Once upon a time, Mohegan Lake resident Judith Heineman was a professional actress (SAG-AFTRA union member) plus poet and teacher, but not yet a professional storyteller. Now, storytelling is her primary way of engaging an audience, and one she thinks of as especially important in times of strife.  “In my naivete, I believe we could achieve world peace if we’d only sit down and listen to each other, because if we truly hear each other’s stories, we find we have so much in common,” she says.

Heineman has traveled the world as a storytelling ambassador. In 2008, she was part of a select American delegation to the People’s Republic of China with other “tellers,” meeting their Chinese counterparts in folklore. (Old China through the Eyes of a Storyteller, a record of the event, includes one of Heineman’s tales.) Ten years ago, Heineman told stories to over 2,000 students in Japan. She has also visited England and Ireland as part of cultural exchanges. 

Chicago was where the storytelling bug really bit. Heineman’s husband of more than 50 years, housing official Joe Shuldiner, was posted from the East Coast to the West Coast, and in between. Shortly after they arrived in Illinois, a new neighbor told them about a three-day national storytelling festival in Tennessee with an audience of over 10,000. Intrigued, Heineman decided to attend. 

“I saw this amazing art form, and it grabbed me around the neck and didn’t let go,” she says.

Already a theatrical producer and the co-founder of the Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival, Heineman realized that she could tweak her one-woman theatrical shows and convert them to the storytelling form.

After returning to Chicago, an opportunity arose to stage a storytelling event there in a scant six weeks. Despite the short timeframe, Heineman stepped up. Friends on both coasts directed Heineman to the “phenomenal” professional storytellers in the Midwest whom she tapped. She walked into every church and synagogue in Chicago’s Hyde Park, and created a new tradition in that city that has continued since 1999: ChicagoTellabration!, an offshoot of other “Tellabrations” across the United States. 

From that point on, Heineman became immersed in the field, starting the Chicago Storytelling Guild and eventually co-leading the National Storytelling Network Conference when it came to Chicago in 2003, still the biggest one ever held there, Heineman says.

Although storytelling and acting share commonalities (and Heineman is still a union dues-paying actress), she continues to relish storytelling’s differences, such as “breaking the 4th wall” between actor and audience, and being able to spontaneously change what’s about to be said. 

In acting, “you must always end your speech with particular words so the next person knows how to come in”  and the audience “sits in the dark, and you ‘re basically living a life on stage,” said Heineman. In storytelling, however, “We usually leave the lights on so that we can look into the eyes of the audience,” she says. ”It’s highly interactive. The audience is actually a partner in shaping the story in real time.”

In addition to her wide repertoire of mythic, classical and international folk and fairy tales, Heineman delves into the contemporary art of personal narrative. Her husband Joe has featured in some of her modern stories, as has her daughter Elizabeth. While living in Chicago, where she still spends time, Heineman was a 2009 Moth Storytelling winner with a piece about a “polite mugging.” 

The shift to contemporary tales has leapt to the fore in the storytelling arena, and is a way of confronting the challenges of the modern, and not always serene, world. 

Heineman cites a friend who continues to work at decreasing animosity in the Middle East.”There is an expression in the storytelling world that I subscribe to that says, once you know a person’s story it is very hard to hate them.”  Beyond such ambitious change goals, personal narratives are a way new storytellers can pass on legacies, impart knowledge, share skills, and create meaningful connections.

That means paying full attention, putting down electronic devices, and bridging differences such as age, national origin or circumstance. It also means eliciting stories from others. For Heineman, she often connects through teaching storytelling or guiding students wanting to tackle their memoirs and pass on family traditions, tales and culture.

With students who range from teenagers to adults past 80, Heineman believes it is a worthy challenge, too. “People don’t realize how much work it takes to actually make a story look like you’re just telling it off the cuff,” she says wryly.

Can people make a living? There are some people who make well over $100,000 a year from storytelling and are very much in demand, Heineman says. Beyond getting on a stage and performing, storytellers can create CDs, teach workshops, obtain grants and creatively interact with young and old alike. One local star, Jonathan Kruk, is sometimes called “Mr. Sleepy Hollow” because of his very popular spooky October tellings.

Heineman herself is a deft producer and a multiple grant recipient. Her accolades include being named an Illinois “Road Scholar,” and winning a SAGE Award from that state for “promoting better intercultural understanding through storytelling.” 

She and her frequent partner, musician Dan Marcotte, have been performing their show, Grimm’s Grimmest: the Darker Side of Fairy Tales, for years, winning a Parents’ Choice Gold Award as well as a NAPPA (National Parenting) Honors award and a Storytelling World Honors Award for the CD. Her riffs on the form even include telling the Roald Dahl version of Cinderella in rhyming couplets. 

Not far from Mohegan Lake, Heineman has performed in Shrub Oak, Peekskill, White Plains and up and down the Northeast, including New York City’s prestigious Hans Christian Andersen festival held in Central Park. A recent Halloween event this year at Peekskill’sthe Field Library generated chills. “I like to make people jump,” Heineman says. 

Sol Miranda, the high profile Peekskill-based actress who with Katie Schmidt Feder started Embark, a performing and literary arts nonprofit, praises Heineman’s chops. “Her delivery is so energized and enthusiastic… she takes you on a ride, – a journey,” said Miranda. “As a storyteller, she’s definitely a master and she’s also a master teacher.  Her exercises are very practical ways to get to those moments in a story that make them happen.” Miranda continues, “I really believe in the power of illustration and example… she gives us tools that are tangible and concrete in order to write a story or a memoir.” 

The Muriel H. Morabito Community Center in Cortlandt Manor is one of Heineman’s teaching venues, with an upcoming 4-week Monday session from 12-2 p.m., starting on June 16 and continuing on June 23, 30 and July 7. Heineman is also a docent at Manitoga in Garrison.

To inquire about classes or workshops, contact Heineman at [email protected].