A Southern compulsion to share stories
BENTONVILLE — Parking spaces are rare on a recent Sunday afternoon at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Cars, trucks and RVs snake into a distant gravel lot and empty out; some of the occupants take advantage of the museum’s air-conditioned shuttle to the main entrance. Others embark on a shady 10-minute walk along a wooded path through the Architecture at Home outdoor exhibition to the museum’s doors.
It’s not surprising that visitors would flock to the coolness of Crystal Bridges, especially since this is the last weekend to see “Diego Rivera’s America” exhibit. Yet there’s another event that’s filling seats in the huge Great Hall on the museum’s lower level.
A preview screening of “Southern Storytellers,” a threeepisode documentary from Arkansas PBS, is the attraction. Following a viewing of the series’ first episode is a panel discussion, led by Courtney Pledger (CEO of statewide public broadcaster Arkansas PBS) with three prominent Arkansans: Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning actor and songwriter Mary Steenburgen; Peabody Award and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Craig Renaud; and filmmaker, playwright, and co-founder of New York-based theater company Vampire Cowboys Qui Nguyen.
The audience is diverse: some in church clothes, others in White Water Tavern T-shirts and Birkinstocks. They seem to reflect what young hip-hop artist, musician, photographer, videographer and storyteller Rah Howard of Little Rock, who opens the presention, tells the crowd: “Arkansas is an unfinished piece of art; we are all ‘paintbrushes, leaving our mark.’”
Typing that sentence makes it sound mandlin. It doesn’t when he says it. The audience approves.
He’s followed by actor and playwright Mark Landon Smith, a longtime participant in the northwestern Arkansas theater scene who’s been featured on NPR’s internationally syndicated program “Tales from the South,” He enchants everyone with a can-you-believe-this-remembrance of discovering his mother’s former life as Miss Sharon on TV’s preschooler educational series “Romper Room.”
“She might as well have been Cher,” he tells the delighted audience. “Southern Storytellers” traces its roots to “State of the Art,” a onehour documentary in which Craig Renaud and his late brother Brent tell the stories of seven diverse artists from Crystal Bridges’ groundbreaking 2014 exhibit who helped redefine the American aesthetic.
“The best writers living today and 100 years from now will be legends of storytelling,” says Renaud.
Along with Steenburgen and Nguyen, the first episode features segments on novelist David Joy (“When These Mountains Burn”), singer/songwriter/poet Adia Victoria (“A Southern Gothic,” an album she wrote while working at Amazon), Billy Bob Thornton (you know who he is), and poet Jericho Brown of Atlanta. Each interlude is compelling in its own way, thanks to some of the following:
“A lot of Southerners don’t feel like real Americans” — Adia Victoria.
“The air is heavier in the South; you can feel the ghosts there” — Billy Bob Thornton, whose appearance includes comical scenes of him, his wife Connie Angland, and daughter Bella taking a walk with their healthy, portly dog Charlie being luxuriously pushed in a stroller; “arthritis,” Billy Bob tells passers-by, who cluck in sympathy.
“Poems want what you don’t know you know” — Jericho Brown, concerning the challenges of self-expression.
“I write about places, and they’re gone by the time the book comes out” —David Joy, on the disappearance of rural and small-town Southern communities.
“I had surgery on my right arm on April 17, 2007. After the anesthesia wore off, I felt weird; everything resonated musically. I started studying songwriting and worked with musicians, learning and growing. It’s become a massively important part of my life. Music is storytelling” — Mary Steenburgen, who started songwriting later in life; the film includes a charming French cabaret-style song dedicated to her husband Ted Danson titled “I Choose You.”
“I became a storyteller because I wasn’t good at anything else. ‘If you get Bs in math, you’re going to be poor,’ my mother said. Story is the only thing that any of us have of value” — Qui Nguyen, whose remark draws big laughs and is about as honest as a story can get.
Two more episodes of “Southern Storytellers” continue to explore the resilience and contributions of the region’s writers, musicians and artists via conversations with authors Jesmyn Ward, Michael Twitty, and Angie Thomas; poet Natasha Trethewey; songwriters Jason Isbell, Thao Nguyen, Lyle Lovett, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, and Amanda Shires; and screenwriter Michael Waldron.
The event is over far too soon (most events like this aren’t). Everyone is talking as they slowly leave the room. But not about the heat. Maybe they’re telling their stories too.
For more information visit https://www.myarkansaspbs.org/engage/blog/arkansas_southern_storytellers