Timeless tales

The return of the Funda Fest

by Johnette Rodriguez

Antonio Rocha

If you tried to pinpoint which artistic endeavor humankind tried out first, surely storytelling would be right up there in the top five. As ancient as recounting tales of the hunt around a campfire, storytelling has always served many functions: preserving family history from one generation to another; educating children and young people; entertaining friends and strangers.

In all of its various contemporary guises, from the spun-out stories around kitchen tables to the crafted monologues of Spalding Gray to the improvised rhymes of rappers and hip-hoppers, storytelling is quite vibrantly alive and well in the Year 2000. In celebration of that craft, the Second Annual Funda Festival, sponsored by the Rhode Island Black Storytellers, will take place this weekend at the Providence Public Library, the Rhode Island School of Design Auditorium, and the Martin Luther King Center in Newport.

Headliners include Teju Ologboni, from Milwaukee; Antonio Rocha, from Maine; and Rochel Coleman, from California and Rhode Island. Coleman is familiar to Rhode Island audiences from appearances at the Jonnycake Storytelling Festival in his most popular incarnation, an African-American cowboy called Nat Love, and from performances at Trinity Rep in the early '90s (he's a 1988 graduate of the Trinity Rep Conservatory).

Coleman worked with the late George Houston Bass at Brown University to develop the role of the historical Nat Love, who was born a slave in Davidson County, Tennessee, in the early 1850s, and ended up a Pullman porter who lived with his family in Colorado and died approximately in the late 1920s. In between, he became one of the most trusted cattle drovers in the business, a cowboy in every sense of the word, friend to Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterston and the legendary Billy the Kid.

"When the railroads reached small towns on the frontier, and women started coming to the towns," Coleman related, in a phone conversation from his home in Providence, " then there were much more racist attitudes -- `we want to protect our women' kind of thing -- and the black cowboys just stayed out on the ranch and didn't go into town.

"Nat Love didn't much like this, so he started riding the rails across the same paths he'd covered as a cowboy," Coleman continued. "He told stories to the well-to-do passengers and to newspapermen on the train, nostalgic stories he knew people wanted to hear. But the newspaper men would write these up and put a picture of a white cowboy at the end of the story."

To complicate research about Nat Love even further, he was last known by the nickname of Deadwood Dick, for winning a contest in Deadwood, South Dakota, on July 4, 1876, as the best overall cowboy. The only problem is that there were five Deadwood Dicks during that time. Nonetheless, Coleman found dozens of Nat Love adventures to draw on for his performance of "I, Nat Love," which he does wearing well-worn chaps, hat and boots, twirling a leather lariat (the better to rope an unsuspecting audience member) and toting an old saddle (which may end up giving a small child a wild bronco ride).

Coleman also regularly presents two other pieces he has written, one based on the memoirs of his uncle, who graduated in the first class of "Tuskegee Airmen," an experiment by the Army Air Force in World War II to train a unit of young black flyers; and the other, in collaboration with storyteller Valerie Tutson, "MLK, Amazing Grace," a look at the life of Martin Luther King from the perspectives of friends and colleagues in the civil rights movement. In April in Los Angeles, he will premier a new piece called "Shadow Ball," about "Cool Papa" Bell, considered the fastest man ever to play baseball -- he was clocked rounding the bases in 12 seconds flat, says Coleman. Look for him to pull from any or all of the shows he has created when he takes the stage at Funda Fest.

Antonio Rocha, who has lived in Maine for the past 12 years, is originally from Brazil and draws heavily on the folktales of that region and on his mother's childhood in Brazil. He also creates stories based on tales from Africa and Asia, including one he performed last September at the Jonnycake Storytelling Festival about a rat who is looking for the most powerful being to marry his daughter. This story is representative of Rocha's style in its memorable combination of mime and storytelling, as he gracefully becomes a cloud, the wind and the sun, as well as all the animals in the story.

Another from the '99 festival and one which Rocha plans to perform at the Funda Festival is "Alazão, the Horse that Saved Six Lives," a story from Brazil about the special friendship between a teenaged girl and her horse. Again, Rocha was captivating with his mime of Alazão.

"I tend to like stories with animals because they are very fun to become on stage," Rocha said, in a phone conversation from his home in Portland. "I also like stories with environmental issues and communication issues."

Originally trained in mime, with a theater degree from the University of Southern Maine, Rocha began to incorporate verbal telling with mime about eight years ago, only to clash with purists who would say, "But then it's not mime." He countered with, "You can play music and tell stories, why can't I do mime and tell stories?"

Rocha is thrilled by the renaissance in storytelling performance over the past two decades: "Storytelling touches people because a story is so naked, not filled with glitter, and because when it is performed, by one person or a group, it finds truth in that communal moment with its listeners. People are hungry for that."

Teju Ologboni, who headlined at the '99 Funda Fest and the '99 Jonnycake Festival, begins almost every performance with an infectious drumbeat and chant, "Talkin' That Drum Talk," which captivates teens, tots and adults alike. Ologboni's stories come out of an African-American tradition that runs down the backbone of the Mississippi all the way across to West Africa. He absorbed storytelling from his parents in Kansas and his grandparents in Arkansas.

Ologboni's stories often feature animals, their adventures woven through a tale that teaches its listeners. Just as instructive, however, are recollections from his boyhood, where gender roles and adult-to-child roles were very traditional and where childhood escapades and their repercussions left unforgettable impressions.

Catch Coleman, Rocha, Ologboni and local African-American storytellers on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Providence Public Library, and at 8 p.m.at the RISD Auditorium. On Sunday at 3 p.m., head to the Martin Luther King Center in Newport. (Admission is $5 for the RISD show.) Call 273-4013.