Indy Theatre Habit

The Hoosier Storytelling Festival is this week!

Last night, I drove downtown to the Eiteljorg Museum to hear Native American storyteller Gene Tagaban.  I was supposed to have been his driver this whole week as he and the other featured tellers shared stories with crowds of school children in the huge Festival tents in Military Park, but a family emergency kept me from doing so.  (Thank you again, Daniel, for taking over for me!)

I believe that everything happens for a reason, but I also believe that I would have enjoyed spending the week with Gene Tagaban.  I had never heard him tell before, but I loved the playful-powerful, earthy-airy energy in his program last night.  And look how handsome he is!

But best of all are his stories. 

Last night, he shared with us personal stories about growing up near a glacier in Alaska and folk stories from the Tlingit portion of his heritage.  (He is also Cherokee and Filipino.)

Many of his stories are bilingual: English and Tlingit.  He often ends a description by saying, “I love that!”  I loved hearing Tlingit spoken aloud, live.

He also incorporates Native American singing and instrumental music – flutes, drums, and rattles.  Sometimes he asks for audience members to play some of the instruments with him.  Other times he invites people to raise their hands and make important declarations related to his stories.

“How does it feel to say, ‘I am honorable!’?” he asks afterwards.  “What does it mean to start living it?”

He also invites people to think about how we fill the spaces in our thoughts and our lives.  “Life is participation,” he told us last night.  “And our gift is choice.”

He embodies whole communities in his stories, switching back and forth between the individual characters easily: a feisty Grandma daring her 13-year-old grandson to wrestle her over who will carry in the next bucket of water from the well while four uncles (one for each direction) look on during a vision quest, for example. 

One story last night was about how he became a Raven dancer.   He was very cute as an ambitious 5-year-old boy struggling under the weight of a huge Raven dancer’s mask at the local community center!  But, as his uncle explained to him, he was not big enough, yet, to be a Raven dancer.  He also had a lot of work to do first.

He told us about doing the work, about looking and listening for Raven both in nature and in the rest of the world.  “I watched Raven going through the drive-through at McDonalds!” he said.  We laughed with him, but we also understood that he meant he opened himself to unexpected spiritual development.

Much later, when he was ready, he received his “regalia” – the decorated shin coverings, the apron, and yes, the giant Raven mask made of wood, leather, and abalone, and finally, the huge set of wooden wings.  He put on the various pieces as he told us his story…and then he danced the Raven dance!

It was very, very cool.

I know he had to plan ahead to bring the Raven regalia, but I don’t know if he decided ahead of time all of the stories that he would tell.  Before the program “began,” he chatted and joked with the people who were already in the room.  “This is ‘Ask an Indian’ time,” he said.  “You know you have a question that you have always wanted to ask one of us.  Go for it!”

The first question seemed very simple.  One man asked, “Where is your home?”

But Tagaban looked carefully at the man before answering, and at first it didn’t seem as if he would answer.  Then he said, “I have a house in Washington state, but my home is here,” and he put his hand over his heart.  Then he told about his grandma telling him to do his homework.

My breath caught, and then deepened when I heard this. 

I don’t know, exactly, what all of my homework, my heart work, is, but I do know that being present for Gene Tagaban’s stories last night made my heart feel light and good.

I am looking forward to hearing more stories from him and from other professional storytellers during the rest of the 2008 Hoosier Storytelling Festival.   The other featured tellers include Charlotte Blake Alston, Brenda Wong Aoki, Beth Horner, and Kevin Kling.  You can hear a podcast of Beth Horner telling one of her signature stories, “Encounter with a Romance Novel: Heroines in Everyday Life,” on the Storytelling Arts of Indiana MySpace page.

Tonight (Friday) night, there will be “Scary Stories: Disquieting, Disturbing & Dreadful” in the Main Stage tent in Military Park in downtown Indy.   The evening will begin with “Scary Stories for Families” from 7-8:30.  “Scarier Stories” will be from 8:45-10:10 pm.

Tomorrow (Saturday) morning, there will be two storytelling workshops, both in the Indiana History Center, just across the street from Military Park.  Saturday afternoon, from noon to 5:00, there will be all kinds of storytelling happening on four stages in four tents in Military Park.  Saturday evening, the five featured tellers will each tell one last time during “The Story Cabaret” inside the Indiana History Center from 7:30-10:30 pm.

For more information, please see the Storytelling Arts of Indiana website.

By the way, at last night’s event I was delighted to finally meet local storyteller Portia Sholar Jackson.  Her name comes up often in conversations about Indianapolis storytelling, but I had somehow never connected with her in person.  She told me that she has recently become the first resident storyteller at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum.  It was exciting to hear about how she is developing outreach opportunities for this new position.

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com