St. Pete Storytelling Festival Celebrates Diverse FL Voices

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — The first-ever Suncoast Storytelling Festivaltakes place Saturday in St. Pete with workshops, a story swap and an evening concert featuring diverse Florida storytellers.

The event takes place at the Sunshine Center at 330 5th Street S. in St. Pete with the open story swap from 5:20 to 6:50 p.m. and the storytelling concert from 7 to 9 p.m.

Storyteller Ross Tarr, who founded the Suncoast Storytellers, has participated in and organized storytelling events locally and elsewhere for decades, including annual Tellabration events in recent years.

The Suncoast Storytelling Festival builds on his previous work with an ambitious day of programming to get people excited about the art of storytelling.

In this age of technology and social media, Tarr feels storytelling, “probably the oldest art form known to man,” is more important than ever — and he hopes to introduce younger generations to it.

“Storytelling is the original social media. We wouldn’t have history without storytelling because all history is storytelling,” he told Patch. “If someone is a good storyteller, they can present their period of history or the issue or event … in a way that brings people in it, right into the story, and make them a participant.”

Tarr added, “Telling a story is like a three-legged stool. One leg is the teller, the other leg is the story, and the third leg is the environment you’re in. The actual seat part of the stool are the participants because you don’t have an audience, you have participants … Storytelling is more intimate than any other form because you’re actually getting the feedback from the person right there in front of you, and so they become participants.”

Storytelling is also an integral part of day-to-day life, as well, he added. “We all have that relative at the family reunions and the holiday parties who was very, very popular. Why were they very popular? They were probably funny and, B, they told great stories. And we all had a favorite grandmother figure who told stories of when she was a little girl or maybe grandmother … And it’s only through those stories that we hand down our traditions, our history.”

One of the tellers participating in Saturday’s concert is Carrie Sue Ayvar, who is based in South Florida.

“She’s a bilingual storyteller [in Spanish and English]. She’s just back from appearances in Mexico and festivals in northern states,” Tarr said. “ She’s on the road most of the time.”

Sarasota’s Kuniko Yamamoto will also take the stage Saturday evening.

“She’s a fabulous Japanese storyteller and myth teller who is in costume and doing origami while she’s telling the story. She’s absolutely perfect,” Tarr said. “She just did three months in [Las] Vegas. That’s the level of appearance and art she presents.”

Donald J. Dowridge Jr., a Tampa Bay-area teller, is also on the lineup.

“He’s a motivational speaker and motivational storyteller and he’s gonna get up there and blow people away,” according to Tarr.

Safety Harbor-based storyteller Walt Belcher, a retired journalist, will also perform.

“He just came back from winning a liar’s contest — I still can't get used to calling them liar’s contests; I still call them tall tales competitions — but he just won one up in South Carolina,” Tarr said. “And he was just telling up at the nationally storytelling annual event in Jonesboro this year.”

He added, “So, it’s really quite a crew. And they’re all telling at a national level. That’s the caliber of talent we have.”

Tickets for the Saturday afternoon and evening event are $20 and can be purchased online here.