To honor Black History Month, Valerie Tutson and Marlon Carey from Rhode Island Black Storytellers are joining us. Not only will they tell us all about their impactful nonprofit, but we also will have a very special performance from them after the interview.
Below is an edited and condensed version of host Anaridis Rodriguez’s interview with Valerie and Marlon. You can watch the in-depth conversation here.
ANARIDIS: Tell us about your nonprofit and your education program.
VALERIE: Sure, the Rhode Island Black Storytellers, otherwise known as RIBS, was born 26 years ago, which is hard to believe. We were like 2 years old when it was founded, and it was born because we wanted to bring a Black storytelling festival to Rhode Island. Ramona Bass Kolobe, who’s one of our co-founders and I were sitting together over tea in her kitchen, and money was available through the Rhode Island Foundation to celebrate Black arts and artists in (the) community. And we said, “We wanna do a festival. Let’s call it the Funda Fest, and let’s call ourselves Rhode Island Black Storytellers, RIBS,” and we were born specifically because we wanted to bring the diversity of Black storytelling to our community. So that’s what we’ve been doing.
ANARIDIS: And Funda Fest, which you just mentioned, is now in its 26th year. ... You kicked off Black History Month with an incredible lineup of creatives and performances and storytelling. Tell us about this year’s experience.
VALERIE: It was pretty amazing. We could go backwards first because we finished up with a day of Black History, and that was really wonderful because Sylvia Ann Soars did “Nancy Elizabeth Prophet.” ... who was a Black Indigenous woman who graduated from the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), and has her first exhibition at RISD as we speak. Never before has there, so we were excited to lift her up and celebrate her. We had two films that were locally done. One by one of our storytellers, Rochel Garner Coleman, about Black tennis.
MARLON: Absolutely. “Fully Ourselves”, it’s an amazing film. And then we were a part of it, and we actually were, Val starred in it. We definitely had...
VALERIE: Oh, right. Come on. You were in it too. ... And that was supported by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, which was great, and the Black Philanthropy Fund, and a lot of good support for that. And then we also premiered a Black Baseball in Rhode Island film that was called “The Price of Admission.” And then we celebrated with...
MARLON: Closing out with a spectacular show by April Armstrong, Bessie Coleman, which is an amazing production of Bessie Coleman. ...
VALERIE: “Two Wings to Heaven.”
MARLON: Black female pilot is what I was gonna say.
VALERIE: Yeah, so that was our last day. I mean, we did everything from hip hop, spoken word, family fun day, kids performed. In fact, we had performers from five years old to 82 on our lineup.
ANARIDIS: That is just beautiful. Marlon, you took on a new role recently in the festival. Tell us how you first started performing at the festival and what you’re doing now.
MARLON: We were talking about that at the kickoff, the opening party that we did at our partnership with Rites and Reasons there at the George Bass performing arts space. And so we threw our party there, we were able to borrow some fireworks, some water fires, we were doing all this, and we’re talking about how long we’ve been affiliated. So I’d been working and doing plays at Rites and Reasons since my daughter, who’s 16, was 3, so first 13 years. And around the time I became affiliated with Rites and Reasons, I started sort of hanging around and being involved with RIBS. And I really ended up directing a couple of specific Words and Music productions, and then they trusted me to, “Hey, you want to do this production manager thing?” And it was the 25th anniversary, let’s do three weekends and not just one.
ANARIDIS: You define Funda Fest as a celebration of Black storytelling. Talk to us about that.
VALERIE: Well that’s, it’s interesting. Two thoughts go in my head. One is, wow, what an interesting question to answer in 2024, post-2020 in a way. And yet it goes on and on, right? So we’ve always been really clear that other people are putting our stories out in ways that don’t always make us look good. And oftentimes, we ourselves get caught up in the trauma stories of what it means to be Black in this world. And those are very important stories. However, we also, again, wanna show the breadth of our experience, and we wanna celebrate all of who we are. Like first and foremost, this is a place for us to kind of lay out the table a smorgasbord of our experience and who we are, and that’s a celebration. And for 26 years, that’s been the idea. This is celebrating us. We want people to always feel uplifted. We want them to feel inspired. We want them to learn something. They might go, “Ooh,” you know? And it’s for everybody.
ANARIDIS: Tell us about your education outreach program, and what your goals are as you expand.
VALERIE: So when we first started our festival, we had three storytelling performances in one school. This year, between January and February, at this moment, we have 70 performances booked all across the state of Rhode Island. ... I used to work on a festival, the Johnny Cake Storytelling Festival, which was a lovely festival in South County at the end of September every year. And it was always frustrating for me because, you know how Rhode Islanders are, they’re not traveling to South County if they live up here in Providence or Pawtucket, they’re not going.
ANARIDIS: Not unless we’re packing a lunch. ... Can you share a reflection with us, both of you, of what’s your takeaway after experiencing something like that with a classroom and seeing just the wonder and the joy that you bring when you come home? What’s your reflection? What brings you back to doing that again?
MARLON: You might be similar. I mean, it’s just, Valerie has become a parent in the last few years, but she’s watched me sort of grow into a parent. So as a parent who becomes, I’ve been doing poetry and storytelling for a while, but doing it through RIBS and going in with this role of the storyteller, and I’m doing and performing, and you light up the auditorium full of young minds. And you remember when you were young and the storyteller came and you were lit up and you had to go and shake hands or like some people come and hug your knees. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to bring such good, and when you leave and you come home to your own children, you hope that there’s a storyteller at their school that did the same sort of thing. It’s an amazing feeling to feel you just, and you receive it, you really do receive a lot of ...
VALERIE: Love.
MARLON: Love back. I mean, absolutely. People are more and more calling storytellers in to bring back the communities post COVID to reestablish the balance and ground everyone. But just certainly that the communities are asking for it. They really, really want us to come in and help. And it’s a important role that I’m, we are all aware of, I believe.
VALERIE: And we don’t know when Len Cabral, for example, has been, he inspired me when I got to Providence. So he’s been doing this, what? 40, more than 40 years probably. And Ramona Bass Kolobe as well, right? So for me, one of the, a story that just popped in my head was going to a school last year, and the principal stood up in front of this middle school and said, “I am so excited to have the Rhode Island Black Storytellers here. Because when I was a kid at the elementary school in Fox Point, this woman came into my school, and it was the first time I saw myself.” And she said, “I knew when I saw her that I could be anyone I dreamed of being.” And she said, “Now I want you all to have this experience.”
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