REFLECTIONS ON JONESBOROUGH’S NATIONAL STORYTELLING FESTIVAL 2012

I spent the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Jonesborough is the site of the annual National Storytelling Festival. This is the event’s 40^th year celebration. USA Today has described the Festival as “the leading event of its kind”. After attending many of the telling performances there, I can honestly say this is not an exaggeration. It is a total immersion in all popular genres, styles and personalities currently shaping American storytelling. The featured tellers are many and represent some of the best of the best among American tellers.

The Festival has four large performance tents spread around the small town. The largest tent holds 1,500 people! Jonesborough normally has about 5,000 residents but during this year’s Festival, that number swelled exponentially with over 12,000 avid and passionate fans of the art of storytelling flooding into the small downtown core. Organized by the staff of the International Storytelling Centre, located in Jonesborough, hundreds of volunteers ensured that all events, site logistics, visitor support and guest registration went very smoothly. Local and state police were in evidence, always friendly, helpful and courteous as they mingled with the visitors, coordinated complicated traffic management movements and even happily posed for the occasional picture.

Each day begins at 10am and continues with special storytelling events drawing enthusiastic fans to the tents and an intimate, indoor performance studio until almost midnight. By my count, there were 25 top premiere or ‘featured’ tellers and 6 new-comers to the Jonesborough stages, each of them having their loyal fans. Each event was emceed by one of six well-known tellers who kept the audience entertained and hyped for the featured performers. 

An event lasted one hour. Sometimes there were several tellers performing in one show while a few of the featured tellers were given their own one hour gig. Between shows, fans had a half hour to make their way to the next tent venue, visit the porta-potties, grab some food from the vendor tents while mixing and mingling with other excited and eager fans. Some of my most memorable moments in my visit were talking to other fans about specific tellers they had heard that day or more often, we traded stories about our own interest in storytelling and some of our telling adventures.

I was surprised to learn that for many who come to Jonesborough each year, the average number of Festivals attended by a fan is six. However, I met many who had been coming for 10, 20 or in one case, 30 years! Just as the featured tellers come from all around the US and two were from Canada, the fans often travel huge distances to sit at the Holy Grail of American storytelling. While Jonesborough is the ultimate event each year for many, I quickly learned that storytelling festivals are hugely popular all over the United States. I lost track of how many Festivals I saw displayed on the T-shirts and fleeces of the fans.

The weather in north-eastern Tennessee at this time of year can always be a bit tricky to predict with confidence and this year was no exception. Friday and the early part of Saturday started off sunny and warm but quickly changed to cloudy, colder, windy and rain for the rest of the time. While most Festival goers came prepared for the changeable weather, I am sure the sale of fleece and windbreakers in the Visitor Centre did a brisk business.

Would I make a pilgrimage to Jonesborough again, I am often asked now that I am back home? Absolutely, no doubt about it. It was an amazing learning experience, hugely entertaining and lots of fun. From where I live in Ontario to Jonesborough, it is a fourteen hour road trip. There is the cost of hotels or B and B’s, meals, Festival registration fee and gas but I don’t regret the expense at all. At least not until my Visa bill arrives next month!

In Part Two of my Jonesborough blog posts, I will introduce you to some of my favourite tellers at this year’s Festival and reflect on lessons learned for me as an aspiring teller.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

October 18, 2012.

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.

JONESBOROUGH 2012, PART THREE

Here are links to the websites of some of the featured tellers. Most of these folks also have video clips on You Tube that are worth checking out. Often their websites have links to the videos to make it easier to find them.

These professional tellers are entertaining, motivational, inspiring and often very funny. Their body of work is significantly shaping the face of storytelling in the United States. I encourage you to check them out and enjoy their unique styles and personalities.

Bill Lepp.  www.leppstorytelling.com.

Kevin Kling.  www.kevinkling.com.

Barbara McBride-Smith.  www.barbaramcbridesmith.com.

Jay O’Callahan.  www.ocallahan.com.

Connie Regan-Blake. www.storywindow.com.

John McCutcheon.  www.folkmusic.com.

Michael Reno Harrell.  www.michaelreno.com.

Roslyn Bresnick-Perry.  www.RoslynBresnickPerry.com.

Donald Davis.  www.ddavisstoryteller.com.

Rex Ellis.  www.yourfavoritestorytellers.org/ellis.

Michael Harvey.  www.michaelharvey.org.

Andy Offutt Irwin.  www.andyirwin.com.

Beth Horner.  www.BethHorner.com.

Syd Lieberman.  www.sydlieberman.com.

Willy Claflin.  www.willyclaflin.com.
Judith Black. www.storiesalive.com.
Alton Chung.  www.altonchung.com.
Carmen Agra Deedy.  www.CarmenAgraDeedy.com.
Kim and Reggie Harris.  www.KimandReggie.com.
Hannah Harvey.   www.covestory.com.
Kevin Locke. www.ixtlanartists.com.
Laura Simms.  www.laurasimms.com.
Jeanne Robertson.   www.jeannerobertson.com.

You may still be able to find the Schedule of Events of this year’s National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough on-line. It’s worth checking out just to see the depth and variety of the events that were offered this year. While you are on the site for the International Storytelling Centre, check out their blog which is over on the right hand side of the page. It always has interesting posts on the creative art of storytelling.

Here is the link for the Event Schedule. Just copy it and paste it into your browser, then click on it when it appears on your screen.

www.storytellingcentre.net/news/2012-festival-schedule-announced/

We would invite you to share your comments about our three Jonesborough blogs here on the Tales and Tips blog of the Peterborough Storytellers. If you have a personal experience with the Jonesborough Festival, we’d love for you to share it with us as a blog post comment.

Written by Don Herald (a member of Peterborough Storytellers)

October 18, 2012