Children and adults will get to feel the Halloween spirit this week on the campus of Illinois College.
Three master storytellers will be on hand to spin spooky tales of the season for the Tales After Dark event happening this Wednesday at 6:30 pm.
Jacksonville’s own Mike Anderson, brings along two very talented friends for the event. Anderson joined the AM Conversation on WLDS this morning, speaking highly about the two pals who will be sharing in the spooky this Wednesday.
“We have myself telling some stories and two of my friends, Kath Brinkmann and another guy by the name of Bobby Norfolk, and they are so far above me in the storytelling world, uh,- it hurts. They are national level, Emmy winning storytellers who just came back from the National Storytelling Festival.”
Bobby Norfolk is an emmy winning storyteller who got his start working for the National Parks Department in St. Louis at the Gateway Arch. Mr. Norfolk is one of the regular “tellers” at the National Folk Festival for ghost and spooky stories.
Anderson, Norfolk and Keding will all keep their audiences in spooky suspense while performing in different locations on the IC campus quad. Anderson explained how the moving part of the event will work.
“The Audiences are going to be moving around on the campus. We have threes different stages, so I’ll be at one, Kath will be at one and Bobby will be at one, and we will each do about 200 to 25 minutes of stories. And then we have lantern carrying hosts who will lead the audience to the next stage. So you are actually going to be moving around the campus going from teller to teller, as rather than sitting in one place and just being talked at.”
Dr. Garrett Allman, Music Director and Conductor at Illinois College said that this is a new type of event for the fine arts series this year.
“We have added two programs to our usual affair, because this is the 40th anniversary season of the Fine Arts Series. So we have this event and then in March we have Roots of Rural Music with Chris Vallillo. These are both Wednesday, early evening events. We encourage families to bring the kids this week to come out and enjoy the fall evening.”
Tales After Dark will be at the upper quad at IC starting at 6:30 pm. Tickets for the event are $5.00 for adults, with both children and students free to attend. Admission for Fine Arts Series season subscribers is also free.
Attendees should go to the patio on the north side of Baxter Hall to meet for the event. The crowd will then be divided into the three groups to start the evening.