Newfoundland's Storytelling Events for July, 2010

There are a lot of storytelling events coming up this month, with visitors from South Carolina, Italy, the UK and Denmark, plus some performances by local favourites. We've got stories for adults, stories for families, stories by kids, stories by candlelight, and stories with tea!

You can check out the full listing of this month's events at:

http://www.storytellingstjohns.ca/events.html

Wheelchair accessible events are noted!

Dale Jarvis book launch to kick off international storytelling conference

St. John's will soon be host to an international conference of storytellers, with lovers of stories coming from across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Local storyteller and author Dale Jarvis will start things off on Monday, July 26th with a pre-conference book launch.

From an encounter with a shrieking horror on Signal Hill, St. John’s, to the legend of the headless pirate of Red Bay, Labrador,  Jarvis has captured stories of white horses, men in black, haunted punts, vanishing boats, and things that go bump in the basement.

Blending local history, folklore, eyewitness interviews, and archival research, Haunted Waters is the latest collection of ghostly tales from one of Canada’s finest, and creepiest, storytellers.

The book launch will take place on Monday, July 16th at the Martini Bar (upstairs) on George Street at 8:00pm. The author will read from his book, and will be signing copies for sale.

Watch the book trailer at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltS_QZM2xOo

Book Trailer: Haunted Waters by Dale Jarvis

From an encounter with a shrieking horror on Signal Hill, St. John's, to the legend of the headless pirate of Red Bay, Labrador, folklorist Dale Jarvis conjures up stories of white horses, men in black, haunted punts, vanishing boats, and things that go bump in the basement.

With its tales of premonitions of death, eerie phantoms, and strange creatures, Newfoundland and Labrador is truly a haunted place. Beware, gentle reader! The unquiet spirits of dogs, wolves, little girls, ships, and soldiers drift through these pages. You may even run into the Old Hag herself, Newfoundland and Labrador's most infamous nighttime visitor. Blending local history, folklore, eyewitness interviews, and archival research, Haunted Waters is the latest collection of ghostly tales from one of Canada's finest, and creepiest, storytellers.

Haunted Waters: More True Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador
by Dale Gilbert Jarvis
Format: Paperback, 170 pages, b&w photos
Pub Date: July 2010
Price: $16.95
ISBN-10: 1-897317-79-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-897317-79-2

Link to YouTube book trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltS_QZM2xOo

Canadian Youth Storytelling Scholarship – Call for applications

The St. John’s Storytelling Festival and Storytellers of Canada-Conteurs du Canada (SC-CC) is pleased to announce the launch of the Canadian Youth Storytelling Scholarship. Each year, SC-CC holds its annual conference in a different location across Canada. The Canadian Youth Storytelling Scholarship will send a young storytelling enthusiast from the conference’s home province or territory to that year’s conference.

In 2010, the conference is being held in St. John’s from July 28th to August 1st, and the first recipient of the Canadian Youth Storytelling Scholarship will be from Newfoundland and Labrador. One scholarship winner from Newfoundland and Labrador will be invited to the conference to meet and interact with storytellers from across the nation and around the world, take part in exciting workshops, and be invited to concert performances by some of Canada’s and the United Kingdom’s finest storytellers. The winner receives:

• Free admission to the SC-CC conference, July 28-August 1, 2010
• Entrance to all concerts and workshops
• A one-year membership to Storytellers of Canada-Conteurs du Canada
• A $250 grant to help offset the cost of travel and accommodation
• Partnership with an established storyteller, who will act as a mentor, guide and resource.

WHO MAY APPLY:
Youth aged 18-30 interested in using storytelling in their respective fields (i.e., education, psychology, museum work, environmental education, healing arts, law, religion, business, theatre, or freelance storytelling!)

HOW TO APPLY:
Please provide the following information via email:
• Name, Address, City, Province
• Telephone Numbers (home and cell)
• Email Address
• Date of Birth
• Storytelling experience (either telling or listening)
• Answer the following three questions:

1. Why are you interested in attending the Storytellers of Canada-Conteurs du Canada Annual Conference?

2. What do you hope to gain from the conference?

3. How can storytelling be used in your present or desired line of work?

Completed applications for the Canadian Youth Storytelling Scholarship must be submitted, by email, to youthstorytelling@gmail.com by Wednesday, June 30th, 2010.

Information about the annual conference may be found at www.sc-cc.com

Wicked Wednesday with Dale Jarvis, Storyteller

Celebrating 13 years of telling terrible tales!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010
8:00pm
Newman Wine Vaults, 436 Water Street.

$13 at the door

Join storyteller Dale Jarvis as he launches the 13th season of the award winning St. John’s Haunted Hike with a special evening of his favourite ghoulish and ghastly tales by candlelight in the haunted Newman Wine Vaults.

Since 1997, the Haunted Hike has thrilled locals and tourists alike with stories of public hangings, duels, and horrific murders, forgotten cemeteries and unmarked graves, vengeful lovers, murdered soldiers, and mysterious fires. He also tells stories of the faerie folk, tales from the collections of the Brothers Grimm, local legends and traditional tales from Newfoundland, Ireland, the United Kingdom and beyond. He is the founder of the St. John's Storytelling Circle, and president of the St. John's Storytelling Festival, Inc.

Last chance to register for storytelling conference

The response to the July 2010 Storytellers of Canada conference in St. John's has been fantastic! We have only twenty slots left before we're completely sold out, so we have decided on extending the registration deadline! If you haven't registered yet, it isn't too late, and we will take the first 20 people who send in their registration forms and payment.

http://www.sc-cc.com/conference/2010/2010-registration.html

If you have already registered and haven't make your room bookings, you can get the information on accommodations at:

http://www.sc-cc.com/conference/2010/2010-accommodation.html

Don't forget the 5-Minute Story Slam, happening Wednesday July 28th, at 7:30pm. We want the slam's theme to fit the local environment, and for St. John's, that means fog, and lots of it! The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland, the meeting place of the cold Labrador Current from the north and the much warmer Gulf Stream from the south. With storytellers from all over the world congregating in St. John's this July, all that hot air is bound to see an increase in the misty stuff. We welcome stories related in any way to fog: foggy days, the mists of time, fog horns, fog banks, lost in the fog, living in a fog, condensation nuclei, various visibility hazards or drizzle, fo' shizzle! Have your foggy tale ready.

Vikings take over the Ship Pub

This from the Folk Arts Society:


On Wednesday night, May 19th, join Bjorn the Beautiful, L'Anse aux Meadows' Viking Chief, (shown above) and his merry band of Vikings at the Ship Pub, where they'll be hosting the Folk Arts Society's Folk Night. Featured guests Jeff Dyer, Bill Brennan and Glen Collins will dazzle us with a mixture of Newfoundland and international folk songs, with a few blues and jazz standards mixed in, while Bjorn will regale audiences during the Open Mic portion of the evening with snippets from the Norse Sagas that relate to the Viking's journeys to L'Anse aux Meadows over 1000 years ago, and tales of the gods and goddesses they brought with them. So come raise a glass, share a story and celebrate 1000 years of the music and culture of this place.

Do you know the ghost horse of Bannerman Street, St. John's?

Help! I am trying to track down some information about a little-documented ghost story from Bannerman Street in downtown St. John's.

Here is what I know, taken from Frank Galgay and Michael McCarthy's book "Olde St. John's: Stories from a Seaport City" (Flanker Press, 2001, page 111):

"A house on Bannerman Street was said to be troubled by the spirit of a white horse that galloped up a stairway and then vanished through a second-storey window."

Dramatic stuff! But that, sadly, is all that I know of the legend. I would love to know more! Does anyone know which house was said to be haunted by this rather extraordinary ghost? Have you heard the story before, and if so, from whom?

You can reach me by email at dale@dalejarvis.ca

Other stories of ghost horses also welcome!

Brimstone and Gall! A Stratford Postcard

Earlier this week, I went went my parents and a few family friends to see the Stratford Festival's production of Peter Pan. It was great fun, well staged, beautifully costumed and acted, with Tom McCamus as an elegant Captain James Hook, who must be one of the most entertaining stage villians to play.

It was nice to be there with my parents. I have strong memories of going to see pantomimes as a family when I was young, and I'm sure that it was one of the things that influenced my love of the arts and performance.  We are all getting a lot greyer, but it was good to still sit and laugh and enjoy the spectacle of Peter Pan as a family.

I like the mythology of Peter Pan, and I do believe that J.M Barrie captured some of the otherness of the fairy realm quite well. There is magic and wonder and adventure, but always that hint of sadness, death and loneliness.

In the program notes for the Stratford production, Bob Hetherington writes, "Peter Pan is arguably the last man-created myth of near-universal appeal, in the sense that subsequent fantasy narratives have tended to be regarded as pastiches of general to which Barrie's belong unambiguously." In a sense, Barrie's word is a pastiche, a blending together of fairy lore, Rackham-esque buccaneers and classical mythology. But it does have a remarkable wholeness that does, as Hetherington argues, move it beyond a pasting together of motifs towards its status of modern myth.

As a storyteller, I loved the framing of the Stratford production around the on-stage presence of J.M Barrie as narrator. And I had nearly forgotten as an adult that it was storytelling that enticed Peter to the Darling household, and that it was Wendy's professed talents as a storyteller that ultimately took her to Neverland. All in all, a great production, for all those who believe in fairies, or those who never really wanted to grow up.

Storyteller on the road: A Wisconsin Postcard

I've just finished the Northlands Storytelling Network conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and barely know where to begin. The conference was great, and packed full of stories and wonderful conversations with storytellers. It is a very busy conference, with lots of great workshops and storytelling concerts. Some highlights for me:

• Jeff Gere from Hawai'i and his great Pele and chicken skin stories;
• Greg Weiss's workshop, and great ideas for using story cards with kids to create stories;
• Sue Black's fantastic story (with a rather grisly stew recipe);
• Cathryn Fairlee's illustrated talk on traditional Chinese teahouse storytelling;
• Debra Morningstar's great workshop on who should tell aboriginal stories;
• Having another Canadian there this year, Renee Englot of Alberta;
• Hanging out with the American tellers who are coming to the 2010 St. John's Storytelling Conference this July; and,
• "Goldilocks and the Three Beers"...

Thanks to the very large, very enthusiastic group who braved my early Sunday morning workshop on working with historical material!

Links:

Jeff Gere

http://www.jeffgere.com

Sue Black

http://www.sue-black.com/

Debra Morningstar

http://www.debramorningstar.com/

Cathryn Fairlee

http://sonic.net/~cfair/

Renee Englot

http://www.reneeenglot.com/

July 2010 Conference

http://www.sc-cc.com/conference/2010/index.html