{"id":29588,"date":"2025-11-01T20:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/29588\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T20:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:49:08","slug":"st-pete-storytelling-festival-celebrates-diverse-fl-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/29588\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Pete Storytelling Festival Celebrates Diverse FL Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. PETERSBURG, FL \u2014 The first-ever Suncoast Storytelling Festival<\/a>takes place Saturday in St. Pete with workshops, a story swap and an evening concert featuring diverse Florida storytellers. <\/p>\n

The event takes place at the Sunshine Center at 330 5th Street S. in St. Pete with the open story swap from 5:20 to 6:50 p.m. and the storytelling concert from 7 to 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

Storyteller Ross Tarr, who founded the Suncoast Storytellers<\/a>, has participated in and organized storytelling events locally and elsewhere for decades, including annual Tellabration events in recent years. <\/p>\n

The Suncoast Storytelling Festival builds on his previous work with an ambitious day of programming to get people excited about the art of storytelling. <\/p>\n

In this age of technology and social media, Tarr feels storytelling, \u201cprobably the oldest art form known to man,\u201d is more important than ever \u2014 and he hopes to introduce younger generations to it. <\/p>\n

\u201cStorytelling is the original social media. We wouldn\u2019t have history without storytelling because all history is storytelling,\u201d he told Patch. \u201cIf someone is a good storyteller, they can present their period of history or the issue or event \u2026 in a way that brings people in it, right into the story, and make them a participant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarr added, \u201cTelling a story is like a three-legged stool. One leg is the teller, the other leg is the story, and the third leg is the environment you\u2019re in. The actual seat part of the stool are the participants because you don\u2019t have an audience, you have participants \u2026 Storytelling is more intimate than any other form because you\u2019re actually getting the feedback from the person right there in front of you, and so they become participants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storytelling is also an integral part of day-to-day life, as well, he added. \u201cWe all have that relative at the family reunions and the holiday parties who was very, very popular. Why were they very popular? They were probably funny and, B, they told great stories. And we all had a favorite grandmother figure who told stories of when she was a little girl or maybe grandmother \u2026 And it\u2019s only through those stories that we hand down our traditions, our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the tellers participating in Saturday\u2019s concert is Carrie Sue Ayvar<\/a>, who is based in South Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a bilingual storyteller [in Spanish and English]. She\u2019s just back from appearances in Mexico and festivals in northern states,\u201d Tarr said. \u201c She\u2019s on the road most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarasota\u2019s Kuniko Yamamoto<\/a> will also take the stage Saturday evening. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a fabulous Japanese storyteller and myth teller who is in costume and doing origami while she\u2019s telling the story. She\u2019s absolutely perfect,\u201d Tarr said. \u201cShe just did three months in [Las] Vegas. That\u2019s the level of appearance and art she presents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald J. Dowridge Jr.,<\/a> a Tampa Bay-area teller, is also on the lineup. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a motivational speaker and motivational storyteller and he\u2019s gonna get up there and blow people away,\u201d according to Tarr.<\/p>\n

Safety Harbor-based storyteller Walt Belcher,<\/a> a retired journalist, will also perform. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe just came back from winning a liar\u2019s contest \u2014 I still can’t get used to calling them liar\u2019s contests; I still call them tall tales competitions \u2014 but he just won one up in South Carolina,\u201d Tarr said. \u201cAnd he was just telling up at the nationally storytelling annual event in Jonesboro this year.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added, \u201cSo, it\u2019s really quite a crew. And they\u2019re all telling at a national level. That\u2019s the caliber of talent we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tickets for the Saturday afternoon and evening event are $20 and can be purchased online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, FL \u2014 The first-ever Suncoast Storytelling Festivaltakes place Saturday in St. Pete with workshops, a story…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-29588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}