Page Unified School District and Page Public Library held the third annual Grand Circle Storytelling Festival last Thursday night, with Donald Davis and Kim Weitkamp as the main storytellers. Steven Law and Kendall Neisess also combined their talents to perform a short piece.

One of the key components of the event was having storytellers go into some PUSD classrooms, where they shared stories with the students and talked to them about methods of creating and crafting a story, whether for the page or the stage.

This year Weitkamp and her husband Danny Gum met with Desert View’s fifth graders. The students assembled in the gym during their specials class. Weitkamp spent an hour with each class. Weitkamp – sometimes accompanied by her husband on the guitar – started the hour by telling the kids one of her original stories, after which she broke down the elements of the story that made it work, that made it engaging to an audience. Then she had the students create their own stories, using a prompt she gave them. She told them to picture one of their childhood modes of transportation, such as a skateboard or bike, then imagine that one day they discover that it has special powers, such as it can fly or do amazing tricks.

After giving them time to create their stories, she called on some of them to share what they had come up with. She was impressed with the results.

“They blew my freakin’ mind when I gave them exercises to do,” she said. “The stuff that they said, they were just unreal.”

At the end of the hour, several students approached Weitkamp and began telling her stories of their own.

“At least six kids came up to me and started telling them about a story they knew,” she said.

“Two girls told me stories that were quite detailed and in depth.”

Another third grader was enthralled by Danny Gum’s guitar playing and during part of the exercise asked if he could play the guitar. Gum let him.

“It was obvious that he had played the guitar before,” Weitkamp said. “Once he got going, we could see he was very talented and we gave him some time to play and he wowed the crowd. When he finished, Danny pulled a guitar pick out and gave it to him. You woould have thought he gave the kid 20 bucks. His whole face just lit up.”

“That’s my favorite part of this whole thing,” Law said. “I love watching the faces of the kids light up when the story pulls them in, and I love that it gets them thinking about their own stories.”

The main storytelling event happened that night in the Cultural Arts Building. Weitkamp told a story about catfishing noodling with her Uncle Howard.

“The first part of the story is true, but I finish it with embellishments that aren’t true,” she said.

Her second story had a similar arrangement. “I took a real situation about two people named Tommy and Laura and inserted into it a folk tale out of Michigan,” she said. “It’s about the circle of life of Tommy and Laura from youth to old age.”

Davis told two humorous, true stories.  The first was a short story that came from his own family, a generation earlier, about accidents and mishaps that occurred while the boys decided to dig their own swimming pool. His second story was longer, about the fright of riding a mule into the Grand Canyon. 

Law read an original poem accompanied by Neisess on the guitar playing an original song she wrote for the occasion. The night was emceed by Mike Collins, who also emcees Page’s monthly open mic night.

Law said he had mixed feelings about this year’s storytelling festival.

“The storytellers did an amazing, amazing job, but I was very disappointed by the low attendance.”

Fewer than 50 people attended the event. Because of the low turnout, this year will be the Grand Circle Storytelling Festival’s final year, Law said.

“I really thought this is something the people of Page would be interested in,” he said. “Boy, was I wrong.”