NPR’s StoryCorps oral history project comes to Hawaii

StoryCorps, the national oral history project popularized by weekly broadcasts on National Public Radio, is visiting Hawaii for the first time in May and June, spending four weeks in the islands to record the stories that make up the lives of these islands.

"Mostly what we want is to have a really diverse group of people telling stories," said Anna Altman, a StoryCorps spokeswoman. "We're trying to spread appointments around to different types of people living in different types of places, different kinds of occupations."

The StoryCorps project involves a casual but facilitated 40-minute interview by two people who know each other well, such as a parent and child, a teacher and student, a longtime couple, even two friends. Participants receive a recording of the interview, and a copy will be stored in the Library of Congress. NPR condenses some of them into two- to three-minute segments for national broadcasts, and local affiliate Hawaii Public Radio will do the same for local broadcast.

Hawaii, with its "talk story" tradition, is accustomed to the notion of people transmitting knowledge face to face. But setting up StoryCorps has been much more complicated than gathering around the dinner table or on the lanai.

On the mainland, StoryCorps has two permanent recording booths and a temporary one, along with a mobile studio in a trailer that travels the country.

Here, StoryCorps facilitators will set up recording locations on four islands. Recording on Oahu will be at the Chamberlain House at Mission Houses Museum, according to Judy Neale, an HPR producer overseeing the project locally.

Open recording slots are likely to be very limited. StoryCorps and HPR already have reserved many of the 164 slots through community meetings. Neale said it is difficult to say how many open spots there will be on Oahu, and there might be only a handful on Kauai.

Sign-ups are first-come, first-served, so Neale is expecting a flurry of calls and online registration attempts — and a lot of disappointment. "One can only hope that this is a first visit, a first residency, that this one will be a very successful one and that they will come back," she said.

STORYCORPS NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO'S ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Schedule: Honolulu, May 25-June 9; Wailuku, Maui, June 10-14; Lihue, June 16-19; Kona, June 20-24

Sign-ups: For reservations or more information, call StoryCorps' 24-hour reservation line at (800) 850-4406 or visit http://storycorps.org.