Art Scene: The Door to Spoken Word
Paula Morell (left) with "Q.V." by V.L. Cox, whose artwork serves as the backdrop of "Tales from the South."
photography by Nancy Nolan and Vanessa Wurtz
If you haven’t experienced an evening of “Tales from the South,” clear your Tuesday night calendar. There is nothing more fundamentally enjoyable than the art of storytelling — as long as humans have been living, they have been telling stories. It was one of our first art forms and a way to pass along history. It is an ingrained form of expression that anyone can do … but not nearly as well as a southerner. Combine this art with delicious food and drink, live music and friendly company in one of central Arkansas’ most up-and-coming neighborhoods, and you have a memorable, if not perfect, evening out.
“Tales from the South” is a weekly radio show and event that features writers telling their true stories to a live audience at the Starving Artist Café in the Argenta Arts District of North Little Rock, Arkansas. Host Paula Morell founded the project more than five years ago when she found herself with a collection of southern stories she thought worthy of sharing with the public.
“At the time, I was an English professor teaching online courses; a colleague of mine sent out a call for true stories hoping to get a storytelling program going in California. I sent the request to a few of my friends and got back about 10 really great stories. My colleague’s project fell through, so I was left with these stories that I didn’t know what to do with,” Morell said. She had the idea to take them to KUAR, the National Public Radio affiliate in Little Rock licensed to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, to see if they could get one show out of them. That show got such a great response that KUAR asked if she could produce a weekly show.
As co-owner of Starving Artist Café, the aforementioned gourmet bistro and art gallery; founder, publisher and editor of Temenos Publishing Company, which is her passion; and dedicated wife and mother of three, a full-time job in itself, Morell has never been one to have ample free time; but not wanting to pass up the opportunity, she agreed to take on “Tales from the South” on a monthly basis.
She and husband Jason opened the Starving Artist Café in downtown Little Rock in 2005. The restaurant was designed to combine the Morells' passion for great food and local art, by creating a venue for local artists and musicians to showcase their work as well as offer fresh, creative and made-from-scratch menu items. The restaurant’s success allowed them to move to the up-and-coming Argenta Arts District in 2008, where they continue to delight diners with their cutting-edge ideas.
Morell founded Temenos Publishing Company in 2005 — the same year she began producing “Tales from the South” — as a way to feed her passion for the written word. Temenos is a small literary press that publishes two to four books of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction annually. She has published 12 titles thus far, including Snapshots of Vietnam: The Unraveling of a Non-Combatant by Arkansan James F. Marsh; End to Ending: An Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker's Story by Tanner Critz; three volumes of “Tales from the South” stories; and others.
When North Little Rock’s William F. Laman Library System took over sponsorship of “Tales from the South” last month, they also took on Morell as the library’s literary projects manager, giving her yet another hat to wear, which should fit very well considering her passion for literature.
“Editing, publishing and literature are my first passions,” Morell said. “I’m excited to be able to focus more attention on this project and to step back from running the restaurant. The restaurant business is very hard,” she said.
“The first five years we did the show, we did it on a night the restaurant was closed and only opened the bar. It was not very publicized at all. It was just readings, not the event that it is now. We went on this way until our budget grew as a result of the sponsorship from Laman Library and funding from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation as well. We have really grown and developed our show with their help,” Morell said. “For the first five years, I did it as a volunteer, as a side project, but in the last 16 weeks — with our sponsors’ help — it has changed and grown so much, and I have been able to make it a top priority.”
Last September marked the program’s move to the weekly format, and Morell said all but one of the shows has sold out. “It is best to get there early, as it is usually standing room only,” she said.
“Tales from the South” is held at the Starving Artist Café each Tuesday. There are two formats for the event, a “regular” event and the Tin Roof Project, which is a special variation held on the first Tuesday of the month.
The “regular” event includes live music by the house band, and the restaurant serves dinner from the regular menu, beginning at 5 p.m. This is free and open to the public. Patrons are encouraged to sit, dine and enjoy refreshments from the bar. At 7 p.m., the live taping and storytelling begins; Morell, the program’s host, introduces the first speaker of the night. Three to four writers grace the “stage,” decorated with a backdrop of artist V.L. Cox's Delta-inspired, mixed-media screen door murals, one after the other, and entertain and enthrall with the true stories from their lives.
Tin Roof events’ agenda varies slightly as they are sponsored by a company or organization that reserves the restaurant for the evening. The event is considered “sold out” as you must be invited as one of the 100 guests of the event’s sponsor. There is a set, three-course menu for these events, which feature live music and one storyteller. Tin Roof storytellers tend to be more well-known southerners, who entertain with a longer tale. Past speakers have included Mara Leveritt, author of Devil’s Knot and expert on the trials of the West Memphis Three; Suzi Parker, author of Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt; Lawrence Hamilton, Broadway actor, singer and dancer; and Grif Stockley, author of Ruled by Race: Black White Relations in Arkansas From Slavery to the Present.
Any southerner can submit a story to “Tales from the South.” Storytellers must live in the south or be from the south originally; and their stories must be true and written in first-person. Stories can be humorous or serious, and up to 2,000 words in length. Once a story is accepted, Morell works with the author to edit and mold the story into a compelling spoken-word piece.
“Honestly, I’m not surprised by the success of this program,” Morell said. “People have been starving for this kind of thing. Our ultimate goal is to give people a way to tell their stories. In our society, we are losing that personal connection. We no longer tell stories … we are texting and e-mailing. We have forgotten how to sit and tell a story, how to preserve our oral history.”
“Tales from the South” is broadcast Thursdays at 7 p.m. on KUAR (FM89.1) in central Arkansas. You can find it streaming online at kuar.org, Thursdays at 9 a.m. or listen along with 140 million European listeners on World Radio Network at wrn.org. For more information, log onto talesfromthesouth.com. For reservations at Starving Artist Café, call (501) 372-7976.
