National Storytelling Festival Wrap Up, Part 2: the Blogs

A sampling of blog postings reflecting on the 37th Annual National Storytelling Festival, held in Jonesborough, Tennessee, the first weekend of October:

Emma Coffer and Erin Maring, posted their reflections on their blog, Whims-E:
Are you afraid of the dark?
Stories! Trains! Fun Hats!
I wanna sing, I wanna dance, Allelu
Top Three Story Moments

Blogger Ellouise Schoettler writes about her Jonesborough experience on Ellouisestory. She wasn't just an audience member—she was one of the invited performers!
Friday to Sunday at the National Storytelling Festival

Annie Campbell teaches third grade, and writes eloquently about her students and the process of teaching, writing, and telling stories. She's been to the National Festival before, and went again this year:
By Chance?

Over at the Storytelling Arts of Indiana blog, storyteller Lou Ann Homan-Saylor writes about her pilgrimage to the Festival, accompanying Ellen Munds, who was awarded the National Storytelling Network's Oracle Award for Distinguished National Service this year, the night before the Festival.
The Mecca to Jonesborough

Appalachian blogger and storyteller "Granny Sue" can always be counted on for a detailed description of her travels, as well as a few photos, and she does not disappoint this year:
National Storytelling Festival: Storytelling and Friends

Over at Alone on a Limb, Terrell Shaw shares his impressions of the tellers he heard at the Festival: Sunday Concert, Truthful Lies

National Storytelling Festival Wrap Up, Part 1: Twitter

Well, I wasn't there this year, at the 37th Annual National Storytelling Festival, held each year in Jonesborough, Tennessee, the first weekend in October.

However, I knew from last year, that it was possible to follow the weekend vicariously, through Twitter. This year, I tuned into the tweets of @Storyconnect (the official twitter account of the International Storytelling Center that hosts the event), and various attendees, and a performer or two, including Ellouise Schoettler, a wonderful storyteller out of Maryland that I know from several worlds (the storytelling circuit, the blogging world, and Fringe Festivals), who was making her debut at the Festival this year.

And while the 140 character limit of Twitter can't help but fail to express the feeling of a three-day storytelling lovefest, there were some nice glimpses over the weekend of the festival's spirit:

@BuckPCreacy Ah I am here. . . Tell me some story 5:11 PM Oct 1st

@MargaretMeyers: Nat'l Story Night has a nature all its own. Stories so touching, audience in tune. 9:28 PM Oct 1st

@Storyconnect: A beautiful morning in J-borough. Watching families & excited festival-goers pin on their calico "tickets." Tellers, your audience awaits! 6:30 AM Oct 2nd

@Djeliba: I got up early to do my ritual of visiting the stage. There are people seated in the audience 2 hours before performances begin! Wow! 7:31 AM Oct 2nd

@iBelin: "There are no fairy godmothers in my story 'cause women stand on their own two feet where I come from." Gay Ducey #Storytelling 11:35AM Oct 2nd

@Storyconnect: Kathryn Windham, on being Southern: "We are not embarrassed by our peculiarities. We chart 'em out & tell stories about them!" 12:26 PM Oct 2nd

@LeeRosen: National Storytelling Festival totally doesn't get social media. Photos, videos, and device use prohibited. Fail. 12:51 PM Oct 2nd

@DavidJoeMiller: //// If you're in Jonesborough right now, stay out of Boo Alley after night fall. Legend has it that ....................... 4:26 PM Oct 2nd

@Djeliba: Just finished my performance (1,200) people in the audience. What an amazing experience! 5:12PM Oct 2nd

@Ellouisestory: Please excuse me. I am still glowing from my first time on a Jonesborough stage at Exchange Place. #storytelling 9:30 PM Oct 2nd

@MargaretMeyers: Watching Eric Wolf around town at #storytelling festival doing interviews. Waiting to hear what he does with them. 9:31 PM Oct 2nd

@LeeRosen: Awake and getting ready for big day of stories. Jonesborough will be packed today. 4:21 AM Oct 3rd

@VeronicaMcG: Crammed like a sardine in a tent w/ 1000 other people at the Natl Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tn., & loving every min of it. 6:53 AM Oct 3rd

@focusonthecloud: I've travelled the south looking for ghost stories & have only found 2 evil ghosts. Thats a lot better than the humans I've met. - Kathryn 8:44 AM Oct 3rd

@focusonthecloud: So there we were a catholic priest, a baptist pastor and a methodist minister flying thru the air with no punchline in sight. - Bill Lepp 1:32 PM Oct 3rd

@DianaBaldwin: At the National Storytelling Festival- the first real social media. Amazing, captivating stories, and absolutely zero backnoise. 3:54PM Oct 3rd

@Storyconnect: Irish scary stories never fail to terrify-- I am now afraid of cairns, bath water, pokers, & cake. You might not want to know why. 6:13 PM Oct 3rd

@Consultdoc: Had a great time at the Intl Storytelling Festival. Fun to get a little old school and laugh out loud. Highly reccommend it. 7:03 PM Oct 3rd

@DianaBaldwin: @storylaura just finished the ghost stories segment. Did you go? Amazing & under the perfect moon... 7:14 PM Oct 3rd

@Ellouisestory: listening to the train passing through early in the morning. Its the music of storytelling here in Jonesboro. 5:02 AM Oct 4th

@Storyconnect: A tent full of of thousands just sang three songs in four-part harmony. That's it's own kind of magic! 7:23 AM Oct 4th

@Storyconnect: Bil Lepp vs. mountain lion. Any takers on the bet? 12:17 PM Oct 4th

@SlashColeman: is back from Jonesborough....ahhhhh. 4:40 AM Oct 5th

Some of the Twitter users even managed a "tweetup" on Saturday morning (photo here)

Tweeter @LeeRosen's frustration with the Festival's policy on electronic devices is understandable, but that didn't stop several tweeters from snapping photos with their cell phones (I found pics of Sheila Kay Adams, Donald Davis, and Kathryn Windham via Twitter... well, most of the pic is row upon row of audience in folding chairs while at the far side of the tent was a tiny human being. If you say that little speck is Sheila, I'll believe you).

Meanwhile, over at @focusonthecloud, Matt Harris was actually twittering quotes from storytellers in near real-time. (Maybe Festival staff and tent volunteers aren't on the lookout for active Blackberries?) Not a substitute for hearing the whole story, but Matt was capturing some nice turns of phrase from these orators. And, if, like me, you've heard some of these tellers before, the tweets evoke the sound of their voices. So I appreciate what Matt was doing.

If I had been there? I would have found a way to post, but probably not during the performances. As much as I like to share the experience online, when it comes to performances, I'm there to experience the storytelling trance. The tweets can come later.

More National Storytelling Festival Wrap Up

Yvonne posts five days of her trip to Jonesborough at http://agreatstorytellingadventure.blogspot.com/

Jaine Treadwell writes a column in the Troy (Alabama) Messenger: "You Have to Experience Jonesborough"

Other blog entries from:

Laurel Winter, "Tell Me a Story --and make it a good one"

Wendy Edey, "Pilgrimage to Jonesborough"

Karen Kennedy, "Once Upon a Time"

One thing I notice about the blog entries on the Festival is how many of them don't focus on the storytelling, but on "making the pilgrimage." Part of it is that some bloggers are simply posting a diary, they're not out to review a performance. But part of this phenomenon is the mystique and lore surrounding the festival (a culture that is both organic to the event and a carefully cultivated (as documented by Sobol and Gneiting), which, for some people, makes writing about the experience moot.

Case in point, over the past weekend, I caught up with a friend who reminded me of his own pilgrimage to Jonesborough in 1993, and --beaming the whole while as he recounted it-- he can still remember what stories he heard from Jim May, and Ray Hicks, and Jackie Torrance, and how much his family loved making the trip, and how profoundly he felt "the presence of truth" in the storytelling, a clarity he hadn't felt since his combat days in Vietnam, albeit this time without the horror. His enthusiasm was so unbridled as so refreshingly uncynical that he nearly sold me on packing up my own kids and jetting across the country for next year's festival.

National Storytelling Festival Round-Up

I did not have the pleasure of attending the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee this year, so here are some field reports (but not many reviews) from those who did:

Emma Cofer, at Inside Vandy: Stories Abound at National Storytelling Festival

Johnson City Press:
Storytelling festival says ‘The End’ until next year; crowd down slightly

Blogs:

Ellouise Schoettler blogs all four days of her trip! You go girl!
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Broken on the Wheel: every story has an ending but it's the tale that is the heart

Blabbin' Grammy: Jonesborough Storytelling

Elena and Maeve: Jonesborough Storytelling Trip

Found a few more mentions via Google and Myspace, but just namechecks of the festival under "what I did this weekend" and no reports.

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Mountain Mama Suzy, several entries

polgara_5's livejournal

Hey, an actual entry from one of the performers, Minton Sparks, on Myspace.

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Jeff Brunson: "The Providential Buckeye"

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Betty checks in post-Festival from Jonesborough at her blog.

Exchange Place teller Kindra Gayle blogs about her trip

Video Documentary: the Culture of the National Storytelling Festival

First weekend in October, it must be storytelling time in East Tennessee.

The National Storytelling Festival, in Jonesborough, Tennessee, now in its 36th year, has, since its inception cultivated a mystique and body of lore around itself.

Joseph Sobol has an excellent folklorist's perspective in The Storyteller's Journey, University of Illinois Press, 1999. (Just noticed a preview of the book is available at Google: link)

Back in 2001, Arizona storyteller Layne Gneiting created a video documentary about the Festival's culture, as part of his ethnographic research for his doctoral dissertation. entitled "Brigadoon Returns: Culture Formed and Reformed at the National Storytelling Festival." You can read about the dissertation over on his blog at Professional Storyteller. Layne has made the video available on YouTube... FYI, this isn't about storytelling, it's about the culture that surrounds this annual storytelling event:

Part I:


Part II:


Part III:

Tweets from the National Storytelling Festival

It's doubtful that anyone in Jonesborough will be blogging the National Storytelling Festival live. However, there are a number of people reporting in via Twitter... the "microblogging" service that lets you post VERY short blog entries from your mobile phone.

Read reports from the Festival at:
http://twitter.com/darwee
http://twitter.com/LeeRosen
http://twitter.com/jhjones
http://twitter.com/coreymayfield (posting photos, too!)
http://twitter.com/adammayfield

I don't know any of these people, but they are publicly posting these updates.

These folks are in or near Jonesborough, but so far they're not posting:
http://twitter.com/darkscape
http://twitter.com/shoestring
http://twitter.com/justloriann

To watch a live feed of Twitter posts, visit
http://www.monitter.com

On the web page, you'll see three columns, each with the header "monitter" (or you might see "apple" "iphone" "mac").
Type directly over those headers. Replace the headers by typing "Jonesborough" in one, "National Storytelling Festival" in the next, and "storytelling" in the third. (This last isn't the best, but I can't think of another keyword)

2nd Story: A Great Idea

A follow up to my previous post.

Normally, I wouldn't rise to the bait of an anonymous poster, but she called me on my snark, and this made me realize something that Sean has commented on before: from my blog postings, the reader can't tell what I actually feel about a subject. So here's an update.

Over in Chicago, Serendipity Theatre Company's got a good thing going with 2nd story, a monthly series and annual festival featuring personal storytelling at a popular wine bar. It sells out. It gets good press. It develops writers' performance skills and actors' writing skills. It celebrates the art of the well-told story.

And storytelling plus wine? That's a damn good idea. I wish more o.g. storytelling events featured wine.

Would that any venue I tell stories in is featured in a Zagat guide.

Jealous much? Yes, I am.

Because the old school storytelling community has missed the boat on this one. Dropped the ball. I looked at the roster of 2nd Story's storytellers. I looked at the behind-the-scenes organizers. I looked at the sponsors. Don't see any of the old guard. I can see storytellers skipping over WNEP's Skald (it's off-Loop, it's fringe, it's under-the-radar). I don't see how they could have missed this one.

(Am I missing something from two thousand miles away, just relying on Google? Yes, yes I am. Fill me in, Chicagoland people)

In my previous post, my use of the word "cringeworthy" wasn't a swipe at Ms. Stielstra, for her definition of storytelling. It was a swipe at the Chicago Storytelling Guild, who are either invisible or irrelevant in the Chicago arts community.

My remarks on the wine tasting at 2nd Story wasn't meant to be a swipe at the event. I just don't understand (not being an experienced wine taster or frequenter of wine bars myself) how the wine tasting and the storytelling go together. An organized wine tasting seems to me much more formal and stuffy than the communal, relaxed vibe that the storytelling can bring out. But I haven't been there. It works for 2nd Story.

2nd Story shows two things about the American Storytelling Revival:
1. That the Jonesborough, Tennessee-centric movement that started 35 years ago has narrowed its vision and become so inward-focused that it misses opportunities to connect with new audiences. (I've been saying this on the blog since the beginning)
2. The Revival of Storytelling will continue without them. The theatre and literary community, in recognizing the power of the personal story, are celebrating the art of storytelling. Hell, the business community, from "knowledge management" experts to marketing and branding gurus are carrying the storytelling torch, too (to my chagrin).

So, I apologize for not being clear.

But just we know, going forward: I've got my own biases and preferences:

I don't particularly care for personal memoir as a genre. (As if that's not clear already from my numerous entries on the toopic)

And reading a story out loud off of a piece of paper is storyreading, not storytelling, and isn't a performance art. And putting it on YouTube doesn't make it a better experience.

I like wine.

Turning a Battleship

Well shut my mouth and call me clammy.

The National Storytelling Network, a membership-based organization dedicated to the promotion of storytelling (primarily oral storytelling), has been in poor fiscal health for some time. The Board finally made some necessary hard decisions and thus the organization now finds itself with no Executive Director and no current plans to get one (until such time as it can afford one).

I've had some issues with the organization, mainly regarding communication.

So to my astonishment, the Board (which is necessarily taking a more active role, since staffing levels have dropped) have set up their own Web site (using Google sites) for the express purpose of communicating with the membership.

(Although NSN has its own web site, I'm guessing that both the site design and its content management system are the wrong tools for this purpose).

Furthermore, the site is interconnected with a Discussion forum, courtesy of Google groups.

This is the first time in my nine years as a member that the Board has taken such proactive steps to communicate with the organization membership on the state of the organization and what the Board is doing... and to invite participation in a discussion in a public forum.

(Okay, I'm biased. I recall that the Board usually wrote some 400 word piece in the magazine every once in a while, about... something. They surveyed the membership once or twice. And they talk at the annual conference).

Whatever the outcome of this experiment in communication (and it will be an experiment: most of the NSN membership shy away from using web tools for communication), I am very glad that the leadership made the move towards public transparency, and open communication, and using the Web to make it happen.

How very twenty first century.

(Now if only my state liaison might do the same).


Link to the NSN Board site: http://board.nationalstorytelling.net
Link to the NSN Board site discussion forum: http://forum.nationalstorytelling.net



(Coincidentally, I received the word about the new site on the very day that the International Storytelling Center's glossy fundraising brochure for their capital campaign... although the wording in the accompanying letter made implied that it would soon be the go-to organization for storytelling advocacy and networking.)

Guest Opinion: Gregory Leifel on Storytelling Recordings

Responding to a proposal from Joseph Sobol, a small part of which was "to support preservation of audio and video recordings of storytelling performances, and devise more effective ways of marketing and distributing them in established and new media forms," Gregory Leifel wrote this posting to Storytell, which I reproduce here with his kind permission.

I have been to the Jonesborough Festival (one example) a number of times and experienced some fantastic performances, as many of us have. A huge problem, as I see it, is that after a particularly great festival performance, I'm pretty much left with only being able to purchase the personal CD of particular performers. With the exception of a few compilation CDs or DVDs offered from years' past from Jonesborough performances (I saw these in the marketplace tent), what other choices are there to disseminate that experience that I just sat through? What does the Festival Organization do with the audiotaped and videotaped performances? (I have noticed them videotaping a number of times, but seldom see where I can purchase those live-recorded performance tapes--with few exceptions). I assume since they are using sound boards at the festival they audiotape every session. Are they archived in some library that you have to travel to to hear them? Why aren't they available through the internet, downloadable like iTunes (with a portion going to the artist)?

As great as some of the storytellers are that appear at festivals, let's be honest, the studio produced CDs resemble very little the hummpfft of a live performance feel. So, I come home from the Jonesborough Festival and I'm excited about our artform and want to spread the word about Storytelling (or individual performers I just saw) and pretty much what I have as a promotional vehicle is a blander, studio-produced or a barely audible audience, live recorded CD (no offense tellers) of a prior performance that does not resemble the fantastic live experience I just had. There's no comparison.

I buy the cds because I'm a storyteller who wants to understand and learn from my peers how they put their stories together. But that's a limited audience. This begs the question: How will our artform (at least the platform performance aspect) ever be taken seriously as a choice for entertainment (for people other than storytellers) if the only way you can experience it is to have to go to a festival or local coffeehouse or show up at your kid's school?

Okay, the contrarians are going to say it's the same way with theater--live is the only way. But when storytelling venues attain numbers like community theaters I'll buy that point. You can download nearly every piece of music out there, and live concerts still sell out. Books do well, even if made into movies. Are we too protective of live storytelling?

With many creative videographers out there, there ought to be a way to videotape and capture the live feel for DVDs, public television, or some outlet the public can have better access to. (I saw one such storytelling program on public television and it was a good step in the right direction.) Is this a matter of the artists wanting to protect their copywrited materials? I don't know, I'm asking. I assume the festival has some rights when it comes to the audio or video taping at a festival, since it always clearly states only they can do it. How are they using those rights? Archival only? I'm curious.

It seems to me if your repertoire as a top storyteller is X number of stories, then allowing outstanding-quality videotaped performances of a handful of your stories to be disseminated freely in an effort to teach future audiences that this is a valid (not just for kids) and entertaining choice would help our community and yourself by raising the awareness, and creating audiences that aren't primarily just made up of other storytellers.

The pictures on the National Storytelling Centers' wall that come closest to the feel you get in Jonesborough are the ones that show the teller from behind looking out to the huge audience. It provides context; tent, teller, audience, audience expression. A picture taken straight on of a storyteller on a stage with however crazy an expression tells us little about the storytelling experience. People go to plays, movies, anything live and entertaining because there's a certain something you can't get off the television. But that doesn't mean you should limit things to live only. There's too much talent and technology out there to not try and recreate the experience and use it as a promotional tool to get demand for festivals popping up all over the country and world.

As a storyteller I'd love access to any archives from large festivals, because that's how I better learn my craft. I'd love the public to have more access to the festival experience because I often feel like an army of one or a very small platoon through the local guild or regional organization, in promoting storytelling after I've been to a festival.

I long for the day when I tell people I tell stories and they say, "Oh you mean the kind of storytelling I saw on television the other night? Wow!"

You want to think outside the box? Has anyone noticed that the Metropolitan Opera is now showing performances inside some movie theaters? Yes, you can go see The Met Performances inside your local movie house. How about stories before the movie starts?

Just some thoughts,
Gregory

Gregory Leifel
www.ThrivingMoss.com
and soon, www.AhhhFinally.com

My thoughts, and yours, in the comments section