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Storytellers do the talking in “Word of Mouth” at Bucks Playhouse

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New Hope’s Michaela Murphy has a great story to tell.

Which comes in handy when you’re a professional storyteller and co-host of and participant in “Word of Mouth: Busted,” a one-day event of two performances with seven nationally known storytellers — including Stuart Carroll of Lambertville, N.J.; Ophira Eisenberg of NPR fame; and Gastor Almonte, who’s spun his stories on Comedy Central and PBS — sharing an amalgam of anecdotes and spoken memoirs, all at 2 and 7:30 p.m. May 13, at the Bucks County Playhouse.

So, what’s Murphy’s story? Let the big bio do the talking: She is director of education at the Playhouse, with a histrionic history that includes “Something Blue,” a one-woman performance at the Aspen Comedy Festival, the Improv in Los Angeles and off-Broadway.

And then the bio is off and running with tales and details of her work with the Moth Radio Hour, NPR, the Whitney Museum and, to wit, sagas that have set sail on the Origin Cruise Ship as well as TEDx and the Clinton White House.

Word of mouth has also generated acclaim for her academic achievements, including serving as head of the entrepreneurs-in-training program at Barnard College.

That is an artful mouthful. But then her work in “Word of Mouth” is a dynamic dramatic/comedic communication between storyteller and audience that helps break down barriers and tears down hang-ups between the two.

And it all started at the dining room table, where the gift of gab and garrulousness was as rooted, she says, in family history as the cornucopia of food consumed. “I come from an Irish family,” she says. “We’re all storytellers.”

Indeed, family figures into her first triumph, a regaling/verbal reliving of her sister’s wedding (“Something Blue,” developed with eminent caustic comedian Lewis Black, with whom she had taken a class and with whom she remains good friends). After making book on that saga, the Providence, R.I., native found it providential to explore her family’s treasure trove of other cherished treats, finding home plate again with a tale based on “taking my brother to a [baseball] All-Star game.”

Her career since has been a grand slam of hits and havens — the West Bank Cafe and Joe’s Pub in New York; Nantucket, Seattle, the Galapago Islands (that cruise ship again) — and, of course, Bucks County, where the “vibrant arts community serves as a throughline for telling stories,” acknowledges Murphy.

It’s only natural that Murphy puts in a good word about the Bucks arts scene; she is very much a major part of it. Indeed, she just concluded her work with the Playhouse’s 55th annual Student Theater Festival, a major draw for troupes traipsing from all over the country to New Hope in the hope of winning recognition. What she especially enjoys is the opportunity for youngsters with a yen for theater to process the power of playful behavior.

With all her work — as an actor, student (Boston University grad), educator, business/tech-firm consultant, speech writer — it is storytelling “that is the form I love most.”

There’s always a new chapter of her literary life to explore: The tales “change every time I tell them,” says Murphy of her storied success.

One thing that has shifted seismically is her stage awareness. Ironically, “the last thing I wanted to do was be a solo performer,” she notes.

But here she is, alone again, naturally. Not. “I realized that the audience is the other person; there are always new discoveries to make as a storyteller,” thanks to that interaction between the two.

A one-woman show with a cast of hundreds? “I don’t feel like I’m by myself on stage; I’m surrounded by the characters” who populate her very popular stories.

Is her career partially an anecdotal Camelot? Well, it is Kennedyesque to a funny degree. As she relates in her quick-witted “Eye Spy”: “My parents got married at Saint Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island — in the same exact church as Jack and Jackie (Kennedy). My father gave my mother jewelry — exact replications of the jewelry that Jack gave to Jackie. And every summer during the 70s, my four aunts would take me and my two cousins on their dream vacation — a week in Hyannisport on the beach that shared property with the Kennedy Compound. ... They would drag their beach chairs down to the beach, and they would set them up perfectly — not facing the water; not into the sun for tanning; but perfectly for spying on the Kennedys.”

Murphy has been telling it like it was it for some 30 years, a mere cosmic drop in the drama that has been a storyteller’s lair for years. Indeed, “it is an ancient form,” she notes, that dates back centuries, with the storyteller stirring a sense of history and community, bonding before bonfires of vocabularies.

It is also about stage presents [correct spelling] — a ribbon-wrapped gift that Murphy assumed everyone was born with. “When I was younger, I thought everyone could do it,” she says. “But then I figured out it was a gift,” a gift that keeps on giving. “But I had to work at it, figure out what I was doing.”

She has become a leading figure in the art since. Indeed, Murphy’s talent has helped her finesse other fields. “It helped make me great at working on scripts, books,” she adds. And it has proved that talk is not cheap; it is rich in rewards. “Communication matters. It shows we are not alone; storytelling sparks insight.”

The fire within has burned bright for decades, and has lit up her work in the corporate world as well. Tech it out: Murphy and Microsoft have become a magna cum lauded team; she is an expert in digital dynamics. Get a life? She has: Murphy also is co-founder of LIFE: Leadership Fueled by Entrepreneurism.”

To that end, she has set up a virtual confab for educators with Newtown’s Will Dennis of Unscripted Productions Unlimited fame (also a Playhouse teaching artist) for zoom sessions May 16 and 17, targeting “Permission to Fail,” turning life’s grade Fs into grade A learning and teaching tools.

Then there is a revival of the production of “Alien8,” staged by the Playhouse Youth Company, with the teens teeming with energy and insight in this theatrical attempt at assessing their place in intergenerational agendas.

Revisiting old concepts, turning tales of old topsy-turvy to eek out new truths, making the implausible possible ... “It’s all about the way you look at things,” says the woman whose vision abets a vocabulary filled with a wealth of words and wonder.

End of story? Not for Murphy; this artist’s path to the imagination continues this Saturday and beyond, as words don’t fail her but continue to infuse her storied career.

Michael Elkin is a playwright, theater critic and novelist who lives in Abington. He writes occasional columns about theater.


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