JONESBOROUGH 2012, PART TWO

Experienced Canadian tellers had told me before I went to Jonesborough, that while the American tellers cover all the genres of popular stories, the most popular remains a skillful and humorous mix of ‘real life experiences re-told’ and ‘Liar’s Club Anonymous’. And that is what I found at this year’s National Storytelling Festival.

While all the popular genres were professionally demonstrated on the tent stages and in the performance hall, the featured tellers who did what I could best describe as a ‘standup comedy’ act often attracted the most enthusiastic, loud and thoroughly engaged and devoted fans. One teller, Bill Lepp, filled the 1,500 seat tent venue to overflowing a couple of times and his often self-deprecating stories, superbly delivered in an ‘aw shucks’, laid black West Virginian accent, had the audience laughing continually and roaring for more. It reminded me of the devotion of Stuart McLean fans here in Canada as heard on his CBC Radio show, The Vinyl Café. Lepp has his unique and quirky cast of country characters drawn from his family and rural neighbours and all are well known to his thousands of fans. The standing ovation at the end of each of his performances was deafening and well-deserved.

Aboriginal and First Nations tellers were skillful and used the flute, drum and song to moving and dramatic effect in their stories of legend. A number of tellers used musical instruments as important elements in their stories. This year, the banjo and guitar were almost always active players in the tales being told. Myth, legend, children’s stories, fantasy and fables were all shared by professional tellers with amazing repertoires of stories carefully nurtured and crafted over the years of many tellings. Very popular in Canada, these stories as told and performed in Jonesborough, powerfully demonstrated their lasting power to entertain and educate all audiences.

Another popular American genre is the purpose-built story that mixes true facts with fiction and fantasy to create a powerful and emotionally compelling tale. Perhaps Jay O’Callahan is one of the best practitioners of this difficult art alive today. At the Festival, Jay told his now famous ‘Forged In The Stars’, an anthem to the fifty years of achievements by NASA and more recently his epic story about the history of Jonesborough. Both of these stories were told by Jay to sold out audiences.

Some of the most compelling and powerful stories were told by tellers of African American heritage, often using both the spoken word and music to engage the audience in an intimate and emotional experience. A stand out for me was the work of Rex Ellis, not only a storyteller but also a teacher, historian, author and minister.

I understand from regular attendees at the Festival, that a major attraction for them is the unique Special Events which showcase particular themes, trends or tellers of distinction. This year was no exception to the tradition with special events such as Ghost Stories or a ‘back-by-popular-demand’ evening of Naughty, Bawdy Senior Stories, or another that was promoted as exploring ‘the lighter side of multiple personality disorder by a world-class storyteller and expert at large on all things strange and slightly unhinged’!

Three, one hour performances on Sunday morning had twelve of the featured tellers demonstrating another important aspect of their diverse and rich genre repertoire: sacred stories. While many festivals devote time to this very popular type of told story, there are some events both in the US and here that focus exclusively on biblical stories. For many of the Jonesborough fans, these tellings are one of the highlights of their time at the Festival.  

A storytelling genre that has been sweeping the United States for several years is the Story Slam contest. For the first time in its forty year history, the Festival held a Story Slam competition, featuring seven tellers chosen from hundreds of auditions received from both the US and Canada. This was a hugely popular event with conference goers and the post-event buzz was that this Slam event had to become an annual offering. If you don’t know much about the Story Slam phenomenon, check out our August 22^nd blog post for a quickie orientation to this new genre modeled after the Poetry Slam contests that have been around for many years.

I was pleased to see that all performers made it a point to credit the source of a story, even if their version tweaked the original, and in some instances, the tellers told of getting the author’s permission to tell it. Sometimes that was an interesting mini-story all in itself!

For me there were so many ‘ah ha’ moments of insight, delight and amazement at not only the skills of the teller but the theatre of the performance and the passion with which the stories were told. So many of the stories were superbly crafted and shared, that after a while if one of them fell somewhat short of the high mark set by others, I found myself examining what had gone wrong in my engagement with the teller or the story or both. It was an unexpected but welcome bonus for me in shaping how I would select, write, tell and perform my own stories when I returned home.

In Part Three of my Jonesborough blog posts, I will provide you with links to some of the featured tellers so you can check out the individual artists themselves.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

October 18, 2012.