Storyteller : Seasoned, 15-Year-Old Yarn Spinner Will Weave Some of Her Make-Believe During Weekend Performance at Church

Take heart, all ye parents of talkative tots. Given some imagination, self-assurance and a taste for the spotlight, your loquacious lad or lass just might be headed for a career in the ancient art of storytelling.

That’s how it worked for Alecia Grebner, a 15-year-old high school senior whose knack for narrative earned her the title of the Best Young Professional Storyteller in America last year in the Oakland Storytelling Festival, put on by the National Festival of Black Storytellers.

Grebner, who has spun yarns for audiences across the Southland, will make her Orange County debut Sunday in a free performance at the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church of Costa Mesa.

Grebner has been on the storytelling circuit since she was 9, entertaining listeners at schools, libraries, churches, benefits and on local radio and television shows.

After taking first place for storytelling in a speech contest (the first time she had ever told a story for an audience) at the private school for gifted children she was attending, the school librarian asked Grebner to share her talents with younger students.

Once word got out among other librarians, Grebner’s reputation was solidified.

Her repertoire includes about 20 tales of varying topics and length. There are the old bedtime favorites, such as “The Gingerbread Man,” a tale she remembers her grandmother telling her as a child; and such morality tales as “How Brother Parker Fell From Grace,” which tells of Judd Parker, a holier-than-thou minister whose self-righteous meddling lands him in hot water.

Storytelling, as one might expect, is a loosely structured art. Grebner rarely plans her program before she meets her audience, preferring instead to “just take a look around and decide what kind of stories they might like.” Given the church setting for Sunday’s show, she says, her performance may include “Brother Parker” and a few fairy tales, most of them running about 10 to 12 minutes in length.

Like her earliest predecessors, she uses no special effects or props,

pulling instead from a bottomless

grab bag of facial expressions, body

language and vocal inflections to enliven her tales.

With her fresh-scrubbed good looks, this young performer is about as far from the typical image of the sage, gray-bearded old storyteller as you can get. Does her youthfulness ever get in her way, especially when performing for young audiences?

“I really don’t have a problem with kids, because I’m not telling them something they have to believe,” said Grebner. “It’s make-believe, entertainment. They like that.”

When she isn’t telling stories or attending classes at Newbridge School, a private institution in Los Angeles, Grebner is pursuing an acting career. She made her first television commercial as a toddler and has since worked on more than a dozen radio and television spots.

She has appeared in local theater productions and earlier this year landed a guest spot on the series “227.” Grebner hopes to study film and theater at USC.

Dorothy White, a spokeswoman for the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church, said she hopes that Grebner’s performance, which will be held in lieu of the church’s usual Sunday service, will be an inspiration to children and teen-agers.

Also on the program are teen-age pianists Erica Friesan of Huntington Beach and Nicola Miller of Fountain Valley, as well as Sonya Sandrachild, a Huntington Beach vocalist and instrumentalist who will play a variety of rare instruments and lead a family-themed sing-along.

The performance by storyteller Alecia Grebner will be held Sunday at 10:30 a.m. in the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church, 1259 Victoria St., Costa Mesa. Admission is free. Child care will be available. Information: (714) 642-2142.