A Traveling Storyteller’s Return to the Renaissance
- Loveday Funck
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
There’s a particular kind of rain that seems to fall only on festival days.
The kind that smells of wet canvas and laughter, that slicks the grass into emerald mirrors, and that makes you clutch your skirts and remember that you’re alive, gloriously, inconveniently alive.
Yesterday, I stood beneath that sort of rain outside the Livingston Parish Library, watching puddles bloom between the book tents and wondering whether Lady Fairfax, my first character of the day, would approve of such weather. She would, I think. She’s a woman who enjoys a bit of drama, who believes every thunderclap is simply applause from the heavens.
It was the tenth anniversary of the Livingston Parish Book Festival, and Boomerang Comedy Theater had kindly invited me to help bring a little Renaissance mischief to the celebration. The plan had been grand, a full day of quests, escape rooms, and courtly games, but the rain had its own script to follow. So we adapted, as traveling storytellers always do.
Children darted beneath umbrellas and canopies, wide-eyed and laughing, more enchanted by the swordplay of raindrops than any stage could promise. A few brave souls joined us, curious enough to see what a lady of the court and a wandering minstrel might be doing among the paperback kingdoms.
By afternoon, Lady Fairfax had handed her jeweled fan to Rosy Nightingale, a bright-voiced troubadour who sings when the weather turns dreary. (They are, after all, two halves of the same heart.) Together we spun tales, improvised riddles, and tried to conjure a bit of wonder from the damp air.
The Rain Writes Its Own Stories
It wasn’t the day I’d imagined, but it was the day the story required. There’s a strange alchemy in that, the way rain reshapes a performance, softening edges, blurring time. A good storyteller learns to bend with it, to follow the thread even when the loom changes shape.
I’ve learned that lesson before. It had been nearly a decade since I last laced up my Renaissance garb, since 2014 and 2015, when I served on cast at the Louisiana Renaissance Faire. I remember the smell of hay and woodsmoke, the clatter of armor, the peculiar magic of becoming someone else entirely. Back then, I played women who existed halfway between myth and memory, much like I do now, though the corsets have given way to microphones and moonlit scripts.
Putting on those layers again, the velvet, the ribbons, the stories stitched into the seams, felt like stepping through a door I’d forgotten was still open.
The Traveling Storyteller’s Creed
Perhaps that’s what it means to be a traveling storyteller: to carry doors with you. Some open onto festivals; others onto art markets, podcasts, or quiet booths filled with candles and prints. Wherever we go, we invite the world to step inside, to listen for a heartbeat of wonder beneath the noise.
Even in the rain. Especially in the rain.
Closing the Book (for Now)
By the time the festival wound down, my heart was full, of laughter, of rain, of the faint ache that comes from returning to something beloved and realizing it never truly left you.
As I packed away Lady Fairfax’s fan and Rosy’s metaphorical songbook, I thought about how many stories begin with a storm. Maybe that’s why it rained, to remind us that even the best-laid tales need a little chaos to keep them honest.
And so, another chapter begins in the journey of the Traveling Storyteller, damp, delighted, and already wondering where the next road will lead.
“Stories are umbrellas,” I whispered to myself as I locked the car. “They don’t stop the rain, but they make us brave enough to walk through it.”
Until next time, my friends, may your roads be muddy and your hearts wide open.
Some women carry storms inside them, quiet ones, the kind that change a room without a sound. Evelyn is one of those.
In the world of Tongue of the Serpent, she walks through New Orleans with the weight of secrets and the grace of someone who has survived too much. No one can quite agree on what she is, healer, heretic, or something older still, but everyone feels the air shift when she enters a room.
This portrait captures that impossible stillness: the moment before a candle gutters out, or before a story begins to tell itself.
Tongue of the Serpent is a New Orleans Southern Gothic audio series where myth and memory blur, and every beautiful thing hides a shadow. If you listen closely, you might hear her voice there, guiding you, warning you, or perhaps waiting for you.
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