Art Notes. Performances. Culture. The Good Stuff.
By Casey Gillis on Mar. 13, 2008
Rotary Club sets fifth annual Irish Festival
The Rotary Club of Lynchburg will host its fifth annual St. Patrick’s Day Irish Festival from 6 to 9 p.m. March 17, at the Academy of Fine Arts Warehouse Theatre at the corner of Commerce and Sixth streets.
Admission is $50 per person. The price includes dinner and two tickets for wine or beer. Tickets may be purchased at the Academy of Fine Arts box office, Arthur’s Jewelry, Aylor’s Farm & Garden, Blue Marlin Seafood, Barnes & Noble, Doyle’s Florist, Givens Bookstore, Hardwick’s Gifts, Macon Bookshop, The Summit, Westminster-Canterbury and SunTrust Bank at 1010 Main St. Tickets can also be charged by credit card over the phone by calling the Academy box office at (434) 846-8499. Space is limited.
Guests will enjoy Irish cuisine from Avenue Foods and lively Celtic music by Riddle on the Harp. Raffle tickets may be purchased for $10 each prior to or during the Irish Festival. Prizes include authentic items from Ireland and a drawing for a trip to Ireland.
Riverviews tackles folk tales for Third Thursday
Folk tales will be told and talked about at Third Thursdays by two people who know more than a few of them, R. Rex Stephenson and Tina Hanlon. The event is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 20, at Riverviews Artspace.
“The whole program is about Appalachian folktales,” Hanlon said.
Some are likely to be Jack tales, or wonder tales. Generally, the stories derive from European oral tradition, which took root in the Appalachian Mountains with settlers. (The hero was so often named Jack that the sub-genre of tales took that name.)
All of the folktales come from a tradition in which people might stories while working together or as a form of entertainment.
Stephenson and Hanlon both teach at Ferrum College, he in the Drama Department and she in the English Department. A shared interest in folktales led them to collaborate in the development of folktale dramatizations and talks about the tales.
Stephenson performs a mix of classic folktales and original pieces he has adapted from traditional Blue Ridge Mountain stories. He is artistic director of the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre and directs The Jack Tale Players.
Hanlon tells the story of the stories, giving an introduction based on her academic work. She has written extensively on Appalachian folktales, co-edited “An Anthology of Texts and Criticism” and has a Web site for teaching Appalachian literature to children and young adults.
For more information, call (434) 847-7277 or visit http://www.riverviews.net.
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