Thursday, September 24, 2009

Festival of Ghost Stories Coming Up!


We are partnering with City Parks and Recreation and for the second year in a row we will be a part of their “Festival of the Falls” in the Lower Cascades Park. The date for our annual Festival of Ghost Stories is Friday, October 23, 7:30-9:00pm.


Anyone who attended or told last year will be pleased to know that the City Parks and Rec. has arranged to have that road closed so that loud cars will not disturb the mood we strive to create.


If you are intersted in telling at the Festival, plan to audition your story on Weds., Oct. 14 4:00-6:00pm in the Children’s Program in at the Main library of the Monroe County Public Library. You are welcome to drop in during those two hours.


It would be ideal if you would email Stephanie Holman at sholman@mcpl.info with your intent to tell, the length of your story, and a brief summary/synopsis of the tale and also let me know what time you can make it to auditions. There are several on our email list that have not told for a long while and we want to invite you to tell again. We miss you and you know who you are! We would love to have some of our old friends back on stage with us as well as some new friends we have just discovered.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Twice -told, storytelling with a translator

"Art Across the Americas" brought a group of young artists from Guatemala together with kids from Bloomington to work on a mural along the B-Line Trail. When the painting was done, they celebrated with a picnic - and storytelling. Sitting on the lawn beside a small pond, the stories were told with a background of water splashing and birds chirping.
It was interesting working with a translator - figuring out when to pause and how to keep a story flowing with such frequent breaks. The audience reaction was interesting too - first the English speaking half would respond, then after the translation, the Spanish speaking half would join in. The translator had not heard the story before, so there were times when she had to grope for an unfamiliar word. The audience was forgiving and enjoyed the novelty of the experience, as did we.