(today's Raw Edge is tomorrow's mainstream)

Spring/summer 2000

A FEAST FOR THE IMAGINATION

Storytelling, that most ancient form of literature is, alive and thriving in the West Midlands. The region is already the home of a major storytelling festival at Much Wenlock and several regular and occasional storytelling events. Now Birmingham's Storytelling Cafe is coming back to life with a new regular monthly appearance at the MAC. Not that it had disappeared – it had been flourishing elsewhere.

The aim of the Café resident storytellers, Katrice Horsley and Graham Langley, has been to give storytelling back to adults. For eighteen months they toured the Birmingham Storytelling Café round libraries, galleries and community centres in the city. Evenings of entertainment, wonder, longing and lust with large helpings of chocolate gateaux in the interval.

Though the evenings were powerful and memorable the audiences were never large. Programme organiser Graham had some explanations for the reasons. "Adults don't expect a storytelling event to be for them. For so long storytelling has been seen as something suitable for children and something especially good at keeping them quite and engaged. But we were convinced that with a different repertoire and style of telling adult audiences could be equally engaged and entertained by the power of storytelling. Another factor is even the finest storytellers in the land are largely unknown. I could put up their names in banner lights and it would mean nothing to anyone. What we were doing was building up a reputation that even if the name was unknown the quality of the evening would be unsurpassed."

Katrice and Graham were very clear about the sorts of guests they wanted ."If we were to build storytelling in the city we wanted audiences to experience the best available storytellers. We also wanted to give a public platform to Birmingham's own storytellers and provide somewhere for new storytellers to gain some experience. Storytelling Cafe also established an email link so that storytellers internationally could make virtual appearances.

On the basis of the artistic success of the Birmingham Cafe, first of all Walsall then Sandwell Libraries set up a series of Cafes. Well supported and funded by the Libraries they were an immediate success, with large audiences attending cafes all over Walsall. In Sandwell they chose the Victorian library at Wednesbury as the venue. No one could have anticipated the success.

Within a couple of months they were full to capacity, shoving shelves to one side and then removing them altogether. Month after month has seen audiences between 80 and 100. "It’s a staggering success. We've never seen anything like it here." says librarian Paul Voyce. It has been so successful that the initial 6 month run has been extended for another 12 months.

Interest has been expressed by other venues, and as well as re-opening at the MAC a programme is planned for the Palace Theatre in Mansfield. In addition, building on its stylish transformations of otherwise unpromising venues, Storytelling Cafe has continued to tour throughout the Midlands to libraries, community centres and cafes. As Graham explains "We pride ourselves in being able to bring a coffee house atmosphere to even the most unlikely room. We add some drapes here, some table cloths there, a glitter of candles to hide the cracks and the cobwebs and a brightly coloured backdrop behind the performers. We also serve the most delicious cakes that Druckers can provide." And they continue to present such engaging, entertaining and innovative storytelling the audiences keep coming back for more.

For more information about the Storytelling Cafe or to be added to their mailing list contact Graham Langley on 01629 826939.