"Stories that didn't make the Paper"

"Rocky" Rockwell was the first Director of Storytelling at the Barter Theatre, Abington, VA.

"Rocky" tells "Stories that didn't make the Paper" left over from his newspaper days in a small town, "Tales from the Swamp" based on experiences in his native Mississippi, and Tales from the High Country" based on his experiences as a country real estate agent where he now lives in exile deep within an Appalachian hollow surrounded by lizards, hop toads and snakes. These stories and others are all based on two fundamental theories - one that taking the daily news too seriously is a certain road to a home for the bewildered, and secondly that a horse-laugh-a-day keeps the psychiatrist away.

Humorist, writer, storyteller, retired journalist, defrocked college professor, former real estate agent, former retail merchant, former typewriter mechanic, former salt water charter boat sport fisherman, philistine, certified heretic, and obviously a man who couldn't keep a job, "Rocky" tells original stories based in part on a checkered career as predicted by the vice-principal of his high school at "Rocky" graduation in 1949, "that boy will never amount to anything!"

"Rocky" prefers telling to adults and mixed age groups. He is a member of the Popularville Mississippi Storytellers Guild, NSA (National Storytelling Association) and TAPPS (Tennessee Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling. Rocky has shared his stories with attendees at the "Blueberry Jubilee Festival" in Poplarville MS, "Tellabration" in Poplarville MS, "Story Night Feb. 1996" in Poplarville MS, at the "SW Virginia Storytelling Festival" in Tazewell VA and at "TAPPS: A Reunion Festival" in Nashville TN. He has also led workshops on "Writing & Telling Humor" in Poplarville MS.

Lastly, and on a serious note something rare for Rockwell - he does believe in storytelling as a "gentle art" - one that is not confrontational, one that advances no political or religious cause, one that does not engage in vulgarity, one that avoids bad taste, and one that brings people together in community instead of driving a wedge between them. This is precisely why the storytelling audience has grown in America as it seeks an entertainment medium.