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Local storytellers to participate in annual festival
(by Kara Krekeler - April 30, 2008)
Much like a good tall tale, the annual St. Louis Storytelling Festival keeps growing and growing.
The festival will celebrate its 29th year April 30 through May 3, with more than 60 national and regional storytellers performing in 150 sessions at 35 locations throughout the metropolitan area. Artistic Director Becky Walstrom said she expects somewhere around 24,000 to make up the audience for this year’s festival.
That’s a far cry from the first festival in 1980, which took place in just one location — underneath the Gateway Arch — and hosted just 5,000 visitors.
This year, storytellers will visit several outreach sites in an attempt to bring the art of storytelling to those who otherwise couldn’t attend the festival, Walstrom said. Outreach sites include the Shriners Hospital, MERS/Goodwill in the Central West End and juvenile detention centers in both the city and county.
Walstrom said that while she wasn’t sure if outreach was one of the initial goals, it certainly has been a major part of the festival since at least 1990 when she joined the planning staff — and with each year, the outreach portion grows larger.
“Almost every year, I get someone who comes and wants to host a festival event,” she said. “And just like with regular sites, I’m always looking for new ways to expand the festival.”
Walstrom said that storytellers generally enjoy the outreach-site experience, particularly when they’re performing before an audience that is actively engaged in the story. “The storytellers put so much into it, and it makes it much more enjoyable for everyone involved if the audience is actively participating in the story,” she said, adding with a laugh that such involvement doesn’t always happen, particularly at senior-citizen centers, where some residents may doze off.
While the festival’s outreach events are not open to the public, Walstrom said there are plenty of other opportunities for people to hear both local and internationally known storytellers during the festival. Events are scheduled for a wide variety of parks, libraries and bookstores, as well as at local institutions, including the Missouri Botanical Garden, Missouri History Museum and the Gateway Arch.
The final event of the festival will bring all of the internationally known storytellers together for a concert at 7:30 p.m. May 3 in the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The concert will feature the talents of Heather Forest, Robert Greygrass, Beth Horner, Baba Jamal Koram, Franky Ramont, The Storycrafters and Ken Wolfe. Like the other festival events preceding it, the final concert is free and open to the public.
In addition to these featured storytellers, the festival will also include a host of local storytellers, including Marilyn Phillips of University City.
The Youth Services Librarian for the University City Public Library, Phillips has a long history with the storytelling festival. She first attended 26 years ago as a member of the audience. After that, she was hooked, taking her children to the Saturday storytelling events every year as they grew up.
Later, she volunteered as an emcee or crowd-control assistant, and it was only when a colleague suggested signing up as storytellers 10 years ago that she started performing at the festival. While her friend regularly tells stories at the library, Phillips’ work is more centered on administrative tasks, and she said she relies on the festival to keep her storytelling skills fresh.
“This is my way of keeping my toes in the water,” she said, adding that she prefers to tell stories to younger children. This year, she’s planning on focusing on “scary insect stories.”
Phillips still hasn’t given up her role as an audience member, however. When she’s not performing, she tries to make it to as many other storytelling events at the festival as possible.
“This festival is really one of the hidden treasures of St. Louis, especially for families,” she said. “Many cities have storytelling festivals, but I don’t know of any [others] that are free and offer so much to so many people.”
For more information about the St. Louis Storytelling Festival, including a complete schedule of events, visit www.umsl.edu/storytelling or call 516-5961.
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