On Sunday 31 October, six Australian Storytellers were honored to represent our land in a Spooktacular Story event as part of the Federation of Asian Storytellers 2021 Festival - FEAST FEST. Four stories were new creations for the event, and Jill Webster brought our unofficial national anthem to life with a fabulous shadow puppet show and good old sing song.

Christine Greenough told Uncle Fred the Ghosthunter
Jo Henwood told The Waterloo Medal
Michael Patterson told Isolation
Christine Carlton told A strange happening
Jill Webster sung and told Waltzing Matilda with shadow puppetry by Lily

Liz Locksley, MC

It was a good evening. We enjoyed the variety of styles and stories with the smooth transitions by our MC. We represented our country and mother tongue well.

The Festival was mostly about having stories that were "distinctly Asian" as their theme song stated yet it was lovely that we were invited to bring some of our Australian voices and culture to the FEAST. It was most appropriate that they acknowledged Kiran for her role in connecting us with them and maintaining a good relationship with them for our Guild institutional membership.

The extensive FEAST FEST organising team have a multiplicity of skills and enthusiasm and did a wonderful job. It was a mighty task to have taken on over a long period of time. Hopefully, they can enjoy a bit of a rest as they bring all their planning to closure.

Our team can feel a sense of relief and accomplishment now that the 'live performance' via 'the box' is over. Our tech time with the FEAST FEST team was valuable and we learnt something about zoom sound settings as well.

We continue to experiment with different sound, lighting, virtual backgrounds, shadow puppetry, singing, voice modulation etc because of "zoom". Covid has indeed challenged and invited us to continue to develop our storytelling skills in a variety of ways. .. so well done to us... MC, tellers and puppeteer!

Recordings of FEAST FEST are available until 31 December 2021.

https://www.feast-story.org/2021-FEAST-FEST

Christine Carlton, Vice-President