Dollhouse Museum hosts celebration of storytelling

One of the new events surrounding the Great American Brass Band festival will feature an art that far predates the brass music the festival is known for.The Great American Dollhouse Museum on Swope Drive will host a celebration of storytelling in conjunction with the festival. Museum director and curator Lori Kagan-Moore said the theme will be small-town life in America, with a focus on the South.Performers at the event will include Lori’s husband, Centre College drama professor Patrick Kagan-Moore, fellow Centre drama professor Matthew Hallock and local theater veteran Sean Cook. Patrick said they also are hoping to attract at least one musician with folk music influences to perform.Storytelling long has been an interest for the Kagan-Moores, who travel to numerous storytelling events such as the acclaimed National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tenn., and one held in Cave Run.Patrick is the Hazelrigg Professor of Dramatic Arts at Centre, and in addition to his involvement with theater, which includes acting and staging numerous production as a director, he is an experienced storyteller. He said the emphasis on small-town life will fit perfectly with a festival that celebrates preserving many of the same aspects of American culture. He said the museum hopes to become a place where the storytelling tradition can be preserved.“Much of the storytelling movement in America has been a movement of rural places the last 20-25 years,” Patrick said. “It came about because of the loss of the country store and other locations where the oral tradition was passed down.”Lori said storytelling already has been an important thematic element for the museum since it began.“The museum tells the story of American history, the story of miniatures and dollhouses, and the fictional stories of the miniature inhabitants of the neighborhoods and villages of the exhibition hall,” Lori said.  “The vision of the dollhouse museum was always that it would be a place where stories were told, both historical and fictional ones. It comes naturally, then, that we would bring local and professional storytellers together to share the old-fashioned art of telling, and that it should happen at the museum.”It won’t be the first time there has been storytelling at the dollhouse museum. Patrick has performed at the Halloween and Christmas holidays, as well as hosting about 250 Girl Scouts and their mothers for an outdoor event.Patrick also emphasized the event will be held indoors at the air-conditioned museum, which could give festival attendees a respite from the heat.