ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250041
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
WHAT WOULD YOU DO with a master's degree in storytelling? Donnamarie Emmert uses hers to make TV alternatives appealing.
The children kept their eyes fixed on Donnamarie Emmert.
She kept them on edge with stories of faraway and scary places. She had them laughing with possum and animal stories.
First, she was a turtle. Then, a rabbit. And then, a wolf.
Emmert cupped her hands to her mouth and barked liked a dog. She waved her arms. She pointed her fingers. She clapped her hands. She croaked like a frog. She screamed. She whispered. She jeered.
And the children at Wasena Elementary School in Roanoke loved it.
"You guys know that animals used to talk to each other, don't you?," Emmert asked the children. At first, they weren't so sure.
"Oh yes, possums and turtles talked to each other. They had a special relationship," she told them.
It didn't take her long to make them believers.
She got the children to wave their arms, wiggle and join in audience-participation stories.
"Anyone can tell a story," she told them.
Not everyone can tell stories the way Emmert does.
She turns them into dramas.
With her wire-framed glasses, earrings, beads and braided hair, she brings back memories of hippies and the peace movement in the 1960s. She spent several years in California and liked its free-spirit environment.
But Emmert, 37, is an Appalachian storyteller. She was born in Bristol, Tenn., and grew up in Abingdon.
You know she's from Southwest Virginia when she tells the children that a character in a story told "a big whopping fib."
Emmert was in Roanoke to entertain the Wasena children as part of the school's observation of National TV-Turnoff Week.
During the week - which is sponsored by TV-Free America - schoolchildren and others are encouraged to stop watching television and to do other things.
"We decided to bring Donnamarie here because we thought it would help show the children there is an alternative to television," said Diane Rose, a Wasena teacher who went to high school with Emmert.
"It's not that television is bad. We just wanted the children to know there are other things to do," she said.
Rose also thought city children would enjoy Emmert's Appalachian tales and storytelling style.
"We came from an area where we heard stories when we were growing up, but some of these children haven't," Rose said. "I thought it would be a nice activity for them."
Emmert's stories stirred the youngsters.
"I'm scared," one little girl said loudly to no one in particular at the end of one story.
"The stories were good. I liked them," said Owen Harvey, a third-grader.
Emmert said she's been telling stories for three years at schools, women's retreats, educational workshops and children's fairs.
She has a master's degree in storytelling from East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, the only school in the country that offers a graduate degree in storytelling.
For now, storytelling is a part-time job for Emmert, but she would love to do it for a living. She teaches English at Virginia Highlands Community College in Abingdon.
"I'm just waiting to be discovered," she said jokingly.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. Wasena Elementary pupilsby CNBfind a possum-and-wolf story is pretty cool when it's told by
Donnamarie Emmert. color.