A storytelling festival? We spontaneously think of Fred Pellerin, children’s albums or story time at the library. But a story is more than that. These stories delve into the heart of the human soul, with its dramas, fears and desires, and can perhaps even heal people.
“A story is really something other than the little stories you read in the library. Storytellers reinvent with each new generation stories that are part of the world heritage of humanity,” summarizes Stéphanie Bénéteau, director of the Montreal Intercultural Storytelling Festival.
This event, little known to the general public, is on display for a 15e year starting Friday (the festival has been presented every two years since 1993). This year’s edition offers a high-level program, with 52 shows presented in 35 locations, in almost every neighborhood of the city. Artists from half a dozen countries will come and tell their stories to the public.
“Stories contain all the dreams, desires and fears of humanity,” says Stéphanie Bénéteau, who is herself a storyteller – and “intercultural”, like her festival, since she was born in Italy to a mother American and a Franco-Ontarian father.
She speaks movingly of the incomparable “intensity” that emerges from a storytelling performance. An evening of storytelling is perhaps the best antidote to the perverse effects of phones and digital platforms, which compete in ingenuity to captivate humans in our “attention economy”.
“The tale is a story that demands our complete attention,” says the storyteller. You have to live the experience of listening to a story: everything goes out, everything disappears, even the walls and ceilings. The audience is fully engaged with us. »
You have to live the experience of listening to a story: everything goes out, everything disappears, even the walls and ceilings
Mme Bénéteau remembers an enlightenment experienced around ten years ago in Lebanon. She went to deliver stories to young Syrian refugees who barely knew French. Beyond the language, his young audience was hypnotized by the tales: “The borders have fallen. There came a point when refugees stopped being refugees. It was a sharing of very, very great intensity. »
Founding myths
The audience of the Intercultural Storytelling Festival will experience intense moments like this between October 20 and 29, promises the director. Fred Pellerin, undoubtedly one of the greatest Quebec storytellers, is not on the bill for the event. But the public will find what they are looking for.
Artists of Quebec origin, as well as from the Mohawk nation, France, Lebanon, Vietnam, Belgium, Eastern Europe and elsewhere, will come to tell their stories. Stories, dance and music are on the program.
The Lebanese Jihad Darwiche and his daughter Layla, born in France, will evoke African founding myths during the opening evening of the Festival, Friday, as well as the following evening.
The storyteller Ladji Diallo, born in the French suburbs of Malian parents, will bridge the gap between the West and its African lands.
On Sunday, October 29, a round table will even ask whether the story can heal: “Does the story contain some medicinal virtue in its roots? In addition to soothing and relieving, can stories participate in the healing process? How does this magic manifest in clinical practice? » A storyteller, two doctors and a medical anthropologist will share their thoughts with the audience.
“A common good”
A storytelling festival held in Montreal is necessarily “intercultural”, since the spectators come from a wide range of cultures. But the very essence of this art is intercultural, explains Stéphanie Bénéteau, who describes herself as a “storytelling missionary”.
“Tales are generally anonymous stories from oral tradition and which belong to everyone. It is a common good. We find the same stories in many different cultures,” says the festival director.
It is a common good. The same stories are found in many different cultures.
One of the most famous tales in the world, that of Cinderella, was not invented by Disney. It comes rather from China and was transmitted to Europe, South America and among the indigenous people of North America, underlines Mme Beneteau. This story addresses eternal myths like family violence and how appearances can be deceptive when it comes to human torment.
A dive into the human soul, they said. With almost magical powers.