2010 Capital Fringe Festival Wrap Up: Lessons Learned

I returned recently from ten days in Washington DC telling stories at the 5th annual Capital Fringe Festival. I'll have more to say both about my run of shows and the other performances I encountered, but here's a quick summary of some of my experiences.

1. Solo performers support solo performers.
2. A hundred and thirty shows to choose from? Doesn't matter how good your postcard is. You need buzz, targeted marketing, and personal connections. And, in DC in the summer, an air-conditioned venue.
   
3. And a good title.
4. Be nice to the venue manager. Among other things, she's in charge of the air conditioning.
5. Whether there are 12 people in the audience or 50 people, you still have to deliver.
   
6. Media outlets don't have storytelling critics. So if they send a theatre critic to review your show, they may not understand what you're doing.
7. Don't forget your vocal warmup.
8. Or your pants.
9. It is possible to do a show without air conditioning (in Washington DC in the summer), but it's not pleasant.
   
10. It is possible to do a show without a vocal warmup, but it's not pleasant.
11. It is possible to do a show without pants.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Simple idea, brilliant execution: take a fable that most people are likely to know, and ask them to tell it. Splice the tellings together.

Designer John Liu did just that with his Nikon camera:

Art of Storytelling *new from John Lui on Vimeo.

Which Would You Rather Hear?

Great story or great storyteller: which do you prefer?



(hat tip to Sean, who reminded me that this question was first put into my noggin by Priscilla Howe, who asked the question on her Storytelling Notes blog early in 2009: link)

What Transports You?

(Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I've had lots of ideas, but as it takes me about 90 minutes to 2 hours to write a blog post, it's been difficult to carve out time. So I thought up an experiment: with video, I could blurt out my thoughts for a few minutes, and shazam!, instant blog post. (While my internal editor is harsh when it comes to the printed word --a 15 minute burst of creativity turns into a couple of hours of wordsmithing and copy editing-- but when it comes to improvisation, my editor is okay with "what you see is what you get" )



So, when do stories transport you?



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Read more about the story listener's state of transportation in "The Enchanted Imagination: Storytelling's Power to Entrance Listeners," by Brian W. Sturm, American Library Association, September 27, 2006. Link.

The Storyteller's Fire (David Novak)

Stumbled across this audience warm-up: an old outdoor education standby for focusing the attention of a large group of campers, adapted here by storyteller David Novak for storytelling.

File this in the "why didn't I think of this before?" drawer.

Noted Recently (April 19, 2010)

1. The Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival, which ran April 9-11 in Southeastern Missouri, seems to be the first storytelling Festival that had live tweeting for the entire event. Stephanie Lynch, the Director of PR and Marketing for the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, muses on the Twitter feed here, but more interesting is the feed itself: http://twitter.com/capesf --when you get to the bottom click on "more" to get earlier posts.
   
   
2. Millicent, former storytelling blogger, seems to have moved on to content aggregation over at Netvibes: Tonsil: the Itinerant Storytelling Listener's Portal.
   
   
3. And this, from Tuesday's Guardian:

   "There's nothing quite as fun and exhausting as an improvised story marathon that covers everything from murderous children to wizards in forests."
   

   
   More here:
   And on the Thousandth Night... (don't miss the gallery, and view some video clips)
   

Photo courtesy Kristof Van Landschoot

Happy 100th Episode, Art of Storytelling Show

Over at The Art of Storytelling Show, Eric Wolf is celebrating 3 years of his podcast with a 100th episode jubilee. If you haven't had a chance to listen to any of Eric's podcast before, it's a veritable encyclopedia of the current storytelling revival in North America. Each episode is an interview with a working artist, producer, or academic in the storytelling community. Whether you're interested in personal stories, ghost stories, or working with stories in classrooms, you'll find something of value in one or more of these free interviews (If you've never listened, you might want to skip episode 100... it's self-referential).

I'm pleased to note that later this year, Eric Wolf will receive an award from the National Storytelling Network for Distinguished National Service, for his efforts sharing the knowledge of the storytelling community through his podcast.