Crowd at Storytelling Festival's final day happy to be in on the secret

Dressed casually, most in jeans and tennis shoes, the featured tellers at the fourth Annual Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival could have been anyone off the street.

Joel Rhodes, co-producer of the festival, told the Sunday afternoon crowd at the River Campus that the tellers make everyone feel like they have a story to tell, and they make it look easy.

Although an evening crowd Saturday was smaller than he hoped, and attendance numbers didn't beat last year's total of 745 people, Chuck Martin, executive director of the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, said by no measure is the CVB disappointed. More than 630 people attended the festival that featured six renowned storytellers, three of them award winning.

"The people that came this year came from numerous states," Martin said. "It was our pleasure to put this event on. We're looking to 2012 to be a record-setting year."

Attending each day of the festival had its advantages, according to Ellen Meyer, who has stayed to hear the storytellers with her 11-year-old niece for the last three years.

Staying all three days, Meyer said, allows the audience to get to know the tellers and often they are let in on some "inside jokes." The storytellers will often reference or poke fun at another story a teller told previously, she said.

"I think a lot of people have a misconception of what storytelling is about," Meyer said. "That it's fairy tales for children, which isn't true. People don't know what they're missing; it's the best kept secret."

Kathe Brinkmann, who on Sunday told a few stories on the topic of love, said it's not uncommon for there to be some connectivity among the tellers.

"What's interesting, in our set here, before we came I told Rev. [Robert] Jones what I was going to tell -- love stories, mostly," said Brinkmann, a lifetime storyteller who founded the Champaign-Urbana Storytelling Guild. "I think he changed his set up because of that."

In his set, Jones, equipped with his 1920s Resonator guitar, told a story about a beautiful lady who was too good to marry any of the men in her village. When she did marry, she fell for a "snake" and was eaten by the slithery reptile.

"There's a lot of creativity going on up at that microphone," said James Highland, who traveled with his wife, Linda, to the festival from Chicago.

The speech instructor said the couple was were excited to learn of the storytelling circuit from their Anna, Ill., friends Jim and Edna Goddard, regulars at a festival in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

"I'll share stories with [students] and express to them there's a whole other outlet out there, not just a theater stage," Highland said.

Linda Highland said it often makes her think of stories in her life and which ones would be important to pass on to her family members.

Festivals do the same for Ned Carter, who is president of a storytelling group in Muskegon, Mich.

The Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival is the best he has been to, Carter said Sunday during an intermission.

"They bring in top-notch tellers. That's what keeps us coming back," Carter said. "A top-notch teller can make you cry in two ways, with an emotional story or with a funny one and you laugh so hard you cry."

The tales continue Monday at the Cape Girardeau Public Library, where international storyteller Dan Keding will shares stories in a morning and evening session.

He'll tell stories from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in a session designed for adults and seniors and from 7 to 8:30 p.m. for all ages. In his tales, Keding often encourages families to preserve their memories through storytelling, according to the Cape Girardeau chamber.

Carter said he's seen Keding before -- he's one of his favorites -- and he focuses a lot on stories from England and Ireland. Keding will be a featured teller at fifth annual Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival in 2012.

ehevern@semissourian.com

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