Community prepares for new festival

Local community members have asked GCSU to join them in planning and hosting a local storytelling festival for Spring 2011. The potential date is set for April 8 at The Campus Black Box Theatre.

“We are trying to increase tourism and interest in things going on in Milledgeville,” said Nathalie Goodrich, an active member on the storytelling planning committee and a resident of Milledgeville for about 60 years. “We lost a lot of industry and jobs in this community. We need more economic development to bring people and tax dollars to Baldwin County. Anything we can do to help will be a win, win situation.”

The GCSU Department of Theatre will be presenting “Milledgeville Memoirs,” a play celebrating the lives of living Milledgeville citizens, on the main stage March 15-18. Karen Berman, artistic director of theater programs, will be directing the play and then leading them to New York for their off-Broadway debut on March 24. As it follows the play, the storytelling festival has the potential to be more strongly supported and encouraged by the community.

“I think when people see ‘Milledgeville Memoirs’ more and more stories are going to come forward,” Berman said. “I think it will be an inspiration for the festival.”

For two years Berman worked with Dr. Bob Wilson and a student interested in oral traditions to gather and compile the necessary information on Milledgeville residents.

“When I walked into Milledgeville two and a half years ago for my first time I thought this city is so steeped in important stories that need to be told,” Berman said. “A priority of mine has been to create a play for these stories. It really has been a passion of mine to tell a story, and the story of Milledgeville is a particularly exciting story.”

The festival event will begin as a night outing, but has the aspirations to grow and develop more in the next few years depending on the community’s initial response. The committee hopes to host a dinner or provide a spread of appetizers preceding the festival for a small fee. Yet, they recognize that they also don’t want to over-plan.

“The idea is to start small and crawl before we begin to walk,” Goodrich said.

Some of the storytellers may include Ruby Werts, a Milledgeville resident who does impersonations of renowned magician Dixie Haygood, and Grady Tariks, a local actress that tells culture stories such as Cajun tales. The Milledgeville Players may even assist with acting out the role of Oliver Hardy.

The storytelling festival has been in the planning stages for a long time. Goodrich recalls when a theater group called Tales from the Back Stoop performed stories of Milledgeville residents as well.

“For Tales from the Back Stoop we gathered stories from seniors, and recorded them and transcribed them. Plays were written from those stories and performed in Milledgeville,” Goodrich said.

As the storytelling festival continues planning, Berman is excited to see how it might benefit GCSU. Already Berman has seen a change in her students preparing for “Milledgeville Memoirs.”

“I already know just from the work shopping of the play (‘Milledgeville Memoirs’) that the students have gained so much respect for the citizens of Milledgeville and for their surrounding community. They have already benefited from feeling more a part of their community, rather than just being plopped in an ivory tower in the middle of a city they don’t know,” Berman said.

GCSU senior and theater major Stacey Silverman believes it is important to reflect and learn from a community’s history.

“I am a very nostalgic person and I love learning about the history of things that pertain to me – i.e. the town I live in,” Silverman said. “It’s always really interesting to hear about how things used to be compared to how they are now. I think it’s going to be great for the GCSU community provided that it is well advertised.”

It is the intention of the festival to initiate interest in local history and community interaction. Goodrich and Berman believe it can be simple.

“There are a lot of local people that tell stories,” Goodrich said. “You just have to look for them.”

Posted by Chelsea Thomas on Nov 5 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.