Charles Dickens Alive and Well in Riverside
Showcase interviews Dickens Festival founder Carolyn Grant
We recently spoke to Carolyn Grant about the Riverside Dickens Festival. It has period costumes like a Renaissance fair but spills over with rich layers of Victorian entertainment and lore. This late-February annual event just marked its 25th season. Festival organizers sponsor an essay-writing contest in the schools, with a different Dickens theme each year. The California Writers Club lends a hand at the festival by giving an essay-writing workshop for teens.
Showcase: What was the original idea behind the Dickens Festival? You didn’t need to put Riverside on the map and Dickens isn’t a native son.
Grant: With the completion of the restoration of the National Historic Mission Inn, Riverside needed to have events and festivals bringing people to the downtown area to stay at the hotel. Friends of the Riverside Library members, Joan and Robert Patton, both excellent writers, and I decided that a literary festival would work well in Riverside. Instead of a Shakespeare festival, we chose Charles Dickens.
Showcase: Why Dickens and not another author?
Grant: Dickens was the most influential and famous writer of the 19th century. He made a difference in changing society and making a better world in which to live. The festival would highlight the library and encourage reading and enjoyment of the dramatic and cultural arts by the general public.
Showcase: The festival famously features 19th century authors portrayed by actors – Dickens of course, also Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelly and so on. They lecture. They debate each other. They draw crowds. When did you add them to the program?
Grant: In 1995, Poe was added in a play Angel in the Architecture written by Jonathan Kinsman. We always had actors portraying Dickens and Samuel Pickwick. In the first year, Joan wrote plays adapted from Oliver Twist and Great Expectations and theater groups partnered with the Friends to produce live entertainment. Attended by hundreds of students and the public, we were encouraged to continue our project so we created The Riverside Dickens Festival, a non-profit, educational organization (501) (c) (3). Here we are 25 years later doing the best we can to provide an outstanding two-day literary event.
Showcase: Was the essay contest in the plan from the start?
Grant: Yes, the Press-Enterprise Newspaper created a Dickens curriculum for their “Newspaper In Education Program” and middle school classrooms participated by writing essays on A Christmas Carol. We also have conducted workshops, book discussions for adults and dramatization contests. Each year we choose a different book for the main theme.
Showcase: Has the festival met your goals?
Grant: Yes indeed and much, much more – way beyond our original expectations. It has grown to an internationally known event with a large London Marketplace, Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball, an Evensong Choral Service, a Children’s Faire named Oliver’s Alley, Queen Victoria and Her Court, Entertainers, formal Teas — all affordable and too many to mention them all.
The Riverside Dickens Festival, Inc. is entirely operated by a volunteer board of directors, chair persons and workers. Hip , hip, hooray! Come join us. We have been fortunate to have the support of two outstanding educators, Dr. Kathy Wright and Susan Purkart, Riverside and Alvord School Systems, UCR, La Sierra University and Cal Baptist University.
Go to dickensfest.com for more about this captivating phenomenon.