| Barbara, Storyteller with a Message | |
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The enormous influence of her father, whom she calls "my favorite modern Greek storyteller," is told below (see sidebar). But he wasn’t the only storyteller who influenced Barbara’s life as she grew. For all its sadness, her home had the qualities of a Greek village. Greek merchant marines visiting America would came to her home, and all the relatives and friends from the home village would sit around the dining room table and tell family stories, folktales and stories from Greek mythology. "Our house was always filled with aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors. I especially remember being embraced by Sophie Anastasia, an 18 year old college student who came to live with us when I was 7 years old and told us stories at bedtime. She was a ‘once upon a time’ kind of teller and introduced me to the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Alice in Wonderland, to name a few." |
| Barbara (Û ) leaves her beloved Greek Island – a babe in arms - with mother Margarita and older siblings, Yianni and Calypso. The memory of that day lingers on through the power of story… | |
 The Storytellers: Tellabration: November 2000 (above) – November 1999 (below) |
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 The African Folk
Heritage Circle Storytellers joined Barbara at New York City Hall when she
received the Greek Heritage Award for her distinguished body of work. (L-R)
Thelma Thomas, Joyce Weiss, Abike Jotayo, Leontyne Watts, Mut Nefereith and
Dr. Joyce D. Duncan. (3/29/2000) |
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Why she tells stories (in a
tiny nutshell): "Each time I share stories, whether center stage, personal, folktales, picture book stories, I am amazed at the resiliency of the human spirit to overcome and/or circumvent obstacles along the way." Barbara believes that the role of the storyteller is "to foster communication and understanding and bring people together. As we listen to one another’s stories and folktales we explore universal themes and we preserve individual cultural identity, at the same time we’re celebrating diversity as a strength." She adds, "there are basically only a few stories going around the globe, and we all tell the same story colored by cultural perspectives. It’s really about connecting with people." Her pet peeve(s) "Most New Yorkers do not understand and/or respond well to the word ‘storytelling.’ They think it is a pastime or something we do just for children. It’s a struggle to build audiences in New York City because there are so many things going on in the entertainment business. Outside of school settings, storytelling in the traditional sense of the word is probably more successful in small towns." She finds particularly frustrating that many people, Greeks included, don’t understand storytelling. People immediately think of "reading." In "reading," the reader and "story" exist separately; in storytelling, the story can literally take possession of the teller, with startlingly dramatic results. |
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