By Pat Summers Special Writer
Somehow, her appearance, bearing and voice all suggest she’s a storyteller. First, she’s commandingly tall and erect. Her face, especially those eyebrows, is expressive, and she speaks comfortably and well.
If you thought she could also be a clergy person — another field that calls for effective speech — you’d be right, too. Although Joanne Epply-Schmidt is an ordained Episcopal priest with 20 years in the Diocese of New Jersey, for our purposes, “Reverend Joanne” is a storyteller — and one who tells most of her tales to an unusual and challenging audience.
Even without campfire, marshmallows or the various other comfortable conventions of storytelling, she achieves notable effects.
But we’re getting ahead of … our story.
Once a week, in five or six 40-minute sessions, “Reverend Joanne” becomes the storyteller for incarcerated boys and girls at the Mercer County Youth Detention Center, Ewing. Visiting their English classes, she “tells” to small groups of boys or girls, usually 13-18 years old.
During the 10 years she has done this, her repertoire has grown to 65 stories, drawn largely from folklore, myth and legend. “If young people know they’re part of a bigger narrative, a bigger story,” she believes, “they will do better than if they feel isolated, even if their (often miserable) circumstances don’t change.”
Her stories “give kids a bigger context, a bigger universe, with company they didn’t know they had.”
“The kids are impeccably polite,” she says. Although their behavior’s rated for their case file, she cites other causes: First, many of the kids come from a matriarchal structure, and she’s a woman. Not only that, she’s old enough to be their grandmother, she says.
But the main reason for their respect is that she’s ordained. Because she “tells” as “Reverend Joanne,” the kids monitor themselves and each other, as in “Don’t do that — there’s a reverend in the room!”
Focusing on the here and now, she’s usually unaware of her listeners’ own back stories, including the charges against them. But not knowing who may be in class from week to week, she keeps growing her story repertoire for the sake of those who stay and those who return.
Then, in action, Reverend Joanne “stands and delivers.” She neither reads nor acts out a story, but suggests with face and gestures, and sometimes uses props she brings to class. For instance, her collection of old purses came in handy for a story about a thief, and she acquired a pair of blue suede shoes for another.
“Their world is drab,” she says, and so she dresses for each day at the center as nicely as she can, often accessorizing with her extensive personal jewelry.
“In their setting, imagination dies off,” she says, “yet many of these kids are bright and very creative — they’re managers, executives, problem solvers, with minds for intrigue — even though their talents have been misdirected.”
Kids in the program like sitting in a circle. It’s one of the few times they’re not in a row or line, and they literally don’t have to watch their backs. They can “chill,” without stress, and take their minds somewhere other than their inner-city environments.
One boy moved from hearing stories to wanting to write his own and is now taking steps toward literacy by producing his autobiography. Greeted by Reverend Joanne out of class, another student was astonished that she called him by name. Still another, years away from the center, is a family man in the Army—and wants to come back to tell his story.
Reverend Joanne believes the storytelling sessions energize, build enthusiasm and lighten kids’ loads. At the same time, kids gain skill in listening, thinking sequentially and self-expression. (“Speaking in mainstream ways that the world will look for” is one of the ground rules.)
From the priest who “tripped into storytelling” only a decade ago when faced with a series of sermons for a mixed group, Rev. Epply-Schmidt seems to have become a storyteller- priest. Since apprenticing with Susan Danoff, founding director of Storytelling Arts — under whose auspices the award-winning program at the detention center is run — she has been a teller in other venues and taught storytelling to seminarians.
Born in Hartford, Conn., in 1955, Joanne Epply was an infant when her family moved to Hanover, N.H. Princeton University (Class of ‘82) was followed by Yale Divinity School (Master of Divinity, ‘88) then 12 years of full-time parish work. She’s now affiliated with Princeton’s Trinity Church as a volunteer associate priest, and she does “supply preaching” for those on leave, which she says puts her in a pulpit three out of four Sundays.
She has lived in the Princeton area for almost 20 years with her husband, Paul Epply-Schmidt, an English teacher at Princeton Day School, and two sons, Alexander, 19, and Aidan, 16. There’s also Haystack, a golden retriever and Truffle, a guinea pig.

