What a revelation my first storytelling festival was. As adults, I think we tend to get rusted. We sometimes forget how to authentically engage, laugh, even cry. Oh, we get pretty good at going to work, paying bills, making lists, dashing from A to B — but turning our imaginations loose? Not so much anymore. Storytelling reminded me what it can feel like. The Possum Town Tales Storytelling Festival in Columbus Sept. 22-25 hopes to deliver on that same promise.
Donald Davis, the acknowledged “dean of storytelling,” will be center stage in the Columbus Arts Council’s fifth annual festival, along with Anna and Elizabeth — a unique duo that sparked a sensation when featured last June in an NPR Tiny Desk concert — and the musical storytelling of Grace Pettis.
A session of HomeGrown Storytelling from local tellers, a “crankie” and storytelling workshop with Anna and Elizabeth, and a songwriting workshop with Pettis complete the schedule. Events will be at the Rosenzweig Arts Center, 501 Main St., and at a Storytelling Tent next to the Tennessee Williams Home at 300 Main St.
Master teller
With honey-coated southern Appalachian charm, Donald Davis narrates the human comedies and dramas that life is made up of.
A reviewer for the New York Times put it this way: “I could have listened all morning to Donald Davis … his stories often left listeners limp with laughter at the same time they struggled with a lump in the throat.”
After 20 years as a minister, Davis “retired” to full-time storytelling in 1989. The North Carolinian travels about 10 months out of the year to tell tales. He’s been on NPR, CNN and ABC’s Nightline and has performed at the Smithsonian Institution and the World’s Fair. His many honors include the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence and Lifetime Achievement Awards. He also, much earlier in his career, made a visit to Columbus, to perform for the arts council’s Young People’s Artist Series.
“Coming back to Mississippi will be great fun,” Davis said in a phone interview from the road. “There’s such an oral culture in our part of the world. We’re accustomed to sitting on the porch or lingering over mealtimes and talking. It just makes it more fruitful, so I’ll have a really good time.”
His stories, he added, are extracted from real life.
“And my hope always is that when somebody hears a story of mine that it’ll make them think of something that happened to them that they may not have thought of otherwise.”
CAC Program Manager Beverly Norris has been trying to bring Davis here since the local festival began.
“Donald was one of the very first people on our list, but he’s so busy he has to be booked a couple of years or more in advance,” she said. “We are so glad to finally get to welcome him.”
Sing me a story
This year’s festival carries a strong component of musical storytelling. Anna and Elizabeth — Anna Gevalt-Roberts and Elizabeth Laprelle — are part historians, part balladeers, melding the lost art of crankies with mesmerizing mountain harmonies and rollicking tunes. Think of crankies as scrolling picture shows created with intricate linoleum block prints, embroidered fabrics and even shadow puppets. Some are illuminated. As the scroll is cranked by hand, images are unfurled at the pace of the song.
Grace Pettis is living up to her birthright. The daughter of revered songwriter/performer Pierce Pettis has already won the “Mountain Stage” NewSong Contest and the Kerrville New Folk Competition, making Pierce and Grace the first father and daughter to have both won. Her third album is due out in the spring.
Pettis will conduct a songwriting workshop Sept. 25. Anna and Elizabeth present a crankie and storytelling workshop Sept. 22.
“Grace, just like her father, has learned to bring life’s ups and downs, tragedies and happiness into her music as a writer and performer with a distinctive voice,” said Norris. “And Anna and Elizabeth are bringing back such an original art form, one that’s enchanting. … So many of our stories we know today are because they were given to us in song.”
On our doorstep
Since the Columbus festival began in 2012, some of the storytelling world’s most well-known professional tellers have been on its stage — Sheila Kay Adams, Carmen Agra Deedy, Kevin Kling, Andy Offut Irwin and Len Cabral among them. And now, Donald Davis, who has been a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, for a remarkable 36 years, recorded more than 25 albums and authored numerous books.
Unless we know our stories, we don’t know who we are, Davis emphasized Thursday.
“Sometimes I see kids who are watching TV like it’s a menu to choose a life from instead of knowing stories of their culture and history,” he said. “You can’t even reject a story if you don’t know it first; you can’t choose the ones that are worth fighting for.”
Pam Bullock of Columbus has attended several Possum Town Tales story concerts. When she took her husband and mother, they were captivated with the art form, too.
“Storytelling can transport you. Your imagination goes wild,” she said.
Some people mistakenly think it’s for children, Bullock continued. “But, oh, it’s so much more! If you ever go, you won’t want to miss another. We are so fortunate Columbus hosts this festival.”
Yes, my first storytelling immersion was a revelation. It was in Jonesborough, the National Storytelling Festival, with 10,000 or more fans who converge every October to spend days under big-top tents, listening to stories. Several of the tents seat 1,500 people. Even so, latecomers are left standing on the fringes, looking in. Collectively, we forgot about work, the bills, the lists — and put our imaginations in the hands of the tale-spinners. Local organizers are committed to bringing that opportunity to us here. So, perhaps you have a list that needs forgetting about, too.
How to go
A festival schedule of free and ticketed events is available at columbus-arts.org, or contact the CAC at 662-328-2787 Tuesday through Saturday.
Tickets for story concerts and workshops are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. A $25 pass covers all events Sept. 22-24. (The Pettis workshop Sept. 25 is $10.)
Free daytime sessions Saturday, Sept. 24 from 10 a.m-2 p.m. in the Storytelling Tent next to the Tennessee Williams Home include Family Storytelling with Mother Goose and HomeGrown Storytelling, followed by performances by Donald Davis, and then Anna and Elizabeth.
All other events are at the Rosenzweig Arts Center.
The festival is made possible by generous support of sponsors including Visit Columbus, Beth and Birney Imes, The Dispatch and the Mississippi Arts Commission.
Videos of all festival performers can be found at columbus-arts.org.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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