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Arts Revive’s 45th Annual Tale Tellin’ Festival will be held on Thursday, Oct. 12 at Arts Revive’s Carneal Building located at 3 Church Street.

Arts Revive’s primary goal is to present a high-quality arts opportunity for the community through the recruitment of exemplary musicians, storytellers, and artists.

Leading up to the festival, tellers visit the local schools, sharing their stories and encouraging students to embrace their own creativity.

This year the schools will have two Tale Tellers:  Afryie Wekandodis and Paul Strickland. Artists delight in watching children belly laugh and they look forward to it each year.

The festival headliner, Paul Strickland, is a professional storyteller and theatre artist who lives in Kentucky. 

Strickland has over seven hours of unique family-friendly stories in his repertoire. He was an Exchange Place Teller at the National Storytelling Festival in 2018.

In November 2018 he made his NYC stage debut Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse with his shadow and flashlight ghost story play “13 Dead Dreams of “Eugene.”

Strickland was a featured teller at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.

In September Strickland was a featured teller at several major storytelling festivals, including the Cave Run Storytelling Festival in 2022. Always adapting to whatever audience is in front of him, Strickland loves telling stories in every imaginable environment, from comedy clubs to elementary and middle schools, corporate events, and even two prisons – where he was not an inmate at the time. 

Collections of his stories have won “Best of Fest” honors more than 16 times at Fringe Theatre Festivals in the U.S. and, Canada. Selections from his comedy performance “Levels of Difficulty” are still played nearly every day on SiriusXM radio.

This year’s festival will also include music by the Lamont Landers Band. Lamont Landers grew up absorbing the soulful sounds of the South that surrounded him.

At the age of 14 Landers taught himself how to play guitar, and at the age of 19 began singing.

Landers spent years quietly honing his talents behind his bedroom doors, listening to records by Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Sly & The Family Stone, and Ray Charles on repeat. The Lamont Landers Band has since become a staple in college towns and performs across the southeast bringing their joyful noise of Soul, Funk, and R&B to audiences of all sizes. Landers has also performed on shows such as “The Steve Harvey Show.”

Catering will be provided by the Valle Grande Mexican Restaurant and is included in the ticket price! There will be a cash or Venmo bar for beverages. Tickets are $25 and available on Eventbrite or at Gallery 905.

Many thanks to the State Council on the Arts for their generous support to help make this event possible.