-[Narrator VO] Nestled in the remote corner of Southwest Virginia, this region captivates with its rugged landscapes, natural wonders, cultural attractions, and outdoor adventures.

Experiences you'll only find in the heart of Appalachia.

Adventure guides available at heartofappalachia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Most stories they reflect a community's values.

They reflect the culture.

-So tricky.

It's a nuance.

But to stand inside your story so that we can really experience it through your eyes, through your nose, through your fingers, so that we are walking with you through it.

So don't tell it from above.

Tell it from within.

-People enjoy entertaining themselves.

And they enjoy being entertained by other people.

And it's also, an aspect of control, of self-reliance.

-There's death.

Oh, man, death.

And his hands is just reaching, getting closer and closer.

And that [inaudible] girl, she's moaning, "Oooh, ooooh."

And Jack knew she was about ready to die.

He thought, "What am I going to do?"

And then he grabs his sack.

-And in that cardboard box, was a whole box of about 45 or 50 Playboy magazines.

[audience whooping] -Of course, I say, as I open my web browser with the phone pointed at her.

[audience laughing] Playing at full blast volume.

-So, I called his manager, who was also his mom.

[audience laughing] -I look at this as a gift that you are giving the community.

And the community is so lucky to receive it.

-It's daunting and thrilling.

It's the very breathtaking experience of being together in time with someone else.

It's a profoundly connective experience, even if I'm sitting alone in the dark for most of it.

-[Narrator VO] When you hear the word Appalachia, what do you feel?

Maybe it's the rustling of mountain winds through the trees.

It might be the smell of wood smoke or the sound of a creek rippling and winding through the woods.

For many, Appalachia is a sound, a voice.

Storytelling is as old as the mountains themselves.

It began with firelight and later porch light.

Stories weren't just entertainment.

They were connection.

They were lessons.

They were survival.

-How I got into folklore, again, folklore is a-- it's a living, organic kind of a thing.

And you can study it, but it exists outside that for-- to compare it to say, literature.

The study of literature is kind of a self-- it exists only within people who do it.

It's sort of-- it's kind of an abstraction, or esoteric in a way.

But folklore doesn't care whether people study it or not.

It's something that goes on.

And, um, I know one of your reasons for interested in the Appalachian region is that it's perceived, at least, that folklore is more present and active and influential.

And that's safe to say that it is, more so than in places where faster paced and people are more diverse and they don't share the same traditions, and therefore, it's-- they're more easily replaced.

It's easy to-- you see more options for a way to achieve the same purpose, to for example, to entertain yourself and others.

The story must entertain to survive.

It may be told only once, and it may serve all these other functions, which are to reinforce a social code, to, um, to relieve anxiety.

When you hear those things happening to somebody else, it's sort of cathartic.

And you sort of vicariously experience that, and you kind of deal with it.

But they often reinforce social codes, moral codes.

And that can be a conscious thing on the part of the teller.

I'm going to tell you this story.

Instead of saying, "Don't do that," you're just like, "I'm going to do that."

You tell a story about what happens when you do it and what happens.

You pick a story... that you think will please your audience.

You pick a story that you think will entertain them, and what they get out of it is partly dependent on what you put into it, but partly dependent on what they bring to it.

So it does those things.

And then, um, there's a fourth thing, which is to give hope to people who are oppressed in some way, or who feel powerless, and who may be, because they're, in some contexts, marginalized with money or race or gender or whatever.

That you tell a story, or you like the story, that lifts you out of that for a while.

-I look at this as a gift that you are giving the community, and the community is so lucky to receive it.

I really believe that.

People will leave this room changed.

They will go home.

They will say, "Oh my gosh, that story reminds me that I also have a story about this."

And they will start talking to each other, and then they'll share it at a dinner party, and then those people will share it.

And it is a beautiful ripple effect of healing.

I really believe it.

-My name is Lee Hunsaker.

And I am the producer, director, curator, mama bear of Hoot and Holler Stories.

I was a theater kid, always loved the theater world, that kind of collaboration.

I was a costume designer in Austin, Texas for 20 years.

And that, again, was so collaborative.

And my joy was bringing characters to life through clothing, and pattern and color, and working with directors, and actors, and art departments, and watching that come to life.

And so storytelling is just kind of in my blood as a natural progression from reading scripts, from being a creative writer, from being a theater kid.

And so it really brings everything that I love together.

You know, a lot of times when people hear the word storytelling, they assume it's sitting around the campfire talking about grandpa.

And my life, my passion is for real people to tell their true stories in the most authentic way that they can.

So, Hoot and Holler is a celebration of that.

It's a celebration of ordinary people telling extraordinary stories.

And some of them are small.

And I always say stories don't have to be these sweeping, epic, you know, multi-generational.

It can be about a trip to Kruger.

And so I want to celebrate all of that.

And so really it's just about the joy of listening and the joy of being given permission to speak your truth.

-So I was very nervous.

I got up there, and my knees were shaking.

My partner was in the very last row and could see my knees shaking from the back.

There was like a moment where the crowd got really, really quiet.

And Lee kept saying, “You could hear a pin drop.” And you really could.

And it was incredible to have, I think, everybody's-- not attention, but focus.

And they were interested in what you were saying.

And I wasn't one of the funnier ones.

And I was a little bit worried about that.

But they were moved, I think.

It felt like they were.

And I felt connected to them.

And it was a good feeling.

-I really meant what I said in my story, that I think that we all need each other.

And we have so many communities across the country even that are like Roanoke, where you have all of these different people that have all these different skills.

And when you pull together, when you have them all in the same room, or when you're all collaborating on a project, it only serves the project and the community and the individuals that are part of it.

So, Hoot and Holler is an incredible thing for the storytellers themselves, for the audience, for all of them together, for Lee.

I mean, it's just-- it's incredible.

Storytelling in and of itself is so important.

We so often don't learn from a textbook.

We might learn from informal things like a dome or somebody just talking on the stage about something they've been through.

So it's just such an opportunity to be moved, whether you're the one speaking or listening.

-[Lee] Quite often, people submit a story that they think is the story that they want to share on stage.

But I have this kind of sixth sense about maybe something they're dancing around, maybe something that is actually the heart of the story.

So through my midwifing, as people call me, I say it's like story pitocin, you know.

I'll kind of give them a little push, a little nudge with love and gentleness and say, "Will you just consider telling me a little bit more "about what's going on in this paragraph "or with your grandmother "or with this former coworker or whatever it is, you know.” I'll just encourage them to explore looking at a story from a different angle.

And so often that brings a breakthrough with a teller.

And that excitement when they really hit upon the story.

-I kept feeling very stuck in my own old processes.

And Lee was amazing at kind of getting me unstuck and just kind of powering through some of the obstacles.

And she said she's worked with other writers in the past.

And you go through all these different feelings.

You can be angry.

And having to change the way you normally would approach telling a story.

But once I broke through, it felt amazing.

And I was really nervous to get up there.

But it was incredible.

-It's so tricky.

It's a nuance.

But to stand inside your story so that we can really experience it through your eyes, through your nose, through your fingers, so that we are walking with you through it.

So don't tell it from above, tell it from within.

And that can bring a lot of emotion.

That can bring a lot of challenge.

But in my opinion, it brings for a much richer story and a much--really deep experience for the teller.

Very transformative.

♪ The power to be ♪ -Katie Brooks, y'all.

First time storyteller.

[audience whooping] Come on.

-It's a way for people to feel a little some pride in something and to feel that they have something, a value that belongs only to them, and then that they can choose with whom to share.

And stories probably more than any aspect of folklore are universal.

If there is a culture that, and I'm not an anthropologist or a linguist, but if there is a culture that does not tell stories, I would be...

Number one, I'd be really surprised.

And number two, I would feel sorry for them.

And number three, I'd never go there because I want to hear, to the extent that I could understand the language, I want to hear some stories.

-[Narrator VO] Our first stories often come from those closest to us, parents, grandparents, and relatives.

Passed down through generations, these tales carry our family histories, our roots... and sometimes a good old Jack Tale.

-[Woman] Good baby.

Cute baby.

-I think a good storyteller, first of all, has to believe the story and he has to make it his own story.

I think too often when people are doing stories they tell them to go memorize the story.

Well, you don't want to do that.

It's your story and you want to be able to picture all the events that's there.

I've listened to some great storytellers and it seems to me that's the way they do it, and it's just like if you look in their eyes they're seeing the mountains or they're seeing Jack walk across the mountains.

And that's, when I've taught storytelling that's what I've always tried to do.

-I'm Rex Stevenson.

I guess I grew up in a family of storytellers and I've been a storyteller for most of my 78 years.

When my mother told me I started telling stories when I was about 4 years old that she didn't believe.

Well, I think the stories and most stories, they reflect a community's values, they reflect the culture and the Appalachian stories really reflect the environment.

These stories were originally old English stories, old world tales.

They were German tales, Scotch Irish tales.

And so when the people came to the mountain areas and moved back up a lot of what was in the folktales from England or Germany didn't make any sense to them.

So they started putting in their own environment, their own culture.

When Richard Chase published his Jack Tale book in 1943, Well, I... then I think that brought the Appalachian tales to the whole United States.

And a lot of people then became interested in collecting the stories and telling the stories and they put a lot more value in what their grandmother had been telling them.

And so all of a sudden they were important and Richard Chase followed it up with the Grandfather Tales , which again, those were mostly female tales.

And so we had female heroines.

And so I think that brought a lot more people into the storytelling.

So I think that book did a lot.

And then the Smithsonian having storytelling festivals and the Storytelling Center in Tennessee, those things all helped to make it something that lots of people either want to listen to or they want to do.

The way I got started with the Jack Tales was actually, my daughter went over here to, my daughter, Janice, went over here to the elementary school fair.

And their teacher every Friday, if they were good, would read them the Jack Tale .

Well, one time she came home with a book, Mr. Chase's book, and she said, "The boys were bad, "so we didn't get to hear our story.

"So would you read me the Jack Tale that was supposed to be read in school?” And when I read it, I thought, “These are marvelous stories.” And they're so reflective of the positive Appalachian culture.

And so that's when I got the idea.

I started telling them and then I started dramatizing them.

When we started there was a lot of principals that were saying, “That's barely hillbilly stuff.

"Do some important folklore.

Don't do that.” So I think there is a misconception about the stories.

And there's also, some of the stories are violent.

And like Jack and the giants, you know, you kill the giants and some people they don't like the violent folk tales.

But I always think that the storyteller is telling the story.

So the children all know, or the adults know, it comes out all right or the storyteller wouldn't be able to tell it.

-I don't know how it worked.

But when I came to deliver the paper the next morning, taped to the outside of her door was an envelope with $32.40 in it.

[audience laughing] [applause] She paid up.

I imagine she never told anybody about it either.

Yeah, she paid up and then after that every month on the exact day it was due was $5.40 taped to her window.

We never talked about it.

She never invited me into her house again.

[audience laughing] I'm always liking to look, I've done this storytelling thing a few times, I always look for a moral to the story.

[audience laughing] And I had a hard time finding a moral but this is what I came up with.

When you're out of options don't forget to think outside the box of Playboys .

[audience laughing] Thank you.

[applause] -[Lee] I have people tell me things that they have never even told their spouses or their families.

And so it's a really sacred, special space that I hold and I take it very seriously and with such honor.

And so it really becomes a process of working together to really shine it up for stage.

And I always say, you know we're working to distill a much larger story into a small golden shiny nugget to share in ten minutes on stage.

-Detail is an important component.

and that's one of the things that people leave out I think when they're beginning storytelling is they think they need to get to the exciting part but you've got to bring the audience in.

-I know you talk about her red hair but just like one more something.

[indistinct] He's been [indistinct], the scrappy cousin only a mile away.

-[laughing] -What's this about?

I couldn't stop thinking about my -- -So, let's just talk about a way to plant David but not worry about him, not wonder if he's going to come back into the story.

This is just me giving y'all my last bit of love, support, appreciation.

♪♪ All right, and maybe now.

-We value your attendance.

Please remain seated and our show will be starting momentarily.

Thank you for choosing Hoot and Holler.

[Lee giggles] ♪♪ -[Ian] Hello, everyone.

[Lee whooping] -[Ian] I hope you were as aggravated by Sam doing that six times in a row.

Ugh.

Sam Lunsford everyone.

[applause] -[Ian] Greetings to you.

My name is Ian Fortier.

It is my honor and pleasure to be the Executive Director-- -[whispers] I love y'all.

-[Ian] ... so many of you have heard me say that before.

I apologize.

Raise your hand if you're new in the room to Hoot and Holler.

All right, that's a healthy crowd.

[audience whooping] Welcome to the Grandin Theatre, the Roanoke region's oldest arts and cultural organization and it is my honor and privilege to introduce the diva of Hoot and Holler.

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the wonderful, Lee Hunsaker.

[applause] -[Lee] I sort of become impossible to live with a few, you know, a week or ten days before the show because I'm so focused on making sure the storytellers are feeling good.

-[on stage] Hello, beautiful.

-It's really my priority.

So I forget to figure out what I'm wearing or I forget to write my own speech until, you know, an hour before the show.

You know, we have a DJ, we have music, we have photos that project on the screen.

I care about the lighting.

I care about the room temperature.

I just want to create a whole universe in here and I take it so seriously.

So yeah, I start losing sleep.

I start worrying, [chuckles] of course.

And so it's really like opening night every time.

And so many people will say to me like, “This is old hat for you, you know, why are you even questioning it?” And I would feel really sad if I didn't have those nerves each and every time.

It's the perfect message for what storytelling is and sharing our truths.

We break down the walls.

We break down the stereotypes.

We figure out what we think we know about another human being.

But guess what?

We don't know.

Right?

Right.

[applause] Sharing our truth, sharing our stories, sharing our hearts is what it's all about.

That's the mission of Hoot and Holler.

It's a really, a holy experience for me.

I'm not a religious person, but for me it's as close to church as I've ever gotten.

Yeah, sacred space.

-[Narrator VO] From podcasts and YouTube videos to live storytelling events, the voices of Appalachia are louder and prouder than ever before.

In Appalachia, stories don't gather dust.

They grow.

They echo.

And as long as there are voices to speak and ears to listen, the stories will never die.

Because here storytelling isn't just a pastime.

It's a birthright.

-This is your community, y'all.

[audience cheering] Um, okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -[Narrator VO] Nestled in the remote corner of Southwest Virginia, this region captivates with its rugged landscapes, natural wonders, cultural attractions, and outdoor adventures, experiences you'll only find in the heart of Appalachia.

Adventure guides available at heartofappalachia.com