National Storytelling Festival
So we spent the past weekend at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. I've always wanted to go. Being a recovering librarian (9 years clean -- haven't touched an information desk phone once, though I admit to shelving the occasional book...) I've known about the festival and wanted to go for years. I figured I had as much professional justification to go now as ever. Moreso, really, because the director of a theater group that deals in folklore should have a clue what's going on the in the storytelling world.

Lemme tell you, it's not cheap. We spent as much on tickets for the family as we would for a show on Broadway. But we got three days, not two hours, of programming, and I laughed almost as hard at times as I did last time I was at a Broadway show. (That was Spamalot, by the way. I clarify because "funnier than Les Mis" probably isn't a very complimentary distinction.)

Carmen Agra Deedy was hands down our family favorite. We saw her all three days. A children's author and storyteller, she was born in Cuba but grew up in Decatur, Georgia. Her ability to recount her childhood and make you laugh with her rivals Bill Cosby's. Donald Davis, of my semi-native North Carolina, was also hilarious, telling of a high school trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. There were ghost stories -- The Skeleton Man, La Llorona, Flannel Mouth, and "The Bargain" (a vampire story.) During several of these, a CSX freight train passed eerily through the town as we sat on blankets amid torches by the creekside.

"Quiet Riot," a team of brothers, were funny and fascinating. One brother narrated, while the other produced an amazing variety of sound effects with his mouth. Their closing, a version of "The Stonecutter," was well-told, but a little too slanted to suit an environmentalist and communitarian agenda for my tastes. But my hat is still of to their talent. Kuniko performed Japanese storytelling in traditional costume with loads of props. She also told the tale of the stonecutter, with what I assume was a more traditional ending. Japanese fairy tales, she explained, often have sad endings, but teach us to make happy endings in our own lives.

I didn't hear anyone who wasn't phenomenal, including six youth storytellers. These kids were inventive and knew how to entertain an audience, despite very different personal styles, ranging from hyperactively outgoing to retiring and shy. An eleven-year-old (maybe twelve since the brochure was printed) told one of my favorite stories to tell, "Dead Aaron." I'm always interested to hear other tellers' versions of that one. (And you can hear my dramatization of it coming soon on the Prometheus Podcast, or at the Prometheus Radio Theatre / Boogie Knights Hallowe'en show on October 28th!)

Jonesborough is very close to my parents' home in Yancey County, NC, so we took the opportunity to catch up with family and spend a few nights "The Chocolate House," the three-bedroom rancher my Father built there in 1954. It was my younger son's first overnight stay there, and he was fascinated. He wanted to climb the mountain and see the old logging trails left over from the days when a company called Carolina Spruce ran a lumber operation there. We hadn't really brought gear for hiking, though, and there are bears and rattlesnakes. Guess we'll have to go back soon.