"Mosi Village"

"Mosi Village" will be at the Syracuse Peace Council Plow Shares Arts and Crafts Festival December 3rd and 4th at Nottingham High School.  I will have story quilts, art dolls, Earth Women Pins and more for sale.  Oh and....BOOK WOMAN CLUB BOOKMARKS!!!!   You ask, yes I can hear you, what is Mosi Village?  It is the name that my friend Mardea Warner and I do our visual art under.

One night, in the early 1990's, I had this dream.  These people spoke to me.  Told me their story. Said they were Mosi...a people that I was connected to.  Ancestors.  They said that I just needed to know this.  Didn't need to do anything with it.  Just know.  At the time I had just settled on an African name for myself.  Re-naming myself.  I had tried out a name or two.  Nahila Nis Mosi for a while.  And then, Kephra Mosi was what I decided on.  Weird, huh!  I then named my business "Mosi Village" to go with the name of the people that had come to me in the dream.  I thought they weren't real.  Until a friend from the Ivory Coast saw my card and asked why I name my business "Mosi Village".  I told him about the dream and he told me that their was a real tribe named Mossi, sometimes spelled Mosi in northern Ghana and Burkina Faso!  Weirder, huh?  I did some research on this tribe and found out that they had ruled a portion of Ghana in Ghana's history.
Then I went to Africa in 1990...to Ghana.  Several of the women that I traveled with looked like the woman in the northern part of Ghana that we had traveled to.  In the Bolgatanga area.  The women there called them their sisters.  And so, as we traveled through Ghana, I kept looking for my face.  And asking elders, "Who do I look like?"  Three times, in different areas of the country I was told, "You should look for your people in Burkina Faso.  You look like you are from the Mossi People."  Yeah....Weird!

See you at Plow Shares...and Happy Thanksgiving!

"To boldly go where you have never gone before!"

     I have been a storyteller and a performer for over two decades now.  I have acted in many plays and have been in one musical.  I have performed and lectured at many Universities and Colleges across the country.  I have done numerous presentations for corporations, and I have performed at hundreds of community events.  I am always scared!  No matter how many prerformances I do, I am always scared before each and every one!  But nothing was as so unnerving as a reading that I did this past Saturday at the Women's Information Center on Allen Street in Syracuse, New York .  I WAS TERRIFIED!!!!!
     It was a wonderful event and I was honored to be asked to be a participant along with such talented writers as Wendy Gonyea, A. J. Bialo, Lorrie Sprecher and Akosua Y. Woods.  We were invited to read from our short stories, poetry, novels, plays...our written work.  Now, I don't write down the stories that I tell during performance.  They are forever works in progress.  They evolve and change with each telling.   Some voices more prominent this time in the telling, and then others more prominent in the next.  I love telling stories in the ancient oral tradition of the Griots that have told the life of the African Continent for centuries.  I think that it is my calling to tell stories.  I think that it is something that I am good at and could never think of living without this art of the spoken word.
     Now, I am also a writer.  I have written and produced several plays for children, and have in the past managed and directed plays for a children's theater group for five years.  My first adult play, "Doors" will be produced next fall in Syracuse and I am working on a new play for adult consumption.  I write and direct Murder Mystery Parties.  My favorite genre is short stories and I have a novel in the works.  (Tired my hand at poetry, but it's not my forte!)  I even have The Book Woman Club blog.  I have all this work on paper and thumb-drives...but I have never done a "reading".  The words of these works have either been performed by others, or have sat for years patiently and quietly on the pages of my notebooks, without hope, without thought, that they would ever be be spoken out-loud.  I've always dreamed of publishing some of these words, but I never ever thought about reading them out-loud to anyone besides the members of the writing group that I belong to, the G - Riot Writing Group.
     But, Saturday, I dusted off paper, wrapped my tongue around words and stood in front of a bunch of people, (most of them strangers), and read!  I felt inadequate, and self-conscious, and untalented, and awkward!  "What am I doing up here?" I kept thinking.  I felt naked.   You see, when I tell stories...that is another persona.  The storyteller "Vanessa".  She is creative, confident, knowledgeable, talented and well rehearsed.  She brings with her all of the tools of storytelling.  Voice, Space, Movement, Gestures, Facial Expressions, and Eye Contact!  (Actually, there are a bunch of  "Vanessa" s.  They all handle specific adventures in life.  We won't go into all of the "Vanessa"s here.  It would be a life-long story.)  The point is...that before Saturday there was no "reading" "Vanessa".  Now, I love new adventures.  I seek actively seek them out.  I am not a coward in my approach to life.  Which is why I said "yes" when I was asked to read.  But...like most of my adventures in life, I didn't think this one out.  I could tell you some stories!  (Not right now!)  I found myself breaking all of the rules of public presentation.  I rocked back and forth.  I hardly every took my face of the paper that I was reading from to make eye contact with the audience.  I kept crossing and uncrossing my feet.  I'm sure I mumbled.  (I don't think I picked my nose or scratched my butt!)  I read too fast.  I read too slow.  I wanted to drop through the floor in embarrassment! 
     I am so glad that amnesia is an option!  I'm already beginning to forget the details of my behavior during Saturday's reading.  The whole terrifying experience is conveniently fading into the memory file I call "mistakes".  What was I thinking when I said yes to doing a reading?  Will I ever do a reading again?  I don't know.  I want to say no, no way will I ever stand naked in front of a crowd again without my storytelling persona!  But, then, I do like challenges!  Since I was in 6th grade and did a report on Leonardo De Vince, I have embraced the idea of trying to be a Renaissance Woman!  I have always stove to be accomplished in as many things as possible in this lifetime! To give myself permission to do...everything!  (Star Trek music begins to softly plays in the background.)  To seek out new skills and new adventures!  To boldly go where I have never gone before!  (Music rises.)   Hey?  Isn't life an adventure?  (Black Out)

Imagine!

I will be doing a 20 minute story-tell at the Barnes and Nobel on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse, on Saturday November 19th sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 for an Imagine Syracuse Celebration.  I was just informed by Jesse Keating - the Ex.Director of Imagine that Bill Cosby will be there during the same time doing a book signing!  Awesome!  So - friends...come on by!  The Imagine Kids will be performing, I will tell stories and the one and only Mr. Bill Cosby will be there signing books for his book tour!!!!  Wow!

"Victoria"

I have changed the nature of the main character of my new play "Washing Hair".  She was too young, too unfocused, too flighty and too unsure of herself.  She was too much like the me that I used to be.  I didn't like her and did not want to write about her.   She was getting on my nerves.  And so I have rewritten her.    I began writing this play, this Victoria in the mid 90's.  I was so different then than I am now.  So, now, I made Victoria stronger, more directed, more reflective of her life.  I have to make sure that she is not too serious, that she has humor. My writing can be too morose, to dark and sad.  I want this play to have more laughter than the last play.  Since so much of my characters are made up of the shadows of myself...I guess I need to laugh at myself more.