Loren Niemi: Keeping the Art of Storytelling Alive

Article by Becky Fillinger, photos provided

Loren Niemi

A Discussion with the Chief Storytelling Officer of the American School of Storytelling

Loren Niemi is a Minneapolis-based storyteller, teacher, author, and performer with more than four decades of experience in oral storytelling. He founded the American School of Storytelling in 2021 to provide classes, performances, workshops, and resources focused on personal narrative, traditional tales, spoken word, and community storytelling. We talked to Loren about discovering his knack for storytelling, how the school came about, and why even in the midst of great divisiveness, we can still find shared stories and experiences as a way forward.

Q:  You have over 45 years of experience as a professional storyteller. What first drew you to storytelling as a vocation?

A:  On one level I have always been a storyteller - it got me into trouble in grade school (Sister Jean saying that I was "lying" in answer to a question about "what I knew about elephants?" and my responding "it isn't a lie, it is a story"). I wrote for the student newspaper in high school (Benilde before it was joined by St. Margarets), and occasionally for St. Mary's college paper.

The real moment of revelation came in 1978, when I was working for the City of Minneapolis as a Community Organizer and attending a conference in Madison, WI. Joy Martin, a lovely woman who also worked for the City, leaned across her martini as we sat in the bar at the Edgewater Hotel and asked me, "What the hell I actually did in the neighborhoods?" My reply was that I was a storyteller - I identified people, organizations, neighborhood stories, helped shape them and then tell them to achieve particular results (which was an accurate description of my role) but having said the word, I realized not only that it was true but that it was opening a door to something deeper than a job.

Over the course of the next five years, I attended the Mythos conference at St. Catherine's (St. Paul) in 1979and met early practitioners of the storytelling revival, several of whom I already knew and had studied with, including Ken Feit and Rueven Gold. In 1980, I met Elizabeth Ellis, with whom I wrote Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, did my first tour of Northern MN with folklorist/musician John Berquist, and went to the National Storytelling Festival for the first time. In 1981-1982, I did a yearlong residency in Northern MN as the Humanities Scholar for the Arrowhead, collecting oral histories, documenting and commenting on the culture as it transitioned from primarily industrial to tourism, and attended The Gathering (of radical/populist theaters) at Gustavus Adolphus (St. Peter) where I began my long association with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre. In 1983 I served as the Ringmaster and tour manager for HOBT's Circle of Water Circus tour from the headwaters of the Mississippi to New Orleans. This was also the seed for Circus Rex, my fictional novel recounting that tour.

The performance stage at 1762 Hennepin S

Q:  Wow! You identified your passion and truly pursued it. You founded the American School of Storytelling in 2021 in Minneapolis and continue to lead it as Chief Storytelling Officer. What inspired to you to start the school and can you tell us about the school – what types of classes and activities might we find there?

A:  When the pandemic ended my teaching in the Executive Leadership Institute at the University of St. Thomas, my partner Christine asked what I wanted to do. Keep teaching. Online. So, we created the school to support teaching the Oral Narrative Arts (storytelling, poetry, spoken word, singer/songwriters, and sometimes comedy, flamenco or magic) to do that. Then, in 2023, Christine found the space at 1762 Hennepin S we are in. It was the right size to let us add in-person classes and performances. We built an 8x8 stage, put in 36 seats and a classroom space, and have been at it ever since. We aim to offer one online and one in-person class a month, plus both ticketed performances, a free storytelling and poetry open mics. The rotating array of classes includes Introduction to Storytelling covering the basics, an Intermediate class where folks work on developing/refining their chosen stories, and a variety of topical classes and workshops including Ghost stories, Family and Organizational Oral History, Storytelling for Social Change, Eulogies, Wedding Toasts, etc., taught by myself or visiting artists.

Q:  In a world increasingly dominated by technology and artificial intelligence, why does the human act of telling stories face-to-face still matter?

A:  Because storytelling is the mother of culture - the fundamental organization of language, knowledge, experience, imagination that gives rise to all else. Storytelling was and remains the basis of what we know. Technology and artificial intelligence rise entirely from those roots. In fact, artificial intelligence is only as good as the stories it can piece together by scraping up and re-assembling what has gone before. In stories heard and told, we communicate emotions and implied meanings that AI cannot create. In stories we build shared experience in the moment. Stories are told to someone, they are both the transmission of (to use a technical term) data shaped by relationship and variable in length, focus, style to build that connection in the now.

Q:  How do you help new storytellers discover their authentic voice?

A:  First and foremost, by giving permission for folks to choose where to begin, where to end, what forms of narrative are available for them to express the meaning they want to share. It is in letting them understand the power of choice(s). The same story can be a five minute Moth-styled tale or a fifteen minute dive into detail and nuance. The questions of who is your audience, what is your intention, and why this story in this form, are a starting point. I should point out that the choice of telling a story is a choice to reveal something about yourself to another. Discovering the authentic voice is often the finding a balance of truthfulness and artfulness for the story you are telling.

Q:  How does storytelling help build stronger communities?

A:  This goes back to my answer about why storytelling is relational. When you hear stories in a group, each person responds in their own way, but all begin with a shared experience. The old adage is that in the personal is the universal. Often a story will prompt other stories - a "that reminds me of..." which can extend a story to include personal memories, moments of laughter, sorrow, etc., as universally familiar, as part of what it means to be human. Stories speak to both the individual and the collective experience. This is why stories survive over the ages, because they are containers for individuals and communities in models (think about heroes and tricksters) and metaphors about what we value, what we do, or what we should not do. 

Q:  Why is storytelling particularly important during times of social division or uncertainty?

A:  Stories remind us that for all our separateness we share fundamental experiences - childhood, relationships with kith, kin, friends and lovers, accidents, laughter, fear, and finally, the inevitability of death. Those stories can help us understand each other - and if we listen closely, even if we do not agree - what another believes. Every story is chosen, and when it is told it offers a glimpse for better or worse of another person's world. We may not want to live in that world, but knowing they do makes it easier to see them as the sum of their experience and culture. Likewise, in the shared experience of telling and hearing, we can see the larger themes that shape our cultural experience; and if we are lucky, or very intentional, begin to shape a shared story.

Q:  What advice would you give seniors who believe they don't have stories worth telling?

A:  Do not underestimate the value of your stories. Going back to AI for a moment, it is very good at summarizing answers to a question based on a broad review of available data, but it is terrible at understanding the precise and meaningful moments that make us who we are. Each of us is a repository of experiences, emotions and memories that, while they may share many common cultural features, are uniquely ours. It is in the telling of what we remember, what we have experienced and hold dear, in the exploring of how we came to who we are, that we can discover the uniqueness of our lives. 

Q:  Thank you for teaching us to share our stories! How may we stay current with your news? 

A:  The American School of Storytelling has a monthly newsletter, The Hearsay, that lists our classes, performances and offers a bit of commentary on stories, storytellers, and our being in the world. You can sign up for our newsletter https://amsstory.com/newsletter/. Come by and visit us at 1762 Hennepin S!