Bright Night in Providence has always brought merriment and loads of cheer to those who flock to downtown to celebrate on New Year’s Eve. In its entirety, Bright Night offers a menagerie of zany performances, circus acts, puppetry, music, drama, and more. As this delightful venue leads the parade towards a brand new year with its promise of new beginnings, it also brings together all kinds of entertainment and traditions from days old. Always on the lineup is the much-beloved tradition and art of storytelling.
Valerie Tutson, whose stories have inspired and captivated audiences for 25 years, is back again on the Bright Night roster, where she’ll be sharing new songs and tales she’s learned from her recent visit to South Africa. Her career that began with her days as an aspiring young storyteller, under the tutelage of the late founder of Rites & Reason Theatre George Houston Bass, would pave the way for her tale-telling travels all over the country and beyond.
City News caught up with Tutson to get the narrative on this local storyteller’s tale.
How long have you been living in Providence?
I moved to Providence in the fall of 1983 to go to Brown. So it’s been over 25 years – shocking! I came from a small town in Connecticut called New Milford.
When and how did your storytelling career begin?
It’s actually very connected to when I first got here to Providence because I went in to the Brown University bookstore and saw three professional storytellers – Bill Harley, Len Cabral, and Marilyn Murphy-Meardon – on the very first week of my freshman year and thought, ‘I love this!’
I instantly got connected. I’d go to storytelling events and happenings from my very first semester at Brown. Then pretty soon I decided I wanted to major in storytelling, so I was doing that, working with George Bass from Rites & Reason Theatre. He was my advisor and mentor while I was in school. I developed my own major in storytelling as a communications art and which of course my parents thought was insane!
The cool thing was when I was graduating in 1987, I was hired by the RI Department of State Library Services to be one of the storytellers for their summer reading program. Instantly I had a job in Rhode Island doing the work that I wanted to do and have been very fortunate to be able to do that ever since.
What inspired you to do this as a profession? Is there a link to family tradition?
It’s not specifically an oral tradition. I think my family has become more conscious of the power of stories and what storytelling means in our family since I became interested in it. At first, my parents and grandparents would say to me, ‘why do you want to know all that old stuff?’ But through persistence, they became more willing to share, although my godmother was always a storyteller. She was always telling stories about my parents and what their life was like before we were born. My grandfather was a writer and that was his way of doing the storytelling. But I always loved books and drama so I thought I was going to be the English teacher who directed the high school play!
Do you write your own stories?
I don’t do a lot of writing. I will sometimes jot stuff down just to kind of help me. I’ve traveled a lot in Africa and so I love telling all of the traditional stories. In the States, we think that the folktales are for children, which they’re not, because they really speak deeper truths, and I love that about the folktales. I love that the traditional stories teach us about another culture but also show us how we’re connected. So I retell a lot of those stories. I do the same thing with the stories from history. So I don’t necessarily write them down but I always craft my own way of telling them. I also do love being read to as well! It’s just one of my favorite things in the world!
What makes a good story?
Good images. I think it’s the ability to be able to be transported to another place and time, to step into another world, and to experience the characters’ feelings and emotions – their journey. If I can step into a world and take somebody along with me and then come back together, I think that can be really good. It could be funny, it could be touching, but I also think if it comes from a place of truth – whether that’s a hysterical truth or a more poignant one – that’s something that truly touches who we are as human beings.
Now, you have been and will be performing again this year at Bright Night. What’s in store for your audiences for this special event in Providence?
Well, I do have some new songs from Africa that I learned in my travels and from a friend of mine from Malawi. I’ll be sharing some new songs, which should be a lot of fun, and probably also a new story from South Africa. I’m getting ready to go back there again in 2009. And I always like to do a mix of some folklore and some history. So people usually with me can expect that they will participate because that’s what makes it fun!
Do you keep an arsenal of stories that you tell during the holidays?
Arsenal – good word! Yes, I do! I do have some that I like to tell during this time of the year that I don’t tell at other times of the year.
After the New Year has past, you will be hosting the annual FundaFest, which is at its 11th year, through the Rhode Island Black Storytellers (RIBS.) For those who might not know about it, describe what the event is all about.
The FundaFest is a celebration of Black storytelling. We started it 11 years ago when the Rhode Island Foundation was doing this big thing called ‘I’ll Make Me A World’ which was the catalyst for black arts celebration. I have been involved with the National Black Storytelling Festival for a really long time and always wanted us to be able to have something like that here in the City of Providence and in Rhode Island – for people to be able to experience the diversity of Black storytelling and the breadth of it.
It started out as a three-day thing and now we do a weeklong event, which this year will fall on the 18th of January to the 25th. We go from Westerly to Woonsocket to Newport, and with our big day being in Providence on Saturday, January 24th.
It draws storytellers from around the country. Last year we had a storyteller from Jamaica and we’ve had other African storytellers who live in the States. We’ve had storytellers from Brazil who also live locally – and so you get a broad sense of what Black storytelling
means. We define that as the oral art and traditions of African or African-descended people. So we’ve had Lydia Perez and Yoruba II who is very conscious of the Puerto Rican connection with African tradition. We’ve had our Narragansett storytellers come too and all different parts of the continent represented, as well as African-American traditions, too.
What do you enjoy most about your craft? And why?
One of the things that I enjoy most is learning about the world through stories. I grew up in a really small town where there wasn’t a lot of diversity. So stories were the way that I got to know about the peoples of the world. For me, storytelling is a way to connect to history and culture. And it’s also a way for community building. The storytelling experience itself is a communal experience, so you don’t go home with anything except for the memory of the journey you took in your imagination and the laughter you shared with that group together. It’s such a generally joyous occasion and it touches the heart. So I love that about storytelling. It’s that shared experience that I think builds community and helps foster understanding. And I’m lucky because I get to go all over the country and to other parts of the world.
Is there a particular memorable or favorite story that you keep close to your heart, that you never get tired of telling over and again?
There are several and I always say that my favorite story is the one that I’m telling at the moment. I would say though that the story of the
Cow Tail Switch, which is the symbol for the National Association of Black Storytellers and originates from Liberia, is something I never get tired of telling.
The synopsis is that man goes out hunting and doesn’t come back. When his pregnant wife gives birth to their child, the child starts to question the whereabouts of his father. So they send everybody out to go and look for the father. They find the father, they put him back together, and they bring him back to life. The father has a gift that he wants to give one of his children, and he gives it to the child who asked the question, ‘mama, where’s my dada?’ because no one is ever dead until he or she is forgotten. And that is a very powerful story for me. That is one that I don’t ever get tired of telling, that connects with people in so many different places, in so many different times.
What are your hopes for the New Year?
My hope for the New Year is that people feel a bit more at peace. Certainly people are more on-edge with the financial situation, and there’s been so much anxiety around the election, and so much angst. My hope and prayers are that we can settle in and get re-grounded and really reconnect and find ways to support our new administration. I’m excited about President-Elect Obama and I know that he’s inheriting a mess and I hope that people will have the energy and the heart to help make the world be the place that we want it to be. I’m hoping for connection and comfort in the New Year.
