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My first year of serious
Storytelling has been
intriguing, to say the least. Marked
by growth and burgeoning confidence, it has seen the addition of nearly
two dozen tales to my repertoire, and almost as many venues. I replayed all but one of last year’s ‘open’ tellings,
and added several more to this year’s list:
| Border’s
Bookstore, The
Festival of the Wild Rose Moon, Kendallville’s Apple Festival
near Ft. Wayne IN, Naper Settlement’s Chautauqua Event,
Saengerfest in Blue Island, Valparaiso’s Gaelic Festival and its
Front Porch Folk Fest, and the Warrenville
Folk Festival
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I also played several private parties –
Scouting awards dinners, a theatrical group’s annual banquet,
and a few birthday parties thrown in for good measure.
This
year saw my first Storytelling workshops – at Warrenville Folk Festival
and at Cumberland Dance Camp 99 … .
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To old
faces and favorite places
to tell … a toast!
Morton
Arboretum,
in Lisle, and Lake Katherine Nature Preserve, in Palos Heights, have to rank among
my favorite places to share stories.
Whether telling indoors because of the weather or outdoors
because of the weather the audiences – great and small – are
always receptive and, invariably, appreciative.
There are wonderful trails to walk through prairie or bower,
and water to rest beside between tellings; the ambiance is …
pleasant. I keep
returning to these two venues again and, happily, again. |
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 I
like to select the tales I tell according to themes chosen by the person
hiring me and the audience to whom I’m telling; it helps me to coordinate
the stories, their order and impact.
It also serves to challenge me to find new stories.
For example, I’ve done sets around an Astronomy theme for both a
birthday party and a nature center, and used different stories for
each.
I’ve told stories revolving around coyotes,
insects, and trees.
This year, I found opportunity to evolve a set architecture based on
time frame: the Festival of the Wild
Rose Moon is one part Rendezvous and two parts ‘Little House on the
Prairie’ with a healthy splash of Society for Creative Anachronism tossed
in for good measure.
The only requisites afforded me were that the tales I told had to be
‘dated’ before the 1870s, and I had to ‘look’ the part.
They were … and I did … and it served me well; within the month I
introduced Naper Settlement’s Chautauqua
program in Naperville, IL with stories and anecdotes focusing on the War
Between the States.
And, on October 2nd, at Kendallville’s Apple Festival
near Ft. Wayne IN, I performed some tall tales, some Native American
stories, a bit of history and humor -- all falling within the same period.
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