Story land

The Jonnycake Storytelling Festival brings it all back home

by Bill Rodriguez

Marc Joel Levitt and Len Cabral

How in the world did this culture get the idea that storytelling isn't for grown-ups? Call it performance art and Spalding Gray and Karen Finley packs 'em in. So folks are still letting themselves be enthralled by the experience itself. Go figure.

As it has for the past dozen years down in Wakefield, the Jonnycake Storytelling Festival will make clear that the appeal is to young, old and everyone in between whose imaginations have not shriveled up from exposure to too much television.

This year the theme is "Bringin' It All Back Home," featuring home-grown Rhode Island tellers, some of whom have earned national reputations.

Spotlighted in concert-length performances on Saturday night will be two storytellers who are old friends and whose successful careers have flourished along with the local interest in tales: Len Cabral and Marc Joel Levitt.

Their roots as tellers go way, way back, to when they were attentive listeners.

"For the longest time I thought that the old country was where old people came from," says Cabral, 52, who grew up in North Providence, his grandfather originally a Cape Verde whaler, his grandmother also from the islands. People around him talked about more than the old days, though. "I came from a real ethnically sharing community. So I learned to swear in Armenian, in Italian, I learned to swear in Portuguese. I was bilingual in bad language."

Levitt, 50, grew up in New York City, and words meant much to him, too.

"I was read to a lot. But, actually, the main stories that made an impression were through music, listening to the early days of rock and roll," he says. "Understanding stories of yearning and love and possibility that were coming off of the records of that time that I'd listen to before I went to sleep at night . . . Stories about teenagers, about unrequited love, death by car. High drama, archetypal situations."

They are sitting at a picnic table, relaxing at the recent Rhythm & Roots Festival in Charlestown, where they were both spinning yarns, folk tales, and childhood memories on the family stage.

Cabral says he discovered the power of stories around 1972, when they saved his sanity while he worked in a Providence day-care center. "I was in charge of 15 five-year-olds. That'll make you a storyteller! I'd be reading to them, and as soon as I took my eyes off of them they began pinching each other," he begins. "So I put the book away and I started telling a story."

It worked. The immediacy kept them attentive.

Levitt nods in recognition. "That's interesting. In San Francisco in the early '70s I worked in a nursery school as well and found that as I read books to kids, if I dropped the book and talked directly to them, and incorporated them into the narrative, they would pay attention."

So Cabral started taking children's literature, child development and theater classes at Rhode Island College. Levitt went off to study performance art in San Francisco and clown characterization with Jacque LeCoque in Paris. Cabral helped found Rhode Island's Sidewalk Storytellers with Marilyn Meardon. By the early '80s, Levitt had moved here and was performing in a vaudeville medicine show. Friends by then, he and Cabral and singer/ storyteller Bill Harley traveled to the National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee, where the fact that there were a half-dozen storytellers making a living in such a small state prompted amazement.

"That was impressive when we talked to storytellers," Cabral recalls. "Because around the country at that time there may have been less than 200, maybe 150 full-time storytellers."

Soon afterward, they formed a collective named the Spellbinders, joining forces to get gigs rather than compete.

"We didn't expect huge amounts of work at the beginning," Levitt points out. "We were all drawn to doing something we loved."

Starting out telling traditional folk tales, Levitt grew more comfortable mining his childhood for stories and writing his own tales. He has also written four plays, one of which -- about the Enola Gay's reconnaissance pilot -- he will adapt for his Jonnycake festival performance. For five years, until 1998, the Wakefield resident was host of New England's only live variety show, The New England Chowda Hour, on WHJJ.

Cabral, an unforgettable sight with his dreadlocks and blazing smile, has become a mainstay at school and library programs throughout the state, with his antic tales from Cape Verde, Africa and the Caribbean, as well as original stories. He has performed around the country, on the Washington Mall as part of president-elect Clinton's inauguration festivities, at the Kennedy Center, and at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Although more often than not they perform before rapt children rather than adults, the two have learned that the appeal of what they offer is ageless.

"It's a re-creation of the oral tradition," Levitt says. "I think there is an attraction, especially given the inundation of the culture by techno-entertainment . . . that a lot of people are drawn to the magic of the one-to-one relationship that they experience with a storyteller."

Cabral agrees. "It's a real natural thing. We say, 'What's happening?' as a greeting. 'Tell me what's happening,' " he points out. " 'Tell me a story.' "

The Johnnycake Festival will take place through Sunday, September 17. On Friday, September 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the South Kingstown High School, "Ghost Stories" will be told by Don Kirk, Anne-Marie Forer, Cindy Killavey, Marc Joel Levitt, Carolyn Martino, and Tony Toledo. Admission is $5 ($3 for children). On Saturday, September 16 from 9 a.m.-noon, storytelling workshops with Len Cabral ("How Do I Get Started?"), and Marc Joel Levitt ("Finding Your Own Voice"). The fee is $35 ($15 for teens). On Sat. from 12-5 p.m. on the Peace Dale Village Green, performances by Dan Beschers, Efrem Bromberg, Peg Donovan, and Piper Padillia. Admission is free. On Sat. at 7:30 p.m., performances by Cabral and Levitt, hosted by Marilyn Meardon. Admission is $8. On Sunday, September 17 at 9:30 a.m. at the Peace Dale Neighborhood Guild, "Sacred Tales" with Joan Bailey, Motoko, Katie Latimer, Keith Munslow, and Len Cabral, with songs by the Rhode Island Feminist Chorus. Admission is $6, which includes a continental breakfast. Call 789-9301 for details.