Old Tales for New Times — Inspired by 9/11, Atlanta Firm Wants to Bring Kids' Classics to Wider Audience
By Phil Kloer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — October 10, 2005
Jonesborough, Tennessee — The trance came over the crowd without anyone being aware. A man's iPod earbuds dangled, unused, around his neck. Potato chip bags lay untouched in teenagers' laps. Two thousand people sat in folding chairs under a huge white tent, utterly still, listening. On a small stage, storyteller Donald Davis spun a yarn about his Appalachian relatives, a little skinny-dipping and a spectacular, blood-spouting head wound.
"We call that storyteller hypnosis," Atlanta storyteller Bobby Norfolk said of the crowd's intense concentration on Davis's every word. "It's a power that takes over a room."
And it's a power that was rampant over the weekend at the National Storytelling Festival, held for the 33rd time in the town of Jonesborough in the northeast corner of Tennessee. Every October, the 3,500 folks who live here in Tennessee's oldest city welcome about 10,000 storytelling fans for a sort of Music Midtown of the spoken word.
"There's this misconception that storytelling is Grandma and Grandpa in a rocking chair on the porch, or putting babies down for the night," Norfolk added. "But storytelling is an ancient art form. The brain is actually hard-wired for telling stories."
And what stories were told over the three-day weekend, under six white canvas circus tents pitched all over town. An Egyptian version of Cinderella, a passionate recounting of Cherokees dying on the Trail of Tears, a hilariously detailed tale about a fourth-grader's obsession that his teacher is really Wonder Woman, a Cambodian origin myth and a Langston Hughes poem were just a few examples of an amazing diversity of topics and techniques.
Old South meets new
Some tellers are closer to stand-up comedians, some are like one-person theatrical events, others more like Garrison Keillor. Most of the stories are original, and personal, but not all. When Madafo Lloyd Wilson, who takes the stage as an African griot, began a tale "Once there was a tree, and the tree loved a little boy," several sighs of recognition floated up from the crowd, from those who knew Shel Silverstein's book "The Giving Tree."
The festival feels like the Old South — the Jonesborough Methodist Church, built in 1846, offered an All You Can Eat Bean Feed, and people poured into the church basement to eat ham and beans, corn bread and sweet slaw at long, communal tables. And it feels like the New South — at the Dogwood Lane, a homey cafe that was jammed all weekend, proprietor David Phillips was matter-of-fact with customers that his co-owner, Jeff Dupre, is also his life partner.
Balm for an ailing town
Donald Davis sometimes begins his stories, "This is how it started," and this is how the National Storytelling Festival started. In the early '70s, Jonesborough was dying, like a lot of small Southern towns. Businesses were closing, the sidewalks were cracked, recalled festival founder Jimmy Neil Smith, and the powers that be were looking for some way to revive the town's lagging fortunes. Smith taught journalism at the high school, and he and his students liked to listen to Southern storyteller Jerry Clower on the radio. He had an idea.
So with the town backing the dubious notion of a storytelling festival, he invited six storytellers in 1973. They stood on a wagon next to the courthouse, and addressed a crowd of about 60, Smith said. "I didn't come at it for the storytelling," Smith said. "I wanted to see my town live again."
Now, there's an impressive new International Storytelling Center across from the courthouse on Main Street, and the festival is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, and a partner of the Library of Congress.
'You can feel the love'
Even the naysayers don't say much nay. Four boys on a field trip from a high school six hours away sat slouched on church steps, assuming the universal posture of male adolescents surrounded by perceived lameness. But it wasn't that bad. "I thought it was gonna be a burden to be here. But it's pretty cool," allowed 15-year-old Tommy Bryan.
The rapport between artist and audience is key. "The crowds are so juiced; you can feel the love flowing back and forth," said Rob Cleveland, who was attending his first festival. Cleveland, known to many as an Atlanta-based stand-up comedian, is also a storyteller and an executive with August House, an Atlanta-based publishing house specializing in storytelling and children's books. August House is one of the main sponsors of the festival, and many of the tellers are also August House authors.
"The people who come here, they get it," Cleveland said. "This gets them going the way some people get excited about Riverdance or Cirque du Soleil or the latest Tyler Perry play."
George Goldman certainly gets it. An Atlanta real estate consultant, he's been coming since the second year. He's been to 31 of the 33 festivals, and one of those he missed due to a heart attack he suffered on the way to a festival. "Before you know it," he likes to say, "you're in the story."
He's part of a far-flung group of 100 or so friends who call themselves the Featured Listeners (the headlining tellers are called Featured Tellers), who met through the festival and now consider it a reunion. Many of them stay with Jonesborough residents who turn their homes into bed and breakfast inns for one weekend a year; over the years, everyone becomes friends.
"The way most people first go is 'cause a friend tells them about and says you have to come," says Rosemary Bond, a Savannah accountant and one of the Listeners. "And then you come and say 'Oh, you were right, and I can't wait to come back.'"
Covington entertainer Andy Offutt Irwin made his festival debut with a story about relations between blacks and whites in the days when Covington was segregated. "Everyone gets real quiet 'cause they're a little uncomfortable," Irwin noted. But only briefly. Irwin is closer to a stand-up comedian in the Jim Carrey, anything-goes vein, and by the end of his story, which involved snakes being let loose in a dark movie theater and the resulting hysteria, everyone was laughing.
Kathryn Windham is the unofficial grand dame of the festival, 87 years old and with a voice like Alabama birdsong. She told many stories about her youth in the Old South, and that storyteller hypnosis would steal over the audience again and again.
She told one that was about cutting biscuit dough with a thimble for a dolls' tea party when she was a girl, but it was really, ultimately, about race and death.
When she was finished, she told the hushed crowd, quietly, "Go home. Tell stories to the people you love."
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About August House
Recently recognized as one of "America's 101 Top Independent Publishers," August House is a highly-acclaimed and award-winning multimedia publisher of children's stories and folktale anthologies. August House's is based in Atlanta, GA.
August House Media Contact
Rob Cleveland
404-442-4422
Rome residents Leonard White and his wife, Paula, enjoy their first visit to the National Storytelling Festival. 'It won't be the last,' he said.
Doris Helvey of Lexington, N.C., wipes away tears during a performance by Sheila Kay Adams, who also elicited laughter from her audience.
Andy Offutt Irwin of Covington a new voice at the National Storytelling Festival, wows the audience with his astonishing mouth sounds in the Creekside Tent.
Kathryn Windham, 87, leaves the stage to a standing ovation. Her tales conjure up images of life in the Old South, of tea parties, race and death.
All photos: Charlotte B. Teagle/AJC
