Some stories, big tales and laughs

　THE whole crowd listened in silence as the soft American accent told the story of a girl forced to grow up when her brother died in the war.
　Another audience burst into laughter as a tall man spoke about the problems he faced when he started dating his first girlfriend.
　These tales were told at the National Storytelling Festival, held every October in the US state of Tennessee.
　The festival features no loud music, no dancers, no loudspeakers - just people absorbed in beautiful tales, ghost stories and a variety of fables that tease all the emotions.
　Some tellers make their stories more lively by performing in native dress, and others act out their characters. The only condition is that they all tell their tales from memory.
　The three-day festival turned storytelling into as an art form once again.
　Storytelling became popular in the early 1980s in the US. And there are now about 300 such gatherings held each year across the country.
　"Storytelling was once the only real form of communication. Stories spread the news and helped people to remember history," said Jimmy Neil Smith, a schoolteacher who started the festival and continues to promote it.
　According to the National Storytelling Association of the US, one of the best things about storytelling is that people are invited to create the picture themselves. There are 1,000 people listening to a teller and they are all creating slightly different images in their minds.
　The simplicity of storytelling is attractive in such a complicated world. Listening to the stories reminds the audience of their own stories. During breaks in the contest, people tell their own tales to one another.
　"Storytelling introduces me to things I might never have noticed," said Waddie Mitchell, a former Nevada cowboy who became a traveling poet and is now a festival regular.
　"In the tellers' world, I realize how small the human family really is and how limited our emotions and problems really are."