Priscilla Howe knows something about what makes for a good story. After all, she’s been telling them for years.

“Telling a story is really a three-legged stool,” she says. “It’s equal parts the story, the storyteller, and the audience. They all contribute to the perfect experience.”

Howe is a professional storyteller. Part thespian, part public speaker, she stands before audiences and tells a story, drawing on the oral tradition of human culture, where fables and myths were passed down from one generation to the next by word of mouth.

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“I tell lots of different kinds of stories,” she says. “Some are my own; some are classics; some are folk tales.”

She does it without notes. She doesn’t read from a script. She just performs it freely.
Which is not to say there isn’t a lot of preparation that goes into the telling.

“I work a lot on the back story,” Howe says. “I’ll write letters between the characters. I’ll imagine real estate ads for the locations. I imagine the story in my head – I don’t memorize lines. If I have it right in my head, it is clear to the audience.”

Howe, who left her job as a children’s librarian in Connecticut to move to Lawrence in 1993, travels to schools, festivals, libraries, and museums to perform. She’s telling the classic story, “Tristan and Iseult”, at SeedCo Studios (826 Pennsylvania in Lawrence) Thursday at 7:30 p.m. It’s an old tale with many interpretations, most famously a version by Shakespeare.

“It’s a lovely story of treachery and betrayal,” she enthuses.

Tristan is an archetypal hero. He vanquishes a giant and slays a dragon all in the name of winning the beautiful Iseult. However, he’s not earning her hand in marriage for himself. He does it for his uncle Mark. Iseult is angry with him for acting as another man’s proxy, but she and Tristan become entranced with each other when they are accidentally given a love potion that was intended for Mark and Iseult. Bad things ensue.

“It’s a great story and tragic,” Howe says.

Howe has been working on it for 15 years and is excited to bring it to Lawrence audiences.

“It’s easily my longest story,” she says. “It runs about 95 minutes. Forty-five minutes is a pretty standard length for me.”

Howe doesn’t act out her tales. There are no props, no dramatic poses. So can listening to someone stand and tell a story for an hour and a half hold the attention of a modern audience, especially young people?

“I’ve told ‘Tristan and Iseult’ at the Johnson County Juvenile Detention Center,” Howe says. “Juvenile inmates sit with rapt attention for 95 minutes. The story is powerful enough that they are deep inside it.”

Howe notes the version of the story she will tell at SeedCo Thursday night is suitable for children ages nine and up.

“It’s an old story and a classic,” she says. “There is something in it for everyone.”

The doors for “Tristan and Iseult” open at 7 p.m, and the program begins with live music by Michael Paull and Sarah Michelle Lockwood at 7:30 p.m. followed by the story at 8 p.m. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $10.