Wise Fools: An Evening of Stories
Event Details
Organizer
IN CELEBRATION OF WORLD STORYTELLING DAY…
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21
8 – 10 PM
HOSTED BY ANDY JONES & FEATURING
MARY FEARON, DALE JARVIS, AND DAVE PENNY
GOWER STREET UNITED CHURCH LECTURE HALL
99 GOWER ST., ST. JOHN’S
$10 (cash only)
Come celebrate the wisdom of fools with the St. John’s Storytelling Festival and special guests, in honour of World Storytelling Day! You can expect riddle, rhythm, and rhyme at this event, where our featured tellers will regale you with songs, recitations, Jack tales, and other flights of fancy.
ABOUT WORLD STORYTELLING DAY:
“World Storytelling Day is celebrated every year on March equinox and the following week. This year it starts on Tuesday March 20. The idea is to have as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible. Doing so we promote oral storytelling all over the world. We also get a chance to build friendships across national and cultural borders in joyful ways. As if we meet around a global campfire.”
ABOUT OUR TELLERS:
MARY FEARON
Storyteller Mary Fearon has been performing professionally since 1997. Mary has performed at festivals and events across the country and has been funded through a variety of provincial and federal funding agencies to develop her art. She has facilitated workshops for children and adults from St. John’s to Australia and places in between. Mary has worked in provincial schools telling traditional stories and working with students to develop their own style of storytelling. This process has included telling their stories through spoken word, shadow puppets, hand puppets and murals reflecting their interpretation of the story. She traveled the province collecting material that was traditionally used and co-developed a book “Over The Big Fat Waves; A Collection Of Newfoundland & Labrador Rhymes, Songs and Language Games”. Mary has a particular love for traditional Newfoundland material and how Jack fits into the story, how they reflect our distinct culture and the connection they have to stories told in other parts of the world.
Photo Credit: Rick West
DALE JARVIS
Dale Gilbert Jarvis is a storyteller and professional folklorist. By day, he is the provincial folklorist for Newfoundland and Labrador. By night, he is the proprietor of the St. John’s Haunted Hike ghost tour, and raconteur of local tales. Dale tells ghost stories, stories of the fairies and little people, tales of phantom ships and superstitions, and legends and traditional tales from Newfoundland, Labrador and beyond. His repertoire includes long-form folk and fairy tales, with a wide-ranging knowledge of local legends, tall tales, and myths. Former newspaper columnist and author of several books on island folklore, he is a tireless promoter of local culture and oral history.
ANDY JONES
Andy Jones has been a professional writer and actor for over forty years. During that time he has been involved in a number of story-telling programs in the schools in Newfoundland and Labrador. He has conducted a series of workshops called The Oral Tradition Project, where the intent is to introduce storytelling to a generation of young Newfoundlanders by having them become story tellers themselves. At the first Longue Veille in Cape St. George Andy worked with a community collective on Louis et Alain et La Bete A Sept Tetes a story loosely based on Jack-tales told by Emile Benoit and his brother John Alfred Benoit. Besides performing for three consecutive years at the St. John’s Story Telling Festival, he has also told stories at The St. John’s Folk Festival and has toured Newfoundland Schools with dramatizations of a number of Newfoundland tales including Jack Meets the Cat (from Pius Power of South East Bight, Placentia Bay) Peg Bearskin (from Mrs. Elizabeth Brewer of Clattice Harbour West, Placentia Bay and Jack and The Three Giants, and Little Jack The Little Fisherman (both from Freeman Bennett of St. Paul’s, Great Northern Peninsula). Andy has written six newfoundland based children’s books.
DAVE PENNY
Dave Penny has been a steady presence on the local folk scene as a composer of songs that are truly unique to Newfoundland and Labrador. With his engaging stage personality, and a style that is entirely his own, he has been a key figure in resurgence in popularity of Newfoundland comic songs.
Dave’s most recent recording—All Turned Around—has been nominated for a 2017 MusicNL award for Traditional Artist of the Year and a 2017 Canadian Folk Music Award for Traditional Singer of the Year. The album promises to strengthen his position as one of Newfoundland and Labradors most fun and diverse entertainers, with its razorsharp
commentary on songs like Chase The Ace and #darkNL.