Local Storyteller Makes Good!
From Business Executives To Kindergartners, Storyteller Will Hornyak Can "Captivate, Surprise, Intrigue And Touch All Ages."
Will Hornyak is telling stories to a classroom of kindergartners. Their five-year-old eyes are wide with interest, their hands busy with an imaginary needle and thread. Their voices chime in as they 'cut, cut, cut and sew, sew, sew' make-believe cloth into a coat, then a vest, a hat, a sock, a doll dress, a button. Later that evening Hornyak will captivate, with almost equally wide-eyed attention, an audience of trial lawyers as a keynote speaker at their annual conference.
A story of an Irish peddler and a Coyote myth from North America will serve as a bit of entertainment and meat for discussion about how real change happens to people and societies. He will introduce the evening with the true story of theBrother's Grimm. Both men were law students, Hornyak explains, and both were interested in folktales as a means of familiarizing themselves with the "internal moral code" by which the people they would one day serve already lived. But for now Hornyak is happily engaged with kindergartners.
"What can we make smaller than a button?" he asks."A nose-warmer for a caterpillar," one girl shouts out loudly. Everyone laughs and the storyteller again leads the children through a round of cutting and sowing and speaking aloud in this adaptation of a Jewish folktale. For nearly an hour the kindergartners are captivated by fables and legends, fairytales and participation stories. Hornyak then says goodbye, peels a couple kindergartners away still clinging to his side,and moves on to a sixth grade classroom down the hallway.
"Sixth, seventh and eighth graders can be your best allies or your worst enemies as a storyteller" says Hornyak, only half-jokingly."If you don't connect with them at their level of intelligence and emotional maturity, they'll hang you out to dry. But if you're respectful of their taste and individuality, you have the best creative collaborators in the world." Hornyak's attention to his audiences, plus a repertoire of dozens of myths, fables and folktales, has helped him find his way to the hearth of many communities over the years.
In the course of a couple months he may tell stories and offer workshops for inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary, to the Home schooling Association, the National Storytelling Network,the American Cancer Society, a business roundtable group and a number of schools, libraries and churches. A former history and journalism major at Marquette University, Hornyak enjoys finding "old ideas" from his collection of stories that speak to contemporary societies and current issues.
"He is a storyteller of immense power and presence," said Marilyn Sewell, Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church in Portland., where Hornyak has regularly offered storytelling presentations to compliment church services."I hold him in the highest regard as a storyteller and teacher." Hornyak's "Stories of Grief andHealing" at the First Unitarian Church in Portland, included stories as well as a grief ritual for the community.
Later,teachers will tell Hornyak that they haven't been able to "get a word" from that student in months. Hornyak says it is not an uncommon experience and one that always "makes me feel like I'm doing my job."