ELLWOOD CITY, Lawrence County - Once upon a time, in a town not so far from here, lived a woman in possession of an uncommon gift. With barely more than a few words, this lady could transport others in her company to places both magical and familiar.

Calling her ability "God-given," Vonnie-Kaye Brough uses her talents to do good.

"I don't want to make people think. I have no intention to educate and I don't want to make a social statement. I want to entertain," she said.

Naturally, her words do all four.

Brough is a storyteller and has been for the past 25 years. Her goal is to have her audience "leave happier than when they came. I always say, 'If they laugh out loud, my work here is done. Laughter is the best medicine.'"

Brough, a retired elementary school teacher, categorizes her storytelling as an avocation. There are times where she's very much in demand and times when she is very much at her leisure.

"From mid-November through Christmas, I may do two events, a brunch and an evening, every day of the week. January through March, it's three or four times in a month. In May, around Mother's Day, I'm out every day."

Brough, who is known through word-of-mouth publicity, is booked by community groups at churches, senior centers, banquet halls and other venues.

Her stories work because she invests in them, sharing her foibles and her faith, interwoven into the flow of the action. When the story she's telling was written by another author, as is often the case, Brough chooses a female character and assumes the woman's identity.

Although humor is her forte, not every story she tells is a side-splitter.

The first story Brough acquired was drawn from "The Cross and the Switchblade," a true story by David Wilkerson about his ministry to the gangs of New York City. Casting herself in the role of the main character's wife, the story was told from that woman's point of view.

She also tells a story that casts her as a Dutch woman caught up in the Holocaust. Despite the somber nature of the subject

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Brough

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with touches of humor.

On occasion, Brough will choose a tale told in the third person, and that requires far more memorization than first-person tales. "I almost have to learn it verbatim," she said.

She has also written a few stories of her own for telling, and they draw totally from her own life and experiences. Two of her tales in her current roster are, "Does God Ever Laugh?" and "Have You Ever Had One of Those Days?"

To acquire an oral tale from a written work she's chosen, Brough reads and rereads the book and begins divesting action and plot lines until she ends up with only one thread of the story, "without losing the flavor. Then I try it for length and pare it down more." Choosing a book with a woman protagonist makes the culling and transition from text to script easier, she explained.

She makes note cards with just a line or two on them to jog her memory and "I try the story on a loving audience" who is prepared to like whatever she has to offer. "It doesn't matter how much you practice at home, you don't know how it will go with an audience."

On average, it takes Brough about two months to acquire a new tale. She has a current repertoire of about 10 stories, each of which creeps near the one-hour mark in the telling. She has about another 15 stories out of her regular rotation that can be polished for use in a short time.

Brough said sometimes in the early renderings "Something will pop out of my mouth I didn't expect and I'll add it to the story." Sometimes, as she works on the story on tougher trial audiences, she finds no matter how much she likes it, the whole thing just doesn't work and has to be put aside.

Depending on the group who will hear the story, Brough tailors sections of an oral tale. Senior citizens and children often get the shorter version; ladies groups get a longer rendition. Experience has taught her to gauge the attention span of her audiences and pick the right story for their ears.

She's also learned that venue has much to do with a tale's reception. A story told in a church's social hall may have listeners falling out of their chairs as they gasp for breath between belly laughs.

The same story to the same audience but with them seated in the pews can result in polite titters. "I always ask if the audience will be uncomfortable with the idea of making a lot of noise in the sanctuary," she said. If she thinks the audience will be restrained by a perceived need for decorum, she'll opt to keep them where they're at and make adjustments.

"Read, read and read more," is Brough's best advice for someone thinking of giving storytelling a try. "Enthusiasm is wonderful, but you must have experience. You have to learn how to do it."

Other necessary skills include "having a fairly good vocabulary at your disposal, be able to use words to paint a picture, and have reasonably good grammar unless you are using a dialect. Speak loudly and use a microphone if you have to. Make eye contact and, when it comes to story telling, the closer you are to the audience, the better.

"And never start speaking while they are still eating dessert or clearing the tables. You have to get their full attention in the first few minutes."

ANOTHER LOCAL STORYTELLER

of long standing is Mary Morgan Smith of Northland Library in McCandless Township, Allegheny County.

For Smith, an organizer for the Three Rivers Story Telling Festival hosted each August by the library, becoming a storyteller began during her probationary period as a children's librarian in Maryland.

Part of the required training was storytelling. There was a final exam that included a small audience and a video camera. It was not her best moment, she recalls.

But she got better with practice. "I realized I could tell a ghost story and make grown men jump. Now that's a power rush," said Smith with a laugh. Over the three decades she's been entertaining audiences small and large, she's come "to love the effect on people and being able to share the joy I get from storytelling."

Her two favorite stories are quite different in nature. "Pinderella," all about sounds, is a fractured fairy tale filled with spoonerisms that must be memorized and told verbatim. A spoonerism is a phrase in which the initial or other sounds are accidentally transposed (think Rindercella and her susly uglers).

It took Smith five years to acquire the tale and get up the gumption to tell it. "Look Back and See" is a Tanzanian folk tale in which the best part, for Smith anyway, is the "little moment of silence at the end as people sit back and take in the wonder."

Smith does her storytelling in schools and at community functions. Her favorite audience is one that brings generations together. "Seeing a 4-year-old and a 75-year-old sitting beside each other and locked into the story is really exciting for me," she said.

To contact Brough, call 724-758-9708; to contact Smith, call 412-366-8100.