A friend I haven’t heard from in a long while called me the other day to ask what I was doing and I told him all about my headlong plunge into the world of storytelling.

He phoned back yesterday to ask if I was still busy reading books.

I wouldn’t have known what he was talking about except that I had just read an article online by Jason Gelt* about California’s  Ojai Storytelling Festival where artistic director and founder of the festival, Brian Bemel, is quoted as saying: “One of the biggest misconceptions is that people just stand up and read books.  That’s why I started using the term ‘theater of the spoken word,” because they don’t read, they perform the stories.”

Theater of the spoken word!  I like that!

And I was delighted to have such a succint nugget to pass on to my slightly cynical friend.

Thank you Mr. Bremel!

* Have they got a tale for you in Ojai, by Jason Gelt, Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2010