Coming Back to Life?

 This past weekend was a very important time.  After a full year without standing in front of a live audience for storytelling, it happened!  It was very controlled and safe, but it felt wonderful.

This year should have been the 25th Anniversary year for the Azalea Storytelling Festival in LaGrange, Georgia.  When it became obvious, due to COVID, that the normal 25th could not happen, another plan was put in place.

The scheduled tellers were rescheduled for next year and a plan was made to have year 24 1/2 this year.

Trish and I drove down to LaGrange where I had two performances, one afternoon and one evening, on the normal Saturday of the festival.  We were in the recently renovated Wesley Hall of First United Methodist Church for their first event there since renovation which included new HVAC filtration.

There was planned spacing with mask wearing.  As each ticket party arrived they were escorted to their assigned spaced seats and instructed to remain there through the program and until they were escorted out.  I did not have contact with anyone except from the distance of the stage.  It was also possible to buy live-streaming tickets for the event and we had a large audience of home viewers.

This event felt so good, and, it kept the Azalea Festival alive and in people’s minds until the real 25th can happen next year.  One wonderful feature of Saturday was that my part was framed by beautiful pre-filmed cameos by the other tellers for next year: Ed Stivender, Kevin Kling, and Josh Goforth.  We were also uplifted by Carol Cain’s marvelous emcee care.

I hope that you will start planning now the the 25th Annual Azalea Storytelling Festival the first full weekend in March of 2022 in LaGrange, Georgia.