MythOff USA - This is how it went down

Organizing a MythOff in a little under two weeks' time was definitely challenging, but a lot of fun. The usual thing happened: by the time we survived the Halloween season, Tellabration was almost upon us, and we decided it was the perfect time to schedule the second playful battle of mythologies in the entire United States.
Cathy Jo Janssen, my fabulous roommate and partner in crime, quickly became the heart and soul of the operation. We enlisted six storytellers from the ETSU program, many of whom had already participated in our forst MythOff, or at least listened ot us endlessly talking about it.
The first step was to decide who is telling what. For this reason we organized a house party where all the tellers were invited (in the meantime, our numbers grew to eight). We prepared three drawing hats for the party: first, every teller drew a mythology; the second drawing decided the pairs of who is going up against who; and from the final hat the pairs selected their common theme. With all of that done, it was time to prepare our stories.
While the storytellers were busy researching, crafting and rehearsing, Cathy and I took care of promotion. We invited people through the MythOff Facebook site, and Cathy designed posters that feature Loki, and put them up all around town. This latter campaign ran into some promblems since some good-hearted Tennessee citizens expressed concerns that the posters featured the Devil, bless their heart, but there was always a Marvel nerd nearby when we needed them to correct the mistake.
The biggest win of the MythOff project was the venue, and once again, we have Cathy to thank for that. She managed to coax the staff of Capone's, a very nice old bar downtown, to give us the Vault for free. The Vault is the back room of the bar with a unique 19th century feel to it, dim lights, mirrors, a bar, and a small stage in the corner. As perfect as a storytelling venue is ever going to get. The staff of Capone's was good sport, and they did not only provide a lovely bartender for the evening, but also sent us bouncers, and set up the whole sound system.

The evening of Tellabration (November 17) we all gathered in the Vault, ready to rock the world of myth. We had about twenty people in the audience, but is was a very enthusiastic crowd. Cathy Jo was dressed in peach colored sheets and golden heels, representing the world of Greek and Roman mythology, since nobody drew that one from the hat - she was the hostess of the event, the Tenth Muse of Storytelling.
And, without further ado, here is the set list of the second MythOff USA:

Round 1: Love
In the Egyptian corner: Gini Richards, with the story of Isis and Osiris
In the East African corner: Carolina Quiroga, with the tale of Solomon and the Queen of Saba
Both ladies were excellent in their telling, blending humor with emotion, and the music of words with vivid images. The winner was a very close call in the end.

After the stories were told, Cathy revealed to the audience the prize they had to assign: the Wings of Love, in the form of a tiny pegasus that she had covered in glitter (together with half our kitchen). This fabulous prize went to Carolina, who combined her telling of the love of equals with a Bob Marley song.

Round 2: Magical objects
In the Inca corner: Patrick Gerard, telling the myth of Manco Capac and the golden staff, the latter being represented by an actual golden staff he used a prop
In the Mesopotamian corner: Joshua Sellers, telling the myth of Anzu and the Tablets of Destiny

This round was all the more exciting because outside the Vault, on the main stage of Capone's, a rock band was doing sound check. Good thing it was two guys competing: Patrick simply boomed his way through his story, which just made the telling all the more epic, and Joshua, being a theater person, had no poblem projecting his voice and his energy all over the audience. The prize, the Glowing Magic Wand of the Most Convenient Use of a Magical Item, went to Joshua. I was really impressed by his telling; it was powerful, well crafted, and contained a very exciting fight scene.

Round 3: Warrior Women
In the Norse corner: Paul Herrin, with the story of Helvör and her magic sword
In the Persian corner: Travis Wolven, with the legend of Gordafarid from the epic Shahnameh
One could not have chosen a better combination for this round. It was two guys, telling myths of warrior women, and two mythologies that are really strong in that department.

Both performances were a treat in terms of excellent story choice. Paul told his with a lot of subtle humor, painting the personality of Helvör as badass as a berserker's daughter can ever be. Travis' telling of Gordafarid's fight was as exciting as an action movie, and highlighted the strength of the female hero in every possible way. Appropriately enough, the prize for this category was the Feminist Appreciation Prize, represented by a doll covered in glitter, and the audience decided the Persian tale deserved it the most.

Round 4: Tricksters
In the Japanese corner: Meg Zinky, with a story about a Kitsune lady
In the Thai corner: yours truly (Csenge Zalka), with a piece from the Thai epic Ramakien, about Hanuman's journey to Longka
I had endless fun preparing for this challenge. When I drew Indonesia and Tricksters, my first thought, naturally, was Mouse Deer... but Mouse Deer, epic as he is, is not really mythology. So I kept seaching, and came across the Ramakien, the Thai version of the Ramayana, with more monkeys in it. I spent the past week reading the English translation of the epic, and trying to cut a part of it down to ten minutes. I rehearsed in the shower - and I found out that apparently I take really long showers, because I ended up going overtime...

Meg, on the other hand, was spot on and perfect in her telling. She is an actress, and she owns the stage, and her storytelling was humorous, smart, and very eloquent. She also won everyone's heart with a service announcement to beware of kappas that suck your soul out through your anus.
The Price of Persuasion, for the most persuasive trickster, represented by a blue-and-white glittery flute, naturally went to the foxy lady.

We even had a door prize: when Cathy was putting up posters, the local comic book store was so enthusiastic about the event that they gave her a Loki comic, which, in the end of the night, went to our timekeeper, Brandon, because he was the only one whi put his name in the hat.

All in all, the MythOff was a success, and an endless amount of fun! Great stories told, great lessons learned, great performances all around, and a very enthusiastic, supportive audience. We are definitely doing it again. Next time we plan on having 6 tellers instead of 8 (hard to stick to the numbers though when everyone is so eager to tell), and give them 15 minutes instead of 10. There is a lot of stuff in mythology that has to be said and done.

Footnote: if you are interested in the MythOff format, feel free to ask! The Guardians of the Idea support the spreading of MythOff all over the globe! Let us know if you have questions, or if you would like to organize your own MythOff, and we will help you along the way!

Something old, something new, something Irish, something Clare

I was listening to Clare's CD today on my way to work. I downloaded the whole album from CDBaby when it first came out, and now that I am walking all over the place in the cheerfully freezing fall sunshine, it is the perfect time to listen to it. Again.

I have confessed before that I have a gigantic soft spot for Irish stories - almost as much as I have one for Clare. She was here last fall for the National Storytelling Festival, and took Jonesborough by storm. People still talk about her stories and her friendly smile (and her "gorgeous Irish accent", because this is America, and everyone around here is Irish :) The CD was recorded live during the festival, as one can see right in the title.
I love this fact about it. It does not only bring you the tales, it brings you the festival experience. Right at the beginning there is Dovie's wonderful introduction, and then there are the reactions from the audience, and the whole thing just feel a lot more alive than a studio recording could ever be.
Clare's stage performance translates really well into recording. The sound effects are all there, the humor comes through loud and clear (maybe I should stop listening to it on the street, because I either grin and giggle like an idiot, or jump at random times). The fact about Clare is, and one of the things I like the most in her storytelling, is that she loves all her stories with a passion that comes through even on a sound recording. She hand picks them, and nurtures them, and enjoys them with the playfulness of a child while sharing them with the wisdom of a crone.

The selection of tales is also full of treats. Some short but great stories like Half a Blanket, or the Legend of Knockgrafton mix in with the big ones, including my ever favorite, the birth of Oisin (if it wasn't for Clare, I still could not pronounce half the names in my favorite Irish tales, by the way, so extra points for that). Lively personalities, unique voices and strong emotions fill every track, and one finds herself walking through a mythic landscape guided by the voice of a trickster.

If you are thoroughly craving some Clare Murphy Irish magic by now, here is the link to her album. Have fun!

Storytellers undercover: I swear I am a folklorist!

Soooo. New Orleans. The week before Halloween. Voodoo Fest. 80-something degrees. Live music.
And the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society (of which I am a member since... two weeks ago?)

It was Dr. Sobol's brilliant idea to apply with a panel on gaming, popular culture, and storytelling to the AFS conference about the Continuity and Creativity of Culture. Our small but powerful team of undercover superheeeerhm, I mean, storytellers, consisted of Kevin Cordi (representing improv role-playing and creative drama), Patrick Gerard (representing storytelling in video games), and yours truly (representing traditional tabletop). Our panel was scheduled for 8am on Saturday, which, given that the hotel was a corner away from a Friday night on Bourbon Street, was less than ideal, but that did not break our momentum at all.

New Orleans, by the way, is a lot of fun. I have been there four years ago, visiting my friend, Angela, and I have been planning on going back ever since. When I was not sitting in a folklore panel, we were wandering around in the French Quarter, visiting touristy places, eating good food, and listening to good music.

When I was sitting in panels... well, that was actually a lot of fun too. For example, Milbre Burch and her husband presented an amazing two-hour panel on their project of interviewing 90 storytellers all around the USA, and gathering more than 200 hours of footage. They showed us snippets of this great project, and the familiar faces - Ray Hicks, Kathryn Windham, Dovie Thomason, Gioia Timpanelli, Olga Loya, and many others - were greeted with sighs and smiles and nods from the audience. They definitely had a lot of important things to say about stories and storytelling.

Kay Stone's presentation on the Grimm tales and their legacy was also fascinating. I have not heard Kay tell before, but Kevin drew my attention to her part in the program, and I was glad he did. Kay is a folklorist and a storyteller, and a great combination at that too! She told interesting variations of Grimm tales to illustrate her point: Japanese Hansel and Gretel, Native American Cinderella, original Snow White etc. It was as enjoyable as it was thought provoking, and especially appropriate for 2012. Grimm tales are in this year!

Another highlight of the event was the panel with the creators of Treme from HBO. If you have not seen that show yet, go home and watch it! It's a lot of fun, and one of the best shows I have seen since the Wire, which is no coincidence. I personally enjoyed the talk with the creators, writers and producers a lot more than if the actors had been there: it was interesting to get a glimpse of how such a story, in the broad and true sense of the word, is created by a team. Also, they were all very friendly, and fun to talk to.

All in all, my first folklore conference felt like a success. I have been to archaeology conferences before, and had my fair share of storytelling gatherings. Folklorists are generally less talkative and sharing than storytellers, but as we have seen, there are exceptions on both sides, and plenty of crossover between the fields.

Also. New Orleans. Nuff said.

The first Story Slam in Hungary!

Well, technically, the second. The first one was in September.
BUT!
Now that we have had two, and the second one bigger and more successful than the first, we can officially announce that the story slam movement of Hungary has begun!

I am so incredibly excited about this I can't even put it to words. I am over here in the US of A, and yet, I get to be a part of another great moment in Hungarian storytelling history. Go figure.

Here is how we do the slams, for those of you who are interested in comparing notes:

1. Every month we have a theme (the first one was "bawdy", the second "antique", and next month it is going to be "twilight", no pun intended)

2. Every month we have a featured guest (first it was master storyteller Berecz András, next Dr. Németh György, everyone's favorite Classics professor who can fill an auditorium at 8am on a Monday)

3. First, the featured guest has 30-45 minutes to tell some stories and break the ice, while everyone else drinks and enjoys the show

4. Then, we draw names from a hat, or, in case we lack enough names, we mercilessly bully the audience until someone gets up to tell

5. Audience votes for the best at the end, and we pass a hat around for donations that become the winner's prize

6. Stories has to be personal and relatively true (although at this point our people need some training because this is a difficult concept for Hungarian storytellers to grasp, through non-storytellers got it just fine)

As I have said, personally I did not attend the slams (even though I am rapidly developing spontaneous teleportation skills, I'll keep you posted on my progress). I had to ask people over chat and Skype and Facebook to tell me about their experiences, and I have gathered a lot f second-hand knowledge and positive feedback. Despite all my worries and doubts, slams seem to appeal to Hungarian audiences just like they appeal to everyone else. Yay!

The success of the slam genre fascinates me, by the way. I can't quite put my finger on it. Is it the competition? Is it the setting? Is it the real life, uncensored personal stories? (the latter needs a nudge, we still have people showing up and telling folktales, but they at least show up, and tell, and that is what counts!) Whatever it is, people seem to like it, and we had folks in the audience who would not have shown up for traditional telling.

We hope to keep going with the slams, and make them a chain of events that leads up to the Holnemvolt Festival. The plan is to have a mini-slam during the weekend of the festival in April where the winners of the monthly slams can perform for everyone's fun. Traditional telling and personal stories will come together to make a more diverse, and, hopefully, more popular festival.

In the meantime, I will be sitting here once a month, waiting for the photos, videos and feedback to come in. I will keep you posted!

VIP - Very Inspired Person

I have known most of these people for years, and I still feel like a fan that has just crashed a VIP party.
On top of all the unforgettable stories, all the amazing moments, all the meetings and the conversations and the laughter, my favorite part of Jonesborough is still the after-festival party. When everyone has gone home and the tents are empty, the storytellers gather in a house on the hill for a last evening out of time before we have to return to reality.
Storytellers are wonderful people. And a lot of fun. Winding down after three days of non-stop performance work, that would be excuse enough to pull a Sleeping Beauty and not wake up for a week, they sit around the house sipping wine or beer, eating delicious food, and talking about... stuff. Contrary to popular belief, storytellers don't talk about stories all the time. Surprise! What we do talk about is everything else, and mostly, life in general. We talk about our journeys, our experiences, our families and friends and past moments and future plans. We talk about kings and cabbages and pets, and places we want to go. I mingle with a passion, walking from one group to another, picking up conversations that started this same time last year, and starting new ones that will last till the next spring. In the meantime, tellers gather on the porch, despite the chilly evening, and suddenly there is music everywhere, and whoever is not playing an instrument is stomping, clapping, snapping, or outright dancing on any clear flat surface. It feels like family.
Every time I have the privilege of spending an evening with a group of storytellers I rediscover why I would not do anything else in the world rather than tell stories for a living. You don't get this sense of community in any other art form. It lights up the map with small colorful dots, and every dot means a person that you know, a person who shared stories, and music, and wine with you, and when you see each other on the road, they will do it again. You learn more from these meetings than any amount of lecture or research.
Once again, it was quite the crazy blur of an evening, much like last year, much like anywhere else in the world where I have been. I was glad that I got to talk to people I have seen on the stage over the weekend, just to thank them for their stories and tell them they were amazing. Storytellers need to hear that as much as any other artist. Plus, secretly, I was very proud to be in their company.
Then, the next morning you wake up and you are back in the real world, with storytellers traveling the roads in all the directions of the wind. The Festival is over, for now. We'll see each other on the road.

Shining highlights

Despite the gloomy weather and the drip drip drip at the edge of the tents, the Festival marched on with unbreakable momentum. Thousands of people warmed the tents with sheer enthusiasm (and additional body heat). Here is a quick and completely subjective list of the highlights, round one.

Jay O'Callahan's Forged in the stars has been one of my favorites. NASA did right to commission him. He told his true stories with a passion, and chose just the right stories to tell. All through the performance I kept thinking about Helga, my ex-roomie and friend, who is studying Astronomy in Australia right now, and who used to do a "star stories" program with me back in Hungary. If I ever get a chance to work with her again, and get to create something 1% as awesome as Jay O'Callahan, I will be extremely pleased with myself.

Michael Harvey got on this list (on top of being a kickass storyteller) because of his story choice: I would endure cold rain and picking up tent garbage any time any day if I get to listen to a full-hour telling of Taliesin. Insert heart flutter here. Taliesin was one of the first stories I started telling as a completely green little storyteller, and I have a soft spot for it in my heart. Especially when someone has the time to do it justice. Michael has a great sense of humor, by the way. Just sayin'.

Hannah Harvey amazed me with the depth and breadth (see how I can spell 'breadth' at 11:30 at night!!!) of her telling. She put years of work into collectiong coal miner stories and crafting them into performance, and it shows; she took us on a journey on a road she knows well, and entertained us in her mischievous and at the same time deeply caring ways.

Alton Chung was another big favorite for me this year. His one-hour show, Life is the treasure, about Okinawa and its people during and after WWII, went to places where not many storytelling performances dare to go. It was dark, and shockingly real, and at the same time still uplifting, as it transcended the reality of war and told stories that stand the test of time. Alton puts on characters and faces like the demon is his ghost story, which is slightly unnerving to think about, but absolutely amazing to watch.

Gay Ducey's tribute to Kathryn Windham on Sunday morning floored me. I have only heard Kathryn once, five years ago, but I have heard so much about her, she has been constantly present in the background of my storytelling journey. Gay is an all-time favorite of mine. I loved the little story she told about Kathryn setting out on a quest one day to find a snake handler, because she had a sudden urge to have a conversation with one. I feel like that level of child-like curiosity and energy is something that should be a mandatory part of the curriculum.

...

Right now I am falling asleep on the keyboard. I'll be back with more shameless fangirl ranting bright and early tomorrow. Good night everyone!

A recipe for complete terror

1. A park with a creek, a gloomy old weeping willow, a pavilion lit with an eerie pink light, burning torches all around, bundled up bodies lying in heaps all around. Location, location, Jonesborough.

2. Kim Weitkamp. As a host, you evil minded people, not as an ingredient. We have always known Kim has a thing for the dark side, and on top of that, she is also a wonderful emcee who carries the storytellers on her palm as if they were incredibly rare, delicate treasures... that she likes to juggle.

3. Lyn Ford. Her girlish smile and sweet voice make any ghost story eerie by default. That she also weaves a masterful mystery is, naturally, a plus.

4. Beth Horner. She is as enthusiastic about the scary as she is about the funny. She takes both of them very seriously, and gets completely absorbed in them like a child playing with her favorite toy (notice the underage theme here? Can't help it, storytellers are young forever). She told the Austrian tale of the girl and the skull, which was also a bonus flavor for me, since I use that story to teach kids about bone structure. Gotta love putting the science in fiction.

5. Alton Chung. Nobody beats the Japanese in horror. Nobody. Alton froze the living daylights into everyone. I saw groups of five attempting to go to the porta potties together. I don't know if they ever made it.

6. Hannah Harvey. She is graceful, delicate, bubbly, and, as Kim put it, "one sick puppy". Both her Scottish ghost legend and her traditional Little Red version were as creepy as it gets - take the former with murder and a smiling ghost chanting a cheerful curse, and latter with slightly sexual werewolves, grandma's intestines hung around the room, and Red drinking some blood. Nuff said.

7. Syd Lieberman. He is an experienced player in the field of horror, even though he reminds me of a Papa Smurf that you just want to hug forever. He told Beowulf today, a fitting ending for an awesome concert, and we got to see Papa Smurf in the torchlight roaring at the night sky, wrenching Grendel's arm from its socket with his bare hands. It was slightly disturbing, and thoroughly awesome.

I (together with about a thousand other people) am sleeping with the lights on tonight.