AS WITH all other things, Guyana is late with this year’s celebrations for World Storytelling Day, which has as its 2018 theme, “Wise Fools”, a phrase that is applicable to many parts of Guyanese life and literature. While March 20 is the date designated for World Storytelling Day, the Department of Social Cohesion, Youth and Sport in collaboration with the National Drama Company and the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama, will be hosting an evening of storytelling, scheduled for Monday, 9th April, at the Umana Yana from 18:00hrs. The evening is the storytelling counterpart part to the World Poetry Day event, which was held last week, and has become a yearly feature that seeks to introduce the public to literary works that are being produced by young and upcoming writers, while also often paying tribute to established writers, including international works put forward by the Embassies and foreign Commissions that are representative of whichever country they emerged from.

The opportunity to go to the Umana Yana to listen to stories might seem like a maudlin idea to some Guyanese people, but that is more of a reflection on those people and the lack of literary knowledge they possess or know how to use, rather than being representative of the merits involved in telling stories. Stories, in a way, might be regarded as the foreground from which many contemporary ideas and ideologies emerged. It was from stories that we got religion – as ancient peoples devised tales to explain the natural phenomena (lightning, fire, drought) around them that they could not yet understand. Stories were one of the first ways of passing on valuable lessons to future generations – whether they taught life-skills, societal expectations, or morality (as seen in some of Aesop’s fables, or those from the Bible for example). Some stories have even helped to launch, inspire the creation of, or improve important technological inventions that we use today. “Smithsonian Magazine” highlights one such example in inventor Simon Lake who was so inspired by Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” that he was inspired to make innovations that resulted in the creation of the first submarine to function in open ocean waters. Another example from the magazine also highlights another Jules Verne book, in “Clipper of the Clouds” which inspired Igor Sikorsky, the man who invented the modern helicopter.

Stories also served the simple purpose of entertaining the people of long ago. They shaped new worlds and peoples and creatures and allowed the listeners to escape into the fantasy of the story, to dwell there under the sea or in the volcanic mountain, to brew potions with the witches or to run with the pack of wolves, to slay the dragon and rescue the princess or to outsmart the troll and steal his chests of gold. Stories enabled us to use our imaginations as a form of entertainment and as a form of escape.

While storytelling was clearly an important part of all cultures in the past, the question has begun to arise: is storytelling still relevant? The response to this has to do with an observation of the fact that stories still serve all, and more, of the purposes highlighted above. Therefore, if it is still essential for us to understand our environment, to pass lessons on to our children, to be inspired by allowing stories to expand our imagination, or if we simply want to be entertained, then yes, stories are still very much relevant.
With technology, the format has changed somewhat – as stories are readily available on screens as movies or as downloadable/instantly readable books. However, the communal aspect that storytelling once lent itself to is still an extremely worthy aspect of this tradition to pursue, especially for a society like Guyana. The World Storytelling Day event is usually held at the Umana Yana, where the audience sits with the storytellers until one by one the storytellers go up to regale the audience with their stories. In this way, not only do the listeners form a single community that listens to the stories, but it is a community where the writers themselves are listeners at some point or the other – sitting with the audience, watching their storytelling peers perform until it is their turn to take to the stage. The relationship between the storyteller and the audience, in this case, becomes a complicated one as it allows interactions between people without separating them into factions (storytellers/audience, me/others, etc.). In a country often forced to deal with its division in uncomfortable ways, communal storytelling can be a way of dealing with issues (race, religion, the environment, sexuality) or anything else that is necessary for us to confront as a people, together, in order to heal, move forward, or be successful at whatever it is we want to do as a nation.

On Monday, in the Umana Yana – the famous benab by the sea – there will be stories surrounding the theme of “Wise Fools”, which brings to mind a host of figures from Guyanese folklore. It promises to be an evening filled with culture, laughter, and the formation of many new and lasting relationships all built on a love of stories.