A life of stories

Courtesy artsBHAM

Storytelling is a part of Southern culture. For Birmingham’s Dolores Hydock, it’s not just a way of life, but her full-time profession. Originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, she made Alabama her home after college and found her way back to performing after pursuing other careers.

Hydock’s experience with stories goes back to her early youth. 

“The stories I heard and the stories I read were the traditional European folktales that came through Ellis Island with the families who settled Northeastern cities in the early 1900s,” she said.

At age 5, she won a storytelling contest at a local playground’s summer program for telling the traditional European tale “Clever Gretel.” At the time, storytelling didn’t especially capture her attention. “My first storytelling effort came about simply because I did everything at the playground, and that meant being in all the contests I could enter,” she recalled. “The fact that I was the only one competing in my age group helped.”

Hydock describes her immediate family members as avid readers rather than storytellers. She remembers that getting her first library card was thrilling, and she traces the genesis of her current storytelling art to a “love of words and love of good writing.” Reading scripts aloud with her sister likewise sparked her interest in acting.

She went on to attend George Washington University and later Yale. Hydock initially studied drama, but opted for an American studies degree instead. Her love for acting hadn’t faded, but she concluded the profession was a “very hazardous” way to earn a living. 

Her decision to pursue American studies was, in fact, what first led her to Alabama — whose folklore was the subject of her senior paper.

“I chose the folklore in the American South, an area rich with tradition, full of stories and storytellers,” she said. “I further narrowed my focus to folklore in Alabama simply because there was already a lot of academic work being done on the folk traditions of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi — but there wasn’t a lot already written about Alabama.” 

Once in Alabama, Hydock said she quickly discovered the state’s folklore encompassed many different strains from “Appalachian-flavored traditions of Sand Mountain to the Old French influence in Mobile.” In order to complete the assignment within the allotted four months, she decided to concentrate on the community of Chandler Mountain in St. Clair County. 

“I was, by good fortune, introduced to Warren Musgrove, who owned Horse Pens 40 on Chandler Mountain at the time and sponsored traditional music and craft festivals there every spring and fall,” she said. “Mr. Musgrove loved everything about Alabama’s folk history and was a wonderful source of information and encouragement for me. He also introduced me to the generous people of Chandler Mountain, who very kindly allowed me – a naïve Yankee college student — to come spend time with them and learn about their lives.”

Alabama ultimately beckoned Hydock back. Upon graduation, she settled in Birmingham. She held different jobs over the years but her desire to perform endured. Eventually, it became too strong to ignore. She began volunteering to tell stories at a retirement community, then her audience members began inviting her to perform at local garden and literary clubs.

Over time, she was able to make her hobby her full-time job. Hydock’s craft also brought her back to acting. Though she didn’t set out to perform one-woman shows, they’ve become one of her signatures. 

 “Once I did a few of them, more opportunities to keep on doing them appeared. By then, my storytelling had become my full-time profession, and one-woman shows, including my original one-woman shows, became a way to combine my love of both theater and storytelling,” she said.

Hydock’s first original one-woman show, “In Her Own Fashion,” grew out of a series of interviews she conducted with Ninette Griffith, who served as the fashion coordinator for Loveman’s department store in Birmingham during the 1950s and 1960s. 

“The stories were so fascinating — and such an honest, intriguing, irreverent look into mid-20th century life in the South — that I wanted more people to be able to hear them. So I compiled some of her stories into a performance piece where I alternate between being Ninette telling her stories and myself, the Yankee interviewer, hearing those stories,” Hydock said. 

Hydock went on to write “Take a Ride on the Reading” and “Tony Curtis Speaks Italian and All I Can Say Is ‘I Love You.’” 

“All of my shows began as stories,” she said. “I started with individual ‘nuggets’ of stories then pieced those stories with other stories, almost like making a quilt, into scripts that encompassed the stories I wanted to share about that particular theme or experience.”

Whether she is acting or performing as a storyteller, Hydock said that connecting with the audience is key. She said Southerners make good audience members because they not only have a gift for telling stories, but also for listening. 

“A story can’t happen without someone to hear it — the listener has an active, essential role to play in the process,” she said. “With a live performance, the physical presence and attention of other people helps shape the performance, so having people who really know how to listen to stories is a crucial part of the experience.”

Hydock will perform “The Lady with All the Answers,” a one-woman show about the advice columnist known as Ann Landers, at the Red Mountain Theatre Company Cabaret Theatre, Sept. 8-10. 

“The play takes place on the night when Ann is struggling to write what will become her most famous newspaper column,” Hydock said. “As she tries to find the right words for this important column, she procrastinates by telling us stories about her life and career — and sharing some of the funniest, most unusual, and most poignant letters that came her way as a ground-breaking advice columnist for more than 40 years.”

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.redmountaintheatre.org.