I can't say enough good about this dazzling event in Norwood on the second day of Dia de los Muertos this year. It was a multi-media happening with poetry, story, video, slides and music.
Craig Childs is an amazing storyteller. He had us riveted to our seats with wild yarns, asides, stories both personal and historical -- waving his arms, timing riffs to images flashed on a screen, building to suspenseful climaxes and then making us laugh hysterically before artfully transitioning to another of his trio. A maestro of the tale.
As for New Orleans-inspired blues folk guitarist Russ Chapman, I couldn't stay seated and had to get up and rockabilly a bit to his winsome lyrics and schooled performance. His song about the Wall that welcomes you in (WalMart) and his Let Bygones Go On By finale had me dancing in the foyer. Russ and Craig even did a bit of rat-a-tat playful debate and stand-up between performances. No wonder he won the 2017 Telluride Blues Challenge award at the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival.
Poet Kierstin Bridger is no stranger to awards either, having won the 2017 Women Writing the West's Willa Award and Telluride's own Fischer Prize for Poetry. Her poems wove around the theme of liminality, just as did Chapman's songs and Childs stories from his adventures in a Tibetan river, the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and Mexican caves
In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.
As Childs' shows always do, they educate, sometimes titillate, while invariably entertaining. It may be its own veiled rite of passage but expect a ritual where one can look forward to a rollicking good time.
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