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Local Philadelphia Favorite Ed Stivender makes his third appearance at the Lower Brandywine Storytelling Festival, again serving as Master of Ceremonies for the Evening Session. Ed has been called "the Robin Williams of storytelling" as well as "a Catholic Garrison Keillor."
He is a Shakespearean actor, banjo player, teacher, theologian, Mummer, dreamer, juggler, and raconteur. Since 1977, when Ed left his day job as a high school teacher in Connecticut and turned to storytelling full-time, he has fabulated his way around the globe, appearing in schools, churches, coffeehouses and theaters, as well as at major storytelling festivals.
He has been a featured performer at the National Storytelling Festival; the Cape Clear Island International Storytelling Festival in Ireland; Graz Festival, Austria and our own local Philadelphia Folk Festival.
Ed has also strutted in the Comic division of the annual Philadelphia Mummers Parade since 1982. In 1994, he received the Mummers' Most Original Character Award for his one-man Vatican-American String Band, and in 1996, he was Captain of the first-prize-winning Kingsessing Morris Men.
Ed is the subject of a chapter in the book Storytellers by Corki Miller and Mary Ellen Snodgrass, and has a story in Chicken Soup for the Romantic Heart. He has also authored two books of his own: Raised Catholic (Can You Tell?) and Still Catholic (After All These Fears).
The National Storytelling Association (now the National Storytelling Network) inducted Ed into its prestigious Circle of Excellence in 1996.
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