I’m interested in putting stories into the world through as many genres as possible. Whether I am singing or telling, being funny or serious, speaking plainly or poetically, I am always trying to serve the story so that it will find as many ears and hearts as possible… Of what earthly good is a story without an ear to receive it, without a mind to be challenged by it, without a sense of wonder to marvel at it and, most importantly, without an open heart to possibly see the world differently after being moved by it?
Andy Hedges is new to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival this year, so we asked him to introduce himself and his Texas brand of cowboy storytelling.
One of the new featured tellers at the festival is Simon Brooks. He is here to help us celebrate our 30th anniversary and we’ve asked him to tell us a little about himself.
Whether you are telling ancient stories, traditional stories, serious stories, true stories or tall-tales, you are talking to people of all ages. When you get everybody from the grandchild to the grandparent laughing, or otherwise engaged in your tale, you are spanning generations and and uniting the feelings and memories of everyone involved. In that way, you are spanning time. If you have a 9 year old, a 45 year old, and a 95 year old simultaneously remembering when they were each 7 years old you have breached the space time continuum: you have three people- or 3000 people- actively reliving and reveling in separate events that happened decades apart but are happening all over again in the present moment. That’s pretty timeless. As for timely, if stories didn’t teach timely and timeless values they wouldn’t still be being told 1000s of years after they were created. If you see trouble, and you know it’s trouble, don’t pick it up! is a message as timely now as it was then.
Anne Rutherford is another new featured teller at this year’s Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. We’ve asked her three questions to help us get to know her and her alter-ego, the wild-west adventurer Clementine Ryder.
Sheila Stark Phillips, storyteller, author, musician, Texan and former zoo keeper has returned this year to help us celebrate our 30th Anniversary. Here she shares with us some of her memories of the festival, gives advice to new storytellers and shares her thoughts on the timelessness of storytelling.
The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year and we’ve asked some of our returning tellers to share some of their memories of the festival, give some advice to our up-and-coming tellers, and tell us about the timelessness of tales. One teller that has been with us from the beginning is Donald Davis and here he shares a bit of his unique perspective on the festival and how he was first introduced to it.
Storytelling is timeless because we are the only species on Earth who use story. They have been our companions, teachers and care givers for millennia.
Storytelling is timely because we, as a species, tend to spend too much time forgetting what being human is all about. Stories remind us of our humanity. Storytelling is the new fire we sit around of in order to keep us warm.
Of all the festivals in which I’ve been privileged to tell, Timpanogos best fulfills the promise of a “family event.” I love the wide mix of age groups that you see in the audience and on the stage: young children listening as older children tell, teenagers and college students telling, and juggling , and playing music, and presenting puppet plays, parents and grandparents cheering the young folks and also sharing stories. Everyone is involved in every way!
Last year, our international teller DANIEL MORDEN was presented with the Hay Festival Medal by Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall.
