By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
A storytelling event on Tuesday will take listeners back in time – but the stories remain as relevant today as they were when they were told.
“Wet Feet: Stories On, Under and Of the Sea” is one of the Stories from the Vault from the Artchange’s Sitka Tells Tales series.
The event will air 7 to 8 p.m. on KCAW-FM Raven Radio.
Six storytellers and one songwriter related their tales in August 2017 in a live broadcast before an audience that packed the BEAK restaurant. The event was recorded but hasn’t been heard since then.
Storytellers are Ellen Chenoweth, Vivian Mork, Jacqui Foss, Chuck Miller, Burgess Bauder, and Renee Trafton. Ted Howard plays a song.
Ellen Chenoweth speaks at an Aug. 11, 2017, storytelling event. (Photo provided)
Artchange director and filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein worked with KCAW’s Dave Emmert to “clean up” the recording for broadcast. She said the stories are relevant four years later, and deserve a fresh listen, even for people who were there for the first live event.
It also may feel like a welcome break to the day-to-day challenges of the pandemic, she said.
“There’s no references – it feels pre-COVID,” Frankenstein said. “It still feels like a live event that happened in a time we didn’t know about COVID.”
Sitka Tells Tales is a live storytelling series that airs on the third Tuesday of every other month. In pre-COVID times, the events were held live in venues such as BEAK, Fisheye Cafe and the basement of the Mean Queen. During COVID, the storytellers have been together on Zoom, and the events are broadcast live.
On the alternate third Tuesdays – including this Tuesday – Frankenstein is choosing Stories from the Vault, which will be the broadcast of a live storytelling event from her archives.
Even though it’s a recording, the Stories from the Vault program Tuesday will still meet the mission and goals of Sitka Tells Tales.
“It brings the community together,” said Spencer Severson, when Frankenstein asked her husband the purpose of Sitka Tells Tales.
Frankenstein agreed and added, “At this point in time, it’s a way to connect, and hear each other. We can hear of each other’s common joys and struggles. If we can’t laugh together (at a live event), we can laugh or cry in our living rooms and at our kitchen tables.”
Artchange and KCAW have just started putting the recordings of live and Zoom events into a podcast “Sitka Tells Tales.” Three have been posted so far, and Frankenstein said “Wet Feet – Part 1” will be posted soon. She added that the “Wet Feet” topic was so popular there have been three live events around the same theme. The Wet Feet storytelling evenings were held in collaboration with the Sitka Seafood Festival.
The next live Zoom event is “Being in the Question: Stories of Science and Curiosity” 7 p.m. October 19 on Raven Radio. Artchange is collaborating with the Sitka Sound Science Center and Whale Fest.
