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Click on the town or city name below to read a report from that site.
| Glasgow, Scotland |
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A winner and I am glad to say we made a little money too.
All the aspects that we covered worked well and we now need to capitalize on this to ensure that the gifts shared last night do not evaporate.
We started at 8pm prompt with everyone who wanted to reading the
proclamation. The doors were flung open and we chanted the message
finishing with a flourish of
"LET THE STORIES BEGIN"
It was well received.
During the interval 20-25 minutes we served food and non-alcoholic drinks,
hamburgers, home made lemonade and muffins delighted the audience with
table magic from a young magician "Tricky Nicky".
Ten tellers told and we finished with a marvelous story for advent by
Helen Dunbar and the last part is a Christmas carol. We kept to our theme
and the sparkle lasted until the end.
It was a YEEHA night of storytelling for all.
Audience numbers including tellers and chaperones 101 and not a dalmatian
in sight.
Interest generated in both clubs and a Glasgow Storytelling Festival is
planned for February.
Michael Kerins |
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| Indianapolis, Indiana |
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The Tellabration sponsored by Stories, Inc. here in Indianapolis went very
well.
Now that I know how wonderful it was, I can say how HORRIBLE I was afraid it was going to be. It was held in the cafe of Borders Books and Music,
where I used to work, so I imagined all kinds of horrible distractions:
clerks paging for "backup to the register," the espresso machine blasting
at inopportune moments, the security alarm at the door bleeping and
bleeping and bleeping until someone turns it off, people sitting at the
tables chatting with each other rather than listening to storytellers, or
people sitting at the tables right near the microphone writing letters
instead of listening to the storytellers and then getting up and putting on
their coats right in the middle of a story, as if the storyteller were a
videotape instead of a live person. I had been in the audience of a poetry
reading at another Borders, and all of that happened. It was horrible.
But last night, everyone who was sitting in the cafe wanted to hear
stories. THAT made the difference. THAT was a blessing. Someone counted
65 "core listeners" and figured that between 100-150 people stopped to hear
at least one story during the course of the evening. Several people
stopped by the display table to get more information about Stories, Inc.
And best of all, for me, it felt GOOD to be a teller in this event - the
mechanical distractions all happened outside the cafe space so were not
really distracting at all. I "logged flight time" on the microphone, and I
got all kinds of "strokes" (compliments, hugs) afterwards.
Best wishes,
Hope Baugh |
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| Idaho Falls, Idaho |
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Idaho Falls had 120 at their Tellabration last night! 4 youth tellers and
8 adult tellers from all walks of life and all levels of ability took part!
Every storyteller donated their time to the cause. A great time was had
by all.
Proceeds from our Tellabration are going to the Wilson Rawls Commemorative
Statue Fund. As I'm sure most of you know, Wilson Rawls wrote, "Summer of
the Monkey's" and "Where the Red Fern Grows" - he lived in Idaho Falls at
the time. The community has really rallied around the desire to build this
statue and we had no complaints about ticket sales for the cause!
I got all choked up when I read the Proclamation knowing so many others
were doing the same. We loved being a part of such a tremendous night of
sharing and can't wait for next year!
Teresa Clark |
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| Cerro Pedernal |
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Saturday night and no Tellabration in several hundred miles at least. But we
did get invited to a house blessing, up in the mountains, right at the foot
of Cerro Pedernal (Georgia Okeefe's favorite mountain). So there we
were, brandnewcomers, in a tiny community, in a circle of folks, drumming,
singing, sharing prayers and wishes and great food. And it seemed
appropriate to share a story. And one story led to another. Liz telling a
tale from Puerto rico... me a hasidic tale... Zack 12 years old told one he
made up about a skiing turtle and Carlos (16) held us spellbound, telling
ghost stories about his times growing up in New Mexico... Hakim lead us in
some sufi chanting....a couple of hours later, Oscar, Carlos' brother
suddently remembers, he was at the village school where we told stories two
years ago. He even remembers our entire gig. Then what Liz was wearing
that day! Step out into ultimate darkness and quiet... there's the milky
way.... the stellarnet! Guess we had our Tellabration after all!
Bob Kanegis |
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| Charles Town, W. Virginia |
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Nothing like a little excitement to add spice to an event. I had lined up two tellers to tell with me for Tellabration at The Cottonwood Inn. I was out of town and returned only two days before the 22nd. There was no message on my machine from Pat
Burhans, one of my tellers, although I had written and left instructions on her answering machine. I called the library where she works and was told that Pat had extended her trip overseas and was in Russia and would not return before December 1. Fine. That was a valid excuse. Who would not grab at the chance to stay in Russia for an extra week? Instead of three strong women, we would be two strong women!... that is until Kate Long called me on Friday. She could hardly speak through a horrible case of the flu. That left it up to me.
Fortunately, I was doing a weekend residency at the inn (on finding your unique voice as a teller) with four students. I worked with them Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon and told two of them that they would be performing that night. They were superb! They told one story each and the audience loved them. Fliers were hastily recreated. The audience was tiny (sixteen people in all). We sat around a blazing fire. Our hosts provided the cookies and hot mulled cider. I told the history of Tellabration before we began, and Joe, the owner of the inn, read the proclamation with a great sense of pride in taking part in such an important evening.
Laura Bobrow |
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| Murfreesboro, Tennessee |
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Here is my report on our small Tellabration party. Last year we
invited about 50 and told everyone they had to tell a story. About 25
showed up and we ran out of time but it was great. This year, we
invited listeners and people to tell (friends of ours and their friends) and
we had about 35 show up and about 20 tell. We had a roaring fire and
some wonderful stories and had a great time. Some of the listeners
were first time listeners and several of our tellers were telling "stories"
officially for the first time and were great. Many of them are regular
Jonesboro attendees and loved hearing their friends tell.
We asked for donations to TAPPS and collected $100. The food was a
very nice part of the "party" and we started earlier this year which lets
us leave before midnight like last year.
We had a Merit teacher get up and tell a heart wrenching story and she
prefaced it with, "Since I have my students tell stories every year, I felt
that I should do it as well". She was very nervous but had everyone in
tears and speechless. We had Doctors telling stories about patients and
college professors telling stories about their pets when they were first
married and even had my wife and I telling "No News" and adapting it to
our own children and home.
Hopefully, one day we will have what I describe as a full fledged event
in Murfreesboro but for now, the storytelling party idea is great. It
exposes people to storytelling that would never be exposed.
Thanks for the hard work on this wonderful idea.
David and Deborah Lasseter |
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