"Tom Taylor- a poet of a storyteller."
(Texas Tale Teller Donna Ingham)
* Veteran teacher, award-winning professional actor/storyteller, song-writer/balladeer, poet/author, Tom forsook the classroom and its attendant breathtaking, character-staining wealth to focus on storytelling.
* Taylor has conducted countless presentations, performances, programs and workshops in classrooms, libraries, theaters, conferences, prisons, festivals, churches, camps and hospitals from China to Great Britain.
* Composer of more than 800 stories, ballads, poems and songs, and author of 7 children’s books and numerous recordings, Taylor began writing seriously while touring with his heralded one-man play as Woody Guthrie. His Guthrie tour (1971-1981)
comprised presentations throughout the U.S.A., Canada, Scotland and England.
* In America he performed everywhere from L.A.’s Skid Row, to Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.; from Death Row to Off-Broadway’s famed Cherry Lane Theater, to the East Room of the White House, and the Library of Congress.
* Film, television and radio engagements included such productions as the network mini-series The Chisholms, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Resurrection, The White Lions, Dallas, Voices in the Wind, and Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion.
* He now shares his remarkable wares with a wide-ranging variety of audiences - not just his personal and family tales, but folktales from around the world, peace tales, biblical stories, true Texas tales, tall tales, as well as his original stories, poems, ballads and songs.
* His programs are most often interactive and frequently include, where appropriate, a segment focusing on American folk rhythms - spoons, bones, washboard and hamboning, etc. - So, SOME programs include not only the telling of, and the listening to - stories - but, in fact, have been known to include (from the audience)
enthusiastic outbursts of spontaneous dancing!