Sacred
stories kicked off the final day of the Storytelling Festival Sunday
in downtown Cape Girardeau. The storytellers were, clockwise from
top left, Donald Davis, Jim "Two Crows" Wallen as Noah, Sheila Kay
Adams, Marilyn Kinsella and Dan Keding. FRED LYNCH ( ) flynch@semissourian.com
[Order this photo]
Donald Davis moved from one story to
another like walking into a different room at a family reunion Sunday.
He told not just stories but life lessons learned through family tales
and weaved around punch lines to keep the audience entertained and
interested.
Davis was the last storyteller to
perform individually at the first Cape Girardeau Storytelling
Festival, which ended at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. The three-day festival sold
"well over 500" tickets and drew people from all over the country,
said festival co-producer Chuck Martin, also the executive director of
the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau. That number does
not include the 700-plus school children who attended Friday.
The chairs have been broken down and
the tents are gone, but the memories of the first-ever event are
fresh.
"We loved the moose, Maynard — Maynard
the Moose," said Donna Sanders of Cape Girardeau. She and her
14-year-old daughter Kristyn were leaving the festival Sunday
afternoon.
Master storyteller Willy Claflin used
puppets like Maynard Moose, Boring Beaver and Socklops to tell his
stories. Sanders' son is in Boy Scout Troop 21, which stayed in the
tents each night to keep watch over the sound equipment. Her son and
husband stayed in the Southern Convenience Store tent on the River
Campus on Saturday night. Boy Scouts or fraternity members from
Southeast Missouri State University stayed in each of the tents
Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
"I guess I didn't think they would be
as professional as they are," Sanders said. She and Kristyn went to a
few stories Saturday and all of them Sunday.
"I liked the funny stories," Kristyn
said. The two agreed they would come back next year for the different
storytellers.
Martin said a least four new
storytellers are signed on for the 2009 Cape Girardeau Storytelling
Festival. He said the festival next year will be basically the same as
this year's.
"The fact is that when 95 percent of
the feedback you get is positive, I don't think you need to change
much," Martin said Sunday as he separated chairs that had just been
full of festival goers. "I think we'll tweak it a little bit."
He said next year they might expand one
tent and play with scheduling some to give people more time to walk
around, eat and shop downtown. Martin said he "couldn't be happier"
with the weekend turnout and that he would "be totally surprised if we
don't double the turnout next year."
"Most importantly, I think I learned
that storytelling will fly in Cape Girardeau," Martin said.
The storytelling brought out more than
just people from Cape Girardeau. Ned and Kathy Carter drove about nine
hours from Muskogee, Mich., to attend the festival. Ned belongs to a
storytelling group and had been to a few daylong festivals, but said
this was a new experience.
"I like this because you get not only a
variety of stories, but you get a big variety of storytellers," Ned
said.
"I'm surprised," Kathy said, "for your
first festival, you've had a lot of people."
This was the Carters' first visit to
Cape Girardeau.
"You know," Ned said, "this town has
got the friendliest people in it."
The couple planned on staying through
the night to have dinner and drive around town, then leave today.
"We've had a good time," Ned said.
charris@semissourian.com
335-6611, extension 246