Northlands Storytelling Conference 2017. - The highlights

Northlands has been my Midwestern home away from home ever since I first visited the conference in 2008. Now, after 9 years and 5 more conferences, I was painfully aware that 2017 was going to be my last visit for a while. I could not have wished for a better goodbye.
The conference, thanks to the New Voices scholarship, turned into a mini-reunion: I got to meet up with three amazing friends and former classmates from the ETSU Storytelling program - Danielle Bellone, Joshua Sellers, and Ingrid Nixon. The conference had a schedule packed with all kinds of events and happenings, but we still found plenty of time to hang out and talk.

This year's workshops were fascinating, and heavy on the cultural possibilities and responsibilities of storytelling. Jasmin Cardenas' workshop on Theater of the Oppressed was an intense and immersive experience where we got to play a lot of games, and participate in various activities that brought the techniques to life. Robert and Nancy from Eth-Noh-Tec presented a wonderful, discussion-filled workshop on cultural appropriation in storytelling, which is a vital topic for our art form, and very important to keep talking about (even though there are no blanket permissions or decisive conclusions). I did not take part in them, but there was also a panel on Truth and Story (led by Laura Packer, Jeff Doyle, and Loren Niemi), and a workshop on the culturally relevant classroom by Susan O'Halloran. Northlands really made an effort this year to highlight cultural diversity and artistic integrity.
On a lighter note, Ingrid Nixon's Story evolution workshop applied the theory of evolution to oral storytelling, and we had great fun re-telling Little Red Riding Hood in various shapes and forms. I also got a lot out of Bob Kann's three-hour intensive course on the business of storytelling, where he shared minute details about his thirty-three year career as a full-time professional storyteller. We talked honestly about pricing and income (a topic artists tend to be allergic to), as well as promotion and marketing. Bob is a lovely, friendly person, and he offered up a wealth of useful tips.

This year's keynote speaker for the conference was Antonio Rocha. It was lovely to meet him again in person, and spend time talking about various things. As usual, Sunday morning offered a workshop slot for friendly conversation with the keynote, so that we could ask all our questions and talk about whatever we wanted to talk about with Antonio. It was great fun.

Of course workshops are not the only thing offered at Northlands. There are also showcases on each day of the conference, featuring a variety of stories and storytellers. Especially memorable this year (to me) were Barbara Schutzgruber (who sang her own version of an awesome ballad about a woman tricking her lover), Jean Bolley (who told a chilling and captivating historical story about a family stuck in a lighthouse all winter), Sue Searing (who combined the Boyhood of Fionn Mac Cool with a story from her own life), Jeff Doyle (who told a hilarious personal story about coming to terms with his mother's dating life), Yvonne Healy (who turned a personal story into a horror tale before we notice she was not telling the truth), Pete Griffin (who told about a wild wolf in Alaska, and how people thought they could make friends with it), and, of course, Eth-Noh-Tec, whose hilarious and very timely telling of Kingdom of Fools was followed up by the gorgeous and lyrical tale of the Bird of Happiness, the closing performance of the conference on Sunday.

Next to the official showcases, we also had other performance events. Friday evening featured a one-hour Fairy Tale Swap, where anyone could tell a tale if their name was drawn from the basket. We were so good at keeping with our time limits that every single name got drawn, and more than ten people got to take the stage. I told The Cheerful Prince, a Hungarian version of Rumpelstiltskin from my upcoming book, and people seemed to really enjoy it, mostly for the figure of a kind and clever mother-in-law.
Following the swap, we were treated to a late night Fairy Tales for Adults room concert (a performance that took place in someone's hotel room, with more than thirty people crammed inside and sitting cheerfully on every possible surface, nursing glasses of wine) by Danielle Bellone, Laura Packer, and Loren Niemi. Danielle and Laura are this year's recipients of the J. J. Reneaux Mentorship Grant, and they are a match made in heaven. The concert featured gorgeous re-tellings of classic fairy tales; Laura's version of Jack and the Beanstalk with a female Jack and her connection with the giantess, as well as Danielle's lyrical rendition of the Norwegian folktale of the Lindworm, left me completely breathless.

I also had a chance to present a fringe performance Saturday evening. I brought Roses in the Mountains, my show of medieval German legends of Dwarves and Men, to the conference, and I had the privilege to perform it for an enthusiastic audience of storytellers. This was my second time doing the whole show, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Definitely a keeper.

Since the theme of this year's conference was Storytelling: The other superpower, I got to throw a Superhero Social on Saturday afternoon, for people to play and relax a little before the evening events (I got tagged as the resident expert on the topic, due to my book). People got capes and masks, and I played snippets of superhero-related music they had to guess for prizes. I also brought some Story Cubes, and brave volunteers could roll some dice and invent new superpowers they could pitch to the audience. I love playing improv games with storytellers - they throw themselves into play with full commitment, and come up with the best ideas. The superhero social ended up being a blast, and people were telling me how much fun they had even the day after.

I said a lot of goodbyes at Northlands this year - but even though it was my last visit for a while, I am sure it was not my last one ever. And I know that whenever I return, people will still be just as friendly, and open, and fun, as they have been all these years.

See you all on the road!

10 Things You Get to Do at a Northlands Conference

Last weekend was the annual Northlands Storytelling Conference in Lake Geneva, WI (kind of poetic that storytellers accidentally found themselves flocking to the birthplace of D&D every year). The conference this year was titled Confabulation; it was my fourth time visiting, and definitely by far the best.
It was con-fabulous.
(Not my pun! Not my pun!)

For those of you who have never been to a storytelling conference before (why not?!), and those of you who have not yet been to the USA's friendliest storytelling conference (that's Northlands), here are 10 things I got to do this year and you didn't.
(But you can next time!)

1. Attend Amazing Workshops

The array of workshops offered this year was staggering, and I wished I would have one of those time-turner thingies from Harry Potter so I could be in more places at once. Alas, without one, I had to make hard choices.
I attended Andre Heuer's three-hour intensive on healing stories, and I learned a lot that made sense to me (there are many kinds of story healing and story therapy, and not all of them do). We got to try out some of the techniques in person, and I ended up with a personally designed sequel to Turtle Flies South to talk about my flight anxiety... Talking about animals, Kevin Strauss' workshop on how to tell biologically correct animal tales was also awesome. I learned about parachuting beavers (which really happened!) and I was an armadillo for a while. Still on the topic of making up stories, I took Loren Niemi's workshop titled "Is the Ghost Story Dead?" and 90 minutes later I left with half a vampire tale that I made up on the spot. We all did. It was great fun. (The ghost story is alive and well). The last workshop of the weekend (other than mine) was taught by Lyn Ford; she used several variations of the Tortoise and the Hare to talk about tailoring storytelling programs to the common core curriculum. I left the conference with a pile of handouts, two new story ideas, and a ton of practical advice.

2. Hear Inspiring Concerts
There is a concert every night! All three days of the conference. We got to hear amazing local, regional and national storytellers bring their very best. In the middle of all the intensive learning that happened in the workshops, it was great to sit back, relax, and let the stories wash over us...
(My favorites were probably Jeff Doyle's wild rendition of a Robin Hood tale, and Beth Horner's telling of how she realized her mother was an academic legend. I highly recommend the latter for Women's Centers, universities, and academic conferences.)

3. Have Breakfast with the Next Generation
Northlands has a scholarship for young storytellers under 35, and this year they gave out 9 of them! Next Gen winners get to meet for breakfast on the Saturday of the conference and talk about how they got into storytelling, where they are going with it, and why a sloth petting zoo is a good idea. (Among other things). This year's 8 ladies and 1 gentleman came from many backgrounds, for libraries to environmental education to performance storytelling.

4. Cash in Some Pocket Stories!
This was a new thing this year, and Jeff's idea. We got together for a story swap of 5-10 minute tales, and all tales told and heard were fair game to take and run with! Storytellers tend to be somewhat possessive of their favorite stories, so it was a fun and liberating idea to do a swap where you could go "what a neat tale!... I'm taking it home!" (We ended up with 13 stories told)

5. Hear Fabulous Fringe Performances

Fringes also happened all three days of the conference, but here I'll only highlight one of them: Janice Del Negro's Broken Molds and Alternative Images: Folktales Reimagined. It was a breathtaking one-hour performance of fairy tales re-told through musing about questions that need to be asked: Why would the girl in Rumpelstiltskin marry the king that threatened to kill her? What happened to the Twelve Dancing Princesses after they were found out? Is wishing for all women to fall in love with you really a good idea?... Janice tells her reimagined tales with captivating eloquence, deep empathy, and craft that stays true to tradition and re-creates it at the same time.
No, really, this show needs a fandom.

6. Go to a Ghost Story Swap
We had one! I am not usually one for ghost stories, but this one was fun, in a dark room with an (electric) fireplace, popcorn, and chilling stories. I even told a Hungarian folktale about a vampire princess - I'll post it here tomorrow for Story Saturday!

7. See a Flash Mob
More aptly titled: See some of the most illustrious national storytellers of the USA dance to "Fabulous" from High School Musical.
Yuup.

8. Make Up Stories for a Raffle
Again, Jeff's idea. The conference does a raffle every year to support the Next Gen scholarship. This year, we had an array of thrift store items, and we spent Friday morning making up stories to make them more appealing. Anne Harding and I created a great tale about a mysterious hat pin. You could hear it drop.
Boom.

9. Teach a Workshop
I did! I taught a workshop on Heroes (the theme of this year's Summer Reading Program) and it was mostly about diversity in the tales we tell. It is kind of my home turf now, I guess, since my folktale collection is also about superpowers and pop culture heroes in folklore... More about it later, I plan on posting some of the workshop materials online.

10. Drink Socialize with Famous Storytellers
There is no conference without networking. You know what happens when you put dozens of storytellers in the same space? Talking happens. Cheerful, enthusiastic, hands-flailing-all-over-the-place, I-didn't-have-a-voice-for-two-days-after, star-struck, ocean deep conversations on life, the universe, and everything. Stories, mostly.

Next year, same place. See you there!