Churches
Melea is known for her stories of faith and brings a unique moment to worship services and Sunday evening services. She has also been a special speaker for women’s banquets and teas, retreats, and inter-generational gatherings. She often participates in adult worship services and Sunday school all within the same Sunday morning format.
Pastor Jack Hayford talks about Melea, “America’s Storyteller”
Schools
Melea is often in educational settings, from elementary to university/college level. These settings include assemblies, chapels, teacher and staff in-service, PTA, Family Nights, or an individualized literature emphasis such as a unit on storytelling or creative writing, developed for the grade-level or college course.
Organizations
Melea is great at bringing an encouraging word through storytelling. Melea will tell you that “Stories point out how very similar we are to one another.” Staff development gatherings, company parties, and holiday celebrations have been a part of her work over the years.
Workshops
Melea has been teaching storytelling for almost as long as she has been storytelling. You cannot take the teacher out of the storyteller. Melea will tell you “We’re all storytellers. Some of us are just a little more practiced than others.” Her teaching has been done in conference format with an hour to an hour and a half to the more languid stretch of her very own unique “Storydays” which are eight-hour workshops, complete with meals, snacks, resources, and relationship. One happy participant noted, “Melea’s Storyday was exceptional. Her humor, practical teaching approach, encouraging words, and unique use of partners left me feeling charged up and ready to tell my story.”
Retreats
Melea is available for family and women’s retreats. In retreat settings, through teaching and small group discussion, Melea will guide your group into the power of telling your own stories. “I love the retreat setting for my work as we can delve deeply into the richness of our own stories (and other authors) and search for their meaning within our lives, all within the setting of an accepting and loving community.”
Concerts
Churches and schools are often venues for Melea’s concert work. In fact, she will tell you that her favorite audience is “…everyone in the same room. Something tremendously powerful happens when all of us, of every age, gather up for a storytelling moment.”
What is a “Storynight” Concert?
Upon the completion of her first audio work in 1989, Melea began her “Storynight” concerts as a thank you to her listeners. Her listeners insisted on another concert and preferably with the same dessert they had had at the first Storynight!
Today, her hometown concerts and those she creatively partners with in other “hometowns” stand out as hallmarks in her craft as a seasoned teller. It was in her third Storynight that everyone’s favorite senior citizen character, Ralph Twigger, was introduced. Melea attempts to create a new Ralph Twigger story (12 stories now) for each of her own hometown concerts caught on, as well as a yearly Christmas story. Storynights are centered on a theme chosen by the host group and many times a creative theme and set.
This comment from a happy audience member sums up the experience of a Storynight—
“Your performance touched my children and myself in a deep and warm way. You should have seen the captivated faces of every adult in the audience. It was as if the years melted away and we all became as little children.”
For bookings contact: bookings@rightsideupstories.com