Of the thousands—or more likely tens of thousands—of times Dylan Pritchett has performed as a professional storyteller, his upcoming program at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg is sure to be among the most meaningful. A native of Williamsburg, Dylan returns to the Hennage Stage on June 13, decades after he helped develop and perform Colonial Williamsburg’s first programming focused on African American history.

“What we started could be looked at as the root for all of the fruit that has come forward.”

As Dylan puts it, he’s only had one employer in his life—Colonial Williamsburg, where he started as a member of the Fife and Drum Corps at age 13 and continued past high school and during summers while off from Hampton University. He then accepted a full-time administrative job at Fife and Drum, while continuing to instruct Corps members.

But in 1984, a new phase of Dylan’s career began when his position transitioned to a role in CW’s first African American programming department as an Interpretive Program Specialist. His duties were broader than the title implies. In addition to performing programs at the Hennage and in other places at Colonial Williamsburg—telling stories that illuminated the lives of enslaved children and adults—Dylan wrote programming and supervised other staff members of the African American department.

During his time performing on the Hennage Stage and elsewhere around Colonial Williamsburg, Dylan grew as a storyteller.

“The Hennage gave me a platform to try out new stories… it gave me an audience, it gave me practice to hone my storytelling skills.”

Around that time, Colonial Williamsburg began outreach programs to schools. That’s when Dylan saw an opportunity and began exploring his next career move. After taking a leave of absence for a year to make sure he could support his family, Dylan became a professional storyteller in 1990, performing in more than 100 schools per year, including in areas of rural Virginia.

“It was a time when that was a novelty. For assemblies you had the clown that comes in for the kids and you got the magician and puppeteer. And here’s this guy who tells African American stories. It’s like, wow. And to be real honest, I went into a lot of places where I was probably the only Black performer they had ever seen, of any genre. That meant a lot.”

A later partnership with the Kennedy Center took him all over the country, using his storytelling techniques to do workshops and performances to train educators. And his storytelling was again a novelty in many places. He recalls visiting New Castle, Wyoming—”three hours from nowhere”—and the educator liaison telling him, “These people have never seen a Black person in person. I said, ‘Whaaaaat?’ He said, ‘Yeah, they’ve seen Black people on TV, but they’ve never seen a Black person in person.’”

When Dylan joined Young Audiences/Arts for Learning Virginia, he was able to cut down on travel and perform primarily in Hampton Roads. He remains one of A4L’s most booked artists. Last year, he was also among a select group of artists to become credentialed as a teaching artist for A4L’s new affiliation as Coastal Virginia Wolf Trap.

Thinking about his upcoming program at the Hennage brings back some powerful memories for Dylan. He recalls performing at a festival where he and other storytellers split their program between the Williamsburg Theater and the Hennage Auditorium. It was the first time he’d ever done a program at the theater, a place where both he and his father had worked.

“My father was a custodian at the Williamsburg Theater who passed away in 1977 after I had just graduated from high school,” Dylan says. “I mentioned on the stage that my father was a custodian there, that I was an usher and had spent a lot time at the theater when we showed movies, and that was a moment. And going back to the Hennage is probably such a moment.”

You can see Dylan on Thursday, June 13 at 5:30 pm inside the Hennage Auditorium at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. This is a free, family-friendly program underwritten by the Williamsburg Area Arts Commission, Virginia Commission for the Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts. No admission ticket is required for the museum.

“I’ve been thinking about what stories to tell and I think I’m going to do a little hodgepodge. A little bit of what I used to tell there and some stuff I never had.  It’s kind of like full circle, but I hope it doesn’t complete the circle because I want to be around to go back later on too.”