By Cynthia Bournellis

When was the last time you were told a tall tale? Probably when you were a child. Yet, if you’d attended the Nov. 23 “Tellabration” at the Los Altos United Methodist Church, your inner child would have gotten more than its fair share of bedtime stories — everything from fractured fairy tales to cowboy poetry.

“Tellabration” is a celebration of storytelling for adults. It started in 1987 in Connecticut, and today has branched out to nine countries.

It presents seasoned storytellers who have developed their craft to a performance level, said Joy Swift, the event’s producer. Swift heads up Southbay Storytellers and Listeners, an organization that meets once a month to tell stories in an informal setting.

About 200 people heard 10 storytellers weave a yarn at last month’s session. Before the show, the performers prepped themselves in the greenroom. Erica Lann-Clark, longtime professional storyteller, warmed up her voice in one corner of the room, while Mia Lieberman, the master of ceremonies and a seasoned storyteller at 15, explained with utmost seriousness, “A voice that isn’t warmed up can lead to real problems.”

Lann-Clark’s exercise paid off. The audience sat captivated, as her voice took on a Czechoslovakian accent she slipped in and out of various characters to tell a family story about how her Jewish grandfather outsmarted Nazi soldiers during World War II.

“Storytelling is about getting the audience’s heart, and not just the laugh,” she said.

Like Lann-Clark, Steven Abell also draws from his family’s past. The 47-year-old engineer from Silicon Valley described what life was like for his mother, who grew up in a logging camp in Northern California during the 1930s. Abell’s colorful prose conjured up visions of scrappy mills, dusty roads, towering redwoods and rugged lumberjacks whose biceps bulged with each push and pull of their long-toothed saws.

Abell said he doesn’t mind sharing his family history with others. “People come to see you … so there has to be something in them (stories) that’s from yourself,” he said.

While some stories are heart-stopping and personally revealing, others, such as those told by 47-year-old Brian Conroy, allow us to laugh at ourselves. By weaving stories and music, Conroy, a San Jose middle school teacher, took listeners to the dysfunctional world of “Sleeping Beauty.”

In his revisionist version of this classic tale, the heroine flees the rule of her wicked, greedy stepmother Barbie — an Arizona transplant addicted to plastic surgery and to chipping away at Sleeping Beauty’s self-esteem — and winds up living in a commune with a group of less-than-5-foot-tall vegetarians.

“There’s a lot of power in some (of these) stories … they haven’t survived for nothing,” Conroy said.

The impact of storytelling depends largely on the ability of the listener to use his or her imagination, but props never hurt. And what better prop than a puppet to appeal to the child in all adults? In a spitting, lisping Sylvester the Cat-like speech, Maynard Moose dazzled folks with his version of “Bully Goat Grimm and the Forest Trolls,” with the help of his human handler, Willy Claflin.

Claflin is a professional storyteller of 20 years who lives in Petaluma. He said there’s a resurgence in storytelling today more than ever, because people are tiring of two-dimensional images. “Live performances unite people face-to-face,” he said.

Unlike most live performances, where there’s an imaginary fourth wall between the actors and the audience, Tellabration storytellers invite listeners to participate. Seasoned performer David Kimball had no problem getting a boisterous “Yippee-yi-ay! Yippee-yi-oh!” from the crowd, who sang along to the classic Western “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

Tellabration has something for everyone and is evidence that the human appetite for storytelling is insatiable.

“Our stories are part of what defines humanity,” said Tellabration-goer Kurt Gravenhorst, an English literature teacher at Foothill College.