The Wake Forest Renaissance Centre will host the inaugural Forest Storytelling Festival on Saturday, Aug. 9. Featuring four professional storytellers, along with entertaining workshops and concerts for children and adults, the festival will introduce the art of storytelling to the Wake Forest community and celebrate one of humanity’s oldest art forms.
With four renowned tellers of different backgrounds, audiences of all ages are sure to relate to their colorful, humorous and inspirational stories.
For years Gale Buck shared the stories and music of the Great Highland Bagpipes in schools around Wake County, but it wasn’t until he shared stories of the Magic of Christmas that he was called ‘Storyteller.’ Author of over 200 short stories and two published books, Gale is now an avid storyteller and promoter of the vocal art. Gale and his wife, Christy, enjoy traveling to festivals and helping others find the magic in our lives. Gale is co-founder of Village Storytellers, a casual group of folks who enjoy improving their skills in Raleigh, and creator of Front Porch Stories, a quarterly storytelling event in Raleigh. He won the 2014 Bold-Faced Liars’ Showdown and appeared as the “New Voice” at the 2014 Storytelling Festival of the Carolinas.
Robin E. Kitson loves taking an audience along with her on trips of the mind. Her tales are much like those she heard as a child in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans where stories roll down the river clothed in fog. Robin’s motivational tales come from first-hand experience, having to take welfare to get by, on up to being topped out in her job at the power company. Robin often has folks rolling in the aisle while learning about life in the land of the Cajuns or her days living in a tin house overseas. Robin’s poetry is beloved by all. She has written poetry for birthdays, anniversaries, retirements, weddings, memorials, grandparents, parents, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, bosses and team building.
Although she didn’t know it at the time, Claire Ramsey was a storyteller before she could write. Claire would take recycled scrap paper and draw stories in picture after picture. In 2007, she turned the part-time storytelling she had enjoyed as a children’s librarian into a new career: Stories With Claire. The “premier storyteller” of Wake Forest and president ex officio of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild, Claire believes storytelling helps people value one another.
Priscilla Best, the Heart to Heart Storyteller, of Goldsboro, NC, delights audiences of all ages in community, church, school or cultural settings. Her stories of folktales and chants of which she skillfully invites the audience to join in, may be drawn from her African American heritage or other cultures around the world. Priscilla is a retired educator who uses classroom and media center experiences gained while teaching in North Carolina schools for more than 30 years to plan programs and workshops that are engaging and enjoyable.
The Forest Storytelling Festival will begin at 10 a.m. with a Children’s Storytelling Concert featuring performances by Claire Ramsey and Priscilla Best, followed at 11 a.m. by a variety of workshops for children of all ages. A free open mike session for children’s workshop participants at 12:30 p.m. will conclude the children’s programs.
The adult-focused programming will begin with workshops at 2:30 p.m. and continue with free open mike performances at 4 p.m. The day-long festival will climax at 7 p.m. with the Adult Storytelling Concert featuring performances by Gale Buck and Robin Kitson.
Tickets are $5 each for the Children’s Storytelling Concert and the children’s and adult workshops and $10 for the Adult Storytelling Concert. Tickets for each event may be purchased online at www.wakeforestnc.gov/tickets-events.aspx or at the Wake Forest Town Hall, 301 S. Brooks St.
For more information about the 2014 Forest Storytelling Festival, including descriptions of the children’s and adult workshops, visit www.wakeforestnc.gov/forest-storytelling-festival.aspx.
The Renaissance Centre is located at 405 S. Brooks St. in the heart of downtown Wake Forest. For more information, contact Renaissance Centre Manager Pamela Stevens at 919-435-9566 or pstevens@wakeforestnc.gov.
