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Women's Storytelling Festival
Apr. 18th, 2022 10:38 pmI’ve been totally swamped the past couple of weeks, between taxes and Passover. So I am way behind on everything. But procrastinating isn’t going to get me caught up, so here goes a little bit of catch-up.
We held the Third Annual Women’s Storytelling Festival in Fairfax, Virginia on March 18-20t, with the shows live streamed and recordings available through April 18th. I say “we” because I was on the festival committee, as well as performing a story in it and emceeing the story swap. My other big role in festival planning was coordinating volunteers to do things like set-up/take down, working the door, and working the merchandise table. That was made a lot easier because the person who did that for the first festival (two years ago) was really organized and I still had her spreadsheet to figure out how many people I needed for which jobs when. (Last year was virtual, so not as relevant.) And, of course, it helped a lot that everybody involved was great, with particular kudos due to Jessica of Better Said Than Done for making it all go smoothly.
I had thought of doing a play-by-play, but decided it was better to just focus on the highlights. Lyn Ford introduced some of her sets with interesting holidays and starting off Friday night with National Awkward Moments Day was a great start to the festival (and to a fun and relatable story). Laura Packer had wonderful stories throughout the festival, including a tale of her recurring characters, Crazy Jane and Red-Haired Annie . Among the stories Carol Moorre told, the one that really stuck out for me had to do with an episode of violence at her church and how her community reacted to it. Megan Hicks brought tears to my eyes with her Civil War story. Denise Page had more than one story about her friendships with other women, but the one that resonated most with me had to do with playing with paper dolls. And Susanne Schmidt had a very funny piece about singing in school choir despite not having learned the words of the songs.
That’s really only a small sampling of the wonderful things I heard over the weekend. What mattered most was getting to spend time with all of the wonderful women at the festival. There is really nothing like live entertainment. I felt that particularly strongly when telling my story, which had to do with weddings in my family. When you’re performing over zoom, you can pause some for places where there should be laughter, but pacing is so much easier when you actually hear the laughter and see the reactions. (Plus I got nice feedback afterwards, both from people who were there and an especially nice note from a friend who watched the livestream.)
All in all, this was a highlight of my year (so far) and I strongly encourage anyone who can to come to next year’s festival, ideally in person but via the live stream if they can’t make it to northern Virginia.
We held the Third Annual Women’s Storytelling Festival in Fairfax, Virginia on March 18-20t, with the shows live streamed and recordings available through April 18th. I say “we” because I was on the festival committee, as well as performing a story in it and emceeing the story swap. My other big role in festival planning was coordinating volunteers to do things like set-up/take down, working the door, and working the merchandise table. That was made a lot easier because the person who did that for the first festival (two years ago) was really organized and I still had her spreadsheet to figure out how many people I needed for which jobs when. (Last year was virtual, so not as relevant.) And, of course, it helped a lot that everybody involved was great, with particular kudos due to Jessica of Better Said Than Done for making it all go smoothly.
I had thought of doing a play-by-play, but decided it was better to just focus on the highlights. Lyn Ford introduced some of her sets with interesting holidays and starting off Friday night with National Awkward Moments Day was a great start to the festival (and to a fun and relatable story). Laura Packer had wonderful stories throughout the festival, including a tale of her recurring characters, Crazy Jane and Red-Haired Annie . Among the stories Carol Moorre told, the one that really stuck out for me had to do with an episode of violence at her church and how her community reacted to it. Megan Hicks brought tears to my eyes with her Civil War story. Denise Page had more than one story about her friendships with other women, but the one that resonated most with me had to do with playing with paper dolls. And Susanne Schmidt had a very funny piece about singing in school choir despite not having learned the words of the songs.
That’s really only a small sampling of the wonderful things I heard over the weekend. What mattered most was getting to spend time with all of the wonderful women at the festival. There is really nothing like live entertainment. I felt that particularly strongly when telling my story, which had to do with weddings in my family. When you’re performing over zoom, you can pause some for places where there should be laughter, but pacing is so much easier when you actually hear the laughter and see the reactions. (Plus I got nice feedback afterwards, both from people who were there and an especially nice note from a friend who watched the livestream.)
All in all, this was a highlight of my year (so far) and I strongly encourage anyone who can to come to next year’s festival, ideally in person but via the live stream if they can’t make it to northern Virginia.
