A storytelling festival is often an annual event that features local, regional and/or nationally known oral storytellers. Each storyteller will have a scheduled amount of time(s) to share a story (or stories) with an audience. The featured storytellers are often professional performing artists, but semi-professional or amateur storytellers may also be included among the events.
A festival may be a single or multiple day event. Depending upon the venue, the festival schedule is organized around blocks of time for the storytellers to share their stories. The storytellers may rotate between smaller venues or the crowds may move from venue to venue. Tents or an amplitheater might be used for outdoor storytelling concerts/venues. Auditoriums, theaters, historic buildings, classrooms or gymnasiums might be common indoor venues. Often storytelling festivals will include an open mike event referred to as "story swapping," where amateurs from the audience may share their own stories. Some festivals showcase the winners of storytelling contests such as the Young Storyteller of the Year.
At many festivals (including the National Storytelling Festival (USA)), paper tickets are substituted by "swatches" of patterned cloth that are pinned on and worn by festival participants. These swatches of cloth have a different/unique pattern each year and various colors may be used to distinguish the level of participation.
The town of Jonesborough, Tennessee self proclaims to be the storytelling capital.
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Famous quotes containing the words storytelling and/or festival:
“If it had not been for storytelling, the black family would not have survived. It was the responsibility of the Uncle Remus types to transfer philosophies, attitudes, values, and advice, by way of storytelling using creatures in the woods as symbols.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)