Another year has passed, and I returned to Utah’s Timpanogos Storytelling Festival with my friend Lori Snyder for my annual dose of story.  Pure story—with no technology coming between the teller and me.  Story—that feeds my hungry soul.  Story—that lifts my spirit and takes me to places I have never been.  Or takes me home to familiar places.

Now in it’s 35th year, the Festival is held the weekend after Labor Day and is attended by thousands.  Being in the audience is simultaneously a delightful group experience and a deeply personal one.  Laughing and choking up with other listeners makes for a shared community.  One in which everyone not only gets the jokes and feels the sorrow, they get why it all matters, why story is important.

At the same time, I find myself feeling the teller and I are in a space where it’s only the two of us and he or she is talking directly to me.  Kind of like the intimacy I felt watching “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.”

Two of my usual favorites were at the Festival—Donald Davis and Bil Lepp, who never disappoint.  I also found special connections with Dolores Hydock, who shared stories about her life in Pennsylvania, my home state.  Cowboy poet and singer Andy Hedges appealed to my love of the West, and it was easy to settle in with the down-home tales of Sheila Arnold.

But this year I was thoroughly turned around, fabulously flipped upside down, by April Armstrong—award-winning storyteller, writer, and actress of both stage and screen. 

Her one-woman show, “Two Wings to Heaven: The Story of Bessie Coleman,” was brilliant and beyond amazing.  In “Two Wings” April uses dialogue (13 different voices), costume, song, imaginative movement, and great deal of heart to tell the inspiring story of the pioneering female aviator.  Joan of Arc, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Harriet Tubman are parts of the story, and she expertly brings them to life.  I was spellbound from the moment April walked on stage and, when it was over, I didn’t want to leave the world she had created—Bessie’s world.  It was real.  Great storytellers can do that—make the story world more real than the world outside the story.  She did that for me.  I will never forget the feeling.

Certainly, I enjoyed all the wonderful tellers at the Festival but, even if there had been no others, April’s performance would have been enough for me.  Visit April’s website at aprilarmstrong.com to find out more.

The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival fills me with all things good, things that help carry me through my days going forward.

Thanks, Timp!  See you next year.

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Here’s the website: https://timpfest.org