Our 30th anniversary: story pearls!
This year, the Montreal Intercultural Storytelling Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary; according to tradition, this is our pearl anniversary! For thirty years, storytellers from around the world have been converging on Montréal in October for one of the biggest storytelling festivals in the world. The Festival has always given a place of honor to English artists.
Spotlight on two distinguished guests
This year we are happy to welcome world-renowned artist Daniel Morden, from Wales. Since 1989 Daniel Morden has travelled the world, telling traditional tales. He is known for lucid, poignant and authentic retellings of Greek and Roman myths as well as for thrilling adventures and absurd nonsense. In 2017 he was awarded the Hay Festival Medal for his services to storytelling. He has written several award-winning anthologies of traditional material. “One of the UK’s finest storytellers,” according to the BBC.
The Festival will also welcome Doctor Judith Cohen, ethnomusicologist and singer, who tells songs and sings stories. She is internationally known as a specialist in Sephardic songs and related diaspora traditions, including Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, Francophone Canada, and Medieval Iberia and Provence. Montreal-born, she lives in Toronto and teaches part-time at York University.
Pearls of joy, pearls of wisdom: English gala
For this year’s gala, six storytellers will be sharing the pearls of their repertoire: stories of joy, celebration, and wisdom. We begin with the celebratory hoop dance of Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk) dancer Barbara Diabo; we then travel from Wales to Morocco, passing back through Québec and the Maritimes, to celebrate the richness of our diversity and the power of human connection.
To end the Festival, Confabulation presents: Boo! Stories of goosebumps, ghostly encounters and the things that still haunt you. Confabulation, Montreal’s original true-life storytelling series is thrilled to return to the Montreal Intercultural Storytelling Festival with another night of stories, true as we can tell them. Join us for six stories, shared by the people that lived them. Expect the unexpected for this evening of stories exploring the inexplicable!
Have a wonderful festival!
