THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9409300192
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 21 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Jasmine Marshall jumped up in the middle of a performance at Virginia Wesleyan College last week and started dancing.
Some college programs, honest students complain, put them to sleep. In this case, Jasmine, 2, did exactly what the program hosts hoped she would do at the sixth annual Storytelling Festival, a lively, story-filled, two-day celebration.
``That's right! You're really dancing now,'' laughed storyteller Michael Parent, when Jasmine hopped out of her seat and did a twist and wiggle right in his spotlight.
Not many children came Friday since the program lasted well past most bedtimes. But Jasmine, whose mother Jennifer Marshall, a Courthouse area resident, is a student at the college, got a bedtime reprieve and a rare treat.
Local storyteller, Una MacGillivray, began the evening with a funny story about the three little pigs. Then, in costume, she told an American Indian story from the Pacific Southwest about a maiden who married a frog.
The Salem Middle School sixth-grade language arts teacher followed that up with a tale that has an environmental lesson about an American Indian boy and an eagle who makes the wind blow. MacGillivray's fluid hand movements and intense storytelling style gave her a rapt audience.
Another local performer, Larry Van Nostrand, performed ``story songs,'' accompanying himself on the guitar. Van Nostrand, who teaches English and visual language at Tallwood High School, has a rich voice and a mobile face perfect for his humorous tales about Blackbeard, the pirate Edward Teach, and local legend Grace Sherwood, the witch of Pungo.
The evening's featured performer was professional storyteller, singer and juggler, Michael Parent. Parent now lives in Charlottesville, but he grew up in Maine in a bilingual French-Canadian family. Recordings of his stories have won awards from the American Library Association and Parent's Choice magazine.
The former junior high and high school English teacher's stories are filled with references to his family and sprinkled with French-Canadian expressions.
He said he loves to travel and tell his stories before different audiences. ``The wonderful thing about this is that you make choices as you go,'' he said before his performance. He hadn't yet decided if he'd tell his favorite tale, ``Josephine and the King.'' That one, he said, was getting better and starting to please him.
``Stories go through metamorphoses,'' he said. ``I've been working on it for a couple of years, and I think it's starting to sound right.''
It sounded great, judging from the reception Parent got when he told it Friday night. Switching from ukelele to juggling balls, rings and rods, the balding Parent told his stories, made jokes about himself, his hair, or lack of it, and threw in memories of his French-Canadian grandfather, a baseball nut.
And at the end, he praised the youngest audience members for listening so well.
With a slate of entertainers this lively, it hadn't been difficult. ILLUSTRATION: Photos by KRYS STEFANSKY
Jasmine Marshall, 2, couldn't take the storytelling of Larry Van
Nostrand sitting down, so she got up and danced - to the delight of
event organizers.
by CNB