also I had a number of courses, I did one for single mothers, for single parents-it turned out to all be mothers. And one course in Wales for storytelling for parents that were illiterate, actually, so it was a way for them to connect literature and to connect with their children, they didn't have to know how to read. • LL: That's really cool. What types of stories do you normally tell? KEB: Well, that's a double-edged answer because there's the stories that I like to tell and the stories I usually tell. Most people like short, happy feel-good stories and those are all good. I really specialize in my heart and in what I do, in what I call stories for our time, which are stories that deal with fundamental theological questions and fundamental questions of how do we survive in the 21st century. I tell a lot of stories about food [laughter], as well, food and having fun. But I'd say mine are about faith, frolicking, food and questions of the soul. And I like to tell stories that are heavier and darker, rather than the light, happier ones, because I think that the heavier and darker ones really challenge us to think. LL: Where do you normally get called on to tell stories? Do you tell a lot in schools, or in ... KEB: I do work with Arts Council, so I do do stories in schools, and that's fun. I do a lot of stories in churches, civics, civic groups, sometimes for private parties, museums, libraries, those kind of things. And then I wasn't getting to tell the kind of stories I liked well enough so I just started myself a festival [laughter] Yeah. LL: How do you decide which stories you tell in which place? KEB: I base it on the audience, so who they are, what they're interested in, how much time I have, and how do I want to leave them. So, for example, last Friday night, my daughter, who is fourteen now, she performed with me for the first time and we were telling for the building and grounds committee at a church, it was their annual dinner, and we had about thirty-five minutes, it was after dinner. So we told stories about gardens and trees, that kind of thing. So it's really about who and where and how do I want to leave them. Do I want to leave them thinking about something and happy, or do I want them thinking seriously about something. LL: How do you think growing up here and then living abroad affected the way you tell stories or the specific types of stories you decided to tell? KEB: Okay, well, there, there's two answers to that, as there always is. I'm a Sociologist by training, so I'm very interested in cultural differences. Two big differences. Americans tell stories that are personal experiences. Why? Because we have a litigious society. Europeans and the rest of the world by and large tell stories that are folktales and culturally important to their area. So when I came here I saw that everybody was turning their souls inside out and sharing all their personal experiences on stage and they weren't telling folktales. I like to do some of both, and I actually prefer to tell stories that other people have written. Which raises of course and issue here in the US, because I have to get permission for that. Robert Morgan you may be familiar with is a very well known poet and author from Henderson County, he teaches at Cornell, he's written a number of best seller books that were about Henderson County. I grew up in the same river valley with Robert, and he gave me permission to tell his stories, and they are uniquely Appalachian, but not like Jack-tales. They are very specific to what it was like to carve out a life here, and modem day country Appalachian life. So I tell his stories. I have not yet crossed into the "I'm going to tell American-style personal stories", 'cause I'm not so sure everyone cares about, you know, my first experience with drinking or going to the shopping mall • or whatever. But I do think that our litigious society is really limiting us because there are so many wonderful stories and people have started to get ownership of things, and I really think that's absolutely against the grain of oral storytelling. I mean, for example, when I was in the UK I told a lot of Native American stories and here I don't dare tell 'em the Native American stories because I don't want to offend the Native people and they feel that they own those. I don't tell stories, say, from the Gullah culture here, which I did tell overseas, because the African American Gullah folks own those. I love Jack-tales, but I'm not a good Jack-teller. So there is, there's definitely a cultural impact. LL: When you tell stories do you rely on the audience for participation, or are they just a passive audience? KEB: If I'm telling to kids, I get them involved and they're active. If I'm telling to an audience and they've been sitting there for a while, let's say it's at a conference, then I involve them. I want them to be involved emotionally always, and if I see that an audience is drifting away, then I change what I do. I have this equation in my head that it's either action, description, or conversation, so I go into one of those and change what I'm doing to try to get them involved, at least emotionally. But I have a number of stories where people are involved, where the audience calls back or remembers or does something. LL: Do you think that when you tell a specific story that has like a theological question or something in it, do you think that the audience sees the meaning the same way you do, or do they kind of, does it kind of become different because they're a different person? KEB: This is my theory on that one. Two things. I never unpack the meaning of a story for someone. I tell the story and it stands on its own. I think a good story is powerful regardless of the skill of the teller, and that part of the psychology of stories I love is that stories speak to different people on different levels at different times. So a strongly theological story for example, like I told one called Zygalist(spelling approximated) the Pope which is by Rabbi Baksheebus(spelling approximated), and it's a very strong story about the nature of good and evil, and it is just multi, multi layered. And I probably told it the first time seven years ago, I still tell it, it's different every time in what it teaches. So I think people just take in stories at the level that they need to take it in. And it lodges in their brains and hearts and I think comes back at other times. LL: Has the outside influence like the particular political climate or religious climate at a certain time, has that affected which stories you choose to tell at a certain time? KEB: I am a flaming liberal, I am a flaming liberal, and I have a couple of stories that I definitely with a little bit of impish glee tell to rattle the thoughts and minds of let's say conservative audiences at times. Yes, and, I think, just depending on what's happening in the culture at the time, or society, for example I've developed a story that my daughter and I told last week, and I've been telling it for a while, and it's called Fast Food Game, and it's all about God and Satan and the creation of fast food, and Super Sizing it and Burger King and the $.99 double cheese burger and all that. And that's you know, that's very timely in society because that's one of the things we talk about, and yeah, so definitely what's happening in culture. And I have a few stories that I change the ending to based on the political climate. LL: Have you noticed your style of storytelling changing since you've started telling stories, or is it kind of static? KEB: No, it's changed-that's a great question I haven't-it has changed. When I first started telling stories I told a lot of what I thought were deep and unusual folktales, and I relied on the fact that this historically over many years had been a good story. And in the last four or five years I've started to tell more well, definitely more modern stories, but stories that are less, I guess less standard, so it's allowed me to take a lot more risks with my stories in what the messages are, and in playing with them more. And I'm just more comfortable as a storyteller and I feel that I can read an audience much better, so I can tell how this is going, and do I need to change it. I've grown up as a storyteller so I'm using more mature themes and deeper themes and different techniques. LL: Is storytelling more an, is it an occupation for you now that you've started professionally telling stories, or is it more just something that you love to do that you don't have to do. KEB: Well, very few people I think can make a real living at it. I consider myself a professional storyteller, and I do still tell people that this is my profession, which also means a.k.a I'm not volunteering to do this, I really would like to have an honorarium at the end, but also because I studied it professionally and I take it on very seriously and I feel that to be the keeper of stories and the passer-on of stories is a real honor. And it's a profession. The native people, cultural people around the world have had a storyteller as a real position, and I like that. And I've just recently started a job, a part time job three days a week, which incorporates into it storytelling, and that's one of the aspects of it, as a facilitator and trainer I spend a lot of my time telling stories to make points and link with everything. LL: What do you feel like storytelling contributes to the Appalachian community, to the community around you? KEB: There is a couple, there's quite a few things, and I have pretty strong feelings on this and ... Last year I started a storytelling festival in Hendersonville, it's called the Do-Tell Storyfest, and we've had it one year, and I've now got funding to have it a second year, and I think it'll keep going and there were several reasons behind that. One is I believe that it is part of the Appalachian culture, so I wanted there to be more storytelling that people could go to. Two, I it of course passes down the folktales and stories of our area, so it tells our story in Appalachia. And then I like to introduce new storytellers because it increases the understanding between groups. And I'm very committed to diversity, and next year, for example, we're going to have-well, Lloyd Arneach is coming, he was here last year. But I'm going to have a Native teller an African American teller, a Hispanic teller, and I feel that if we get the white community listening to all of those stories, and those communities listening to our stories, that will increase diversity. And you know somebody, you hear their story, you understand them, you have more empathy for them. So I think it's good for the community in that sense. And I also think that storytelling is a tremendous way to teach values, norms, new information and to stretch • boundaries, because my intention is to have some storytellers that do tell that challenge peoples' thinking as well. LL: What does storytelling do for you when you tell stories, like, what do you think it contributes to your life? KEB: Well, first off, I'm-in the personality assessment world-what's in the disc personality that Hypocrates originally created, I'm an eye, which is a person who really, really need to have creative expression, so it gives me a way to creatively express myself that has a social value. And that's great for me. It's the most, one of the most satisfying things that I've ever done. I get instant gratification by the audience, and afterwards. I love standing there afterwards and people coming up to me and asking questions, that's for sure, not because it's about praise for me, but it's that either the stories touched them or it's moved them or they've remembered something they've connected somehow, which I really appreciate, because I'm all about the development of people, of their personal spiritual, and emotional development. It is a great way for me to be very present and I'm a person that has lots of projects and activities, and I'm always thinking about the future and doing this and that, but when I'm telling stories, that is I am just there. I am so present and I'm aware of the audience and I am-it's almost like my mind splits into three or four sections 'cause I'm perfectly in control of what I'm saying and I'm perfectly aware of what's going on with the audience, very aware of physically where I am and what I'm doing, and I'm always aware of the power that I'm wielding through my words, and what an honor that is. So I try to be very careful with that. And I'm just so present, and I like that. I really like that. 'Cause there's not a lot of times in my life that I can say I'm one hundred percent focused on one thing. LL: Have you noticed any changes in storytelling or the way storytellers work with the advent of new technology? Like the internet; one person I talked to mentioned Facebook. KEB: Well, interestingly, I don't know if it affects how storytellers work, but there are more stories circulating the world than there have ever been because we're all getting these little stories on internet and you send them to fifteen people who send them to 25 more people who, you know and it just multiplies. And I think stories are playing a more important role in our lives consciously than they have in several generations because we can send stories more quickly. Now, does that reduce the number of stories we're telling? I don't know. But I think because we can share stories more quickly-when I get a good story I send it to a storyteller in New Zealand, a storyteller in England and a storyteller in Tennessee, there are four people that I, or three or four people, that I always share, we share our stories, so in that way, technology is increasing the quantity of the stories that we have. 'Cause they send me stories also. LL: Is there anything else, like any anything you want to say about storytelling that I haven't asked? KEB: Well, you may have covered this, but I did a lot of research into how stories are stories are used in the brain and this is so fascinating to me. I love how science and real life are always come together. Stories that-I could bring out, I have a whole session on how stories are used in the brain, but-but primarily stories are one of the most effective means of teaching and there's a • lot of research that shows that if a teacher is getting kids to memorize something like the periodic table or a multiplication table and they tell a story or a joke before or after, that they remember this twelve times longer. You're shaking your head like you know this research. LL: Yeah, one of the ladies that I interviewed, she is a teacher, and that is the first thing she said, was that "I was telling a story in the classroom and I noticed 'Hm the kids are actually listening to what I'm saying!"' KEB: Yeah, and I mean, stories have lasted because they are, in business terms, repeatable, memorable, and transferable. And, when I was in the UK, I did a lot of work with the World Bank, and the World Bank has an entire department which is called intelligence management, and all it is is storytelling. That's all it is. They go around the world and they collect all these stories that have worked well in business, and they tell other people who tell other people who tell other people. And I was walking around thinking "Yeah, you've put white coats and dressed it up all up as some science, but this is storytelling, guys." And I think that the power of stories is so important. We overlook or don't call it what it is, which is I mean, movies are stories. We listen to the radio which is filled with stories. The news is stories. E-mail. Cards and letters and films. As human beings we love a story. What I love about the oral process is that it engages other parts of the mind that are not engaged when you see it. I love films. But no one will ever see the same picture in my head when the story is told except me. Garrison Keeler is one of my great heroes and I've listened to him for thirty years, and there was a time when he'd never been on T.V. or in a magazine, and he was going to be on PBS. I had listened to him for 30 years, and I had this internal dilemma about "do I watch him or not" because I had never seen Garrison Keeler. He existed in my head and I thought, "Do I want to undo that?" And also every one of those characters in like Woe Be Gone, they exist in my head and I know exactly what they look like. Now thank goodness they're not going to put this into a movie-well, he's done a movie, but not of Woe Be Gone-because I don't want to see those characters come to life, because I've got a personal relationship with the ones in my head. So I think the fact that storytelling actually stimulates the imagination center of the brain differently than seeing it is really important. Really important. Remember things. You asked me about how I engage, or engaging with the audience. Even if I'm telling a story where I don't have active participation, I always, I always try to use something that has to do with food or smell to get them, because smell I think generates ninety percent of our memories, so I'll talk about the smell of the baking bread or walking into the old person's house and you smell the mothballs, and coffee, and you can see the heads just going, "Yeah, grandma's house. I was five years old. That's the way old people smell!" You know. Or debate the way a baby smells. And that engages the memory. There's some wonderful, wonderful storytellers out there. Saturday there was a storytelling festival in Brevard and I saw Connie Reganblake(Spelling approximated) who was very good and Lisa Esther(Spelling approximated), I'd never seen her before, she was good. And then I saw this guy Jay O'Callahan (spelling approximated) he's from New England, he has, this is great, this is amazing. This is the power of storytelling acknowledged. NASA has commissioned him to tell the story of NASA and he told a fifty minute love story about NASA. And, 'cause everybody who works at NASA says "I love working at NASA" and in it he had facts, figures, dollar amounts, distances to Uranus, to, • he had all of these facts that were just woven into, and he was a master's, a master master storyteller, incredible. And I just thought, "Hurray, I mean, look at this man that NASA has employed." Who would have thought NASA? But you know what they found out, somebody, I mean that's better marketing than anything. So I think it's an old, old art, it's incredibly effective that's still under utilized.

Karen Eve Bayne talks about the importance of storytelling during her childhood in the Appalachian Mountains, and how years later while living in England she pursued training at the Unicorn Storytelling School and Emerson College before becoming a professional storyteller. She mentions teaching storytelling classes in the UK to different groups of people from priests to single parents and in the US working with the Arts Council, and storytelling in schools, private parties, libraries, and museums. She states that her stories are about faith, frolicking, food, and questions of the soul.

• Creator
  • Bayne, Karen-Eve
• Contributor
  • Lansford, Laura
• Format
  • Sound recordings
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Sound
• Date
  • Date interview: 2009-11-19
  • Date: 1990s; 2000s (Decade);
  • Date digitized: 2014-12-04
• Extent
  • Duration: 0:33:21 (sound recording)
  • Duration: 8 pages (transcript)
• Subject - Topic
  • Autobiography
  • Bayne, Karen-Eve
  • Storytellers -- Appalachian Region, Southern
  • Storytellers -- Great Britain
  • Storytellers -- North Carolina
  • Storytelling -- Appalachian Region, Southern
  • Storytelling -- United States
• Location
  • Henderson County (N.C.)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Oral History Collection - HIST 474/574
• Identifier
  • HL_HIST474_Lansford_Bayne_2009-11-19
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library