2012 International Storytelling Conference

April 7, in Istanbul, in case you were wondering. Link.

Pop quiz: what's this conference preview missing?

The Year Ahead

With 2012 still young, I thought I'd set my sights on the year ahead.

As usual, I've got some traditional folktales that I'm working on. And I'm one of many local storyellers learning part of the Kalevala for a day-long telling of this Finnish epic, hosted by our muse Cathryn Fairlee. I'm looking forward to getting to hear such an old story from the oral tradition told live, and if that weren't enough, this year Going Deep, the Long Traditional Story Retreat, is coming to my neighborhood! (I don't think that I can attend the retreat, but oh boy will I be there for the stories.)

I'm looking at possible telling far afield, but I don't think a Fringe Festival is in the cards for me this year. Instead, I might try a mini-tour in combination with a family vacation.

And I'm pledging to spend more time this year producing and curating content, rather than just consuming it. So, look for more blog posts here, as well as continuing efforts at my Tumblr sites: Story Lab X and Storytelling Looks Like This.

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An audience member once asked me if I created my own material, and I confessed that much of my repertoire was ancient. But every once in a while, inspiration pokes its little head out of the compost heap, and sprouts.

Here are three seeds. I wonder if any of them will grow?

1. A character voice: A few nights ago while driving home, I tuned in a syndicated radio program whose host had a unique voice, very atypical for radio. So unusual, I started to speak aloud to myself, and play with sound production, in an effort to recreate the sound of his voice. I couldn't quite match the vocal quality I was trying to isolate, but the exercise reminded me of the variety of characterization possible... and created a challenge. The voice I'm aiming for could be quite comic. However, if I do it wrong, it could come across as mean-spirited mockery.

(I don't do extreme character voices in my performances. But that voice I heard really intrigued me.)

2. The second seed is a visual image. Not an image from a story, but an image of a storyteller. Only, a storyteller not dressed in what you expect a storyteller to dress like.

Do you dress up on stage? Do you have a storytelling outfit? Or even a costume?

I have a storyteller costume, though I don't use it all the time (I'll use it in my Fringe show). When I don't wear the costume, I do think about what I'm going to wear when I tell. Certain clothes allow me to slide into my storytelling persona more easily.

But I'm really intrigued about the kind of stories that might come from a storyteller in this outfit.

It's a chicken and egg question. I don't have an outfit like this. Do the stories come first, then the outfit? Or if I get the outfit, will the stories come?


3. A song: this one has crawled straight into my heart, and evokes so many stories for me.



Happy 2012, everyone!

Gratitude, 2011

Gratitude for my clients, who asked me to tell stories.

Gratitude for the audience, who gave me their attention and listened to the stories.

Gratitude for my colleagues, who encouraged, listened, shared, told, coached, confessed, questioned, nudged, and cheered.

Here's to a new year filled with stories.

Origin Stories

There were stretches of my childhood when I was really interested in comic books-- but not obsessed. I never had to read any particular title, and my ragtag hand-me-down collection mostly had science fiction and war comics. I didn't follow any one superhero.

But there were anthologies of comics at the local branch of our public library that I would read again and again-- these were the ones that told the origins of the superheroes: the stories of how they became who they were. I read about Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider, and Bruce Wayne seeing his parents killed by a mugger, and Bruce Banner being exposed to gamma radiation. I'm sure I read many more stories about Spiderman and Batman and the Hulk, stories with fantastic adventures and incredible supervillains, but I recall few images or scenes from them.

But these characters' respective "creation myths" --I can still recall them decades later.

I've been thinking about this lately, because a few weeks ago someone asked me how I became a storyteller, and I told them my origin story:

When I was a freshman in college, I took a children's literature class. And one day the professor told us we would be starting a unit on oral literature, and we had a guest storyteller (an upperclassman) who was there to tell us a story. So he began to tell us a traditional ghost story. Now I was a theatre major at the time, and I could see that this person at the front of the room didn't have any stage presence. Wasn't using a memorized script. What could I possibly learn from this guy? I thought.
But there, in a classroom, under bright fluorescent lighting, in the middle of the day, as he told us the story, the class grew hushed. We were all caught up in the experience. And when the ending came, that storyteller scared the living daylights out of us.
There's something to this storytelling, I thought. And so, a few years later in my college career, when Rives Collins started offering a storytelling class, I knew I would be taking it.

I asked on Twitter, and I'll ask again now: do you have an origin story? What called you into storytelling?

Farewell, Little Darlings: More Meaning, Less Words

Two years ago I performed a story inspired by Jack and the Beanstalk-- a monologue from the Giant. I enjoyed creating that piece, but have not had an opportunity to tell it since that time. I will have some opportunities soon.

As I have been bringing the story back into the forefront of my consciousness, I realize that I need to operate. The performance captured on video, that's a beta version of the story. A preview of things to come. It's only now, two years later, that I'm carving out the time and energy to shape the finishing details of the story.

I called in an outside ear. I hired storyteller and story coach Nancy Donoval to do a dramaturgical intervention. I asked her a few specific questions I had about how the story comes across, what worked for her as an audience member, what didn't. (Yes, she's just one person, but I first met Nancy when she was a theatre director and I was an actor and I trust her critical eye/ear).

I took pages of notes from our conversation, and promptly laid them aside to let the feedback sink in. (No, really, I was thinking about her comments. I wasn't just putting off the necessary and uncomfortable work of editing).

Coincidentally, a few days later, storyteller Sue Black of Illinois shared her process of winnowing down a favorite story of hers to fit a venue's particular requirements. She took the challenge of bringing a "finished story" (13 minutes, 38 seconds) to where it could fit under ten minutes. "Shave three minutes?" I thought. "Ouch!"

She got it down to 8 minutes 50 seconds.

And then she challenged me to do the same.

Not just me... but all of us storytellers. Challenged us to a simple exercise. Take a story and pare it down:

Consider everything. Get rid of your ‘little darlings’. Throw away what you think is just too cute and everyone ‘must’ hear or their lives won’t be complete.

Delete, delete, delete and still maintain the essence of the story.

You’ll grow with the experience.

Your story will be better.

And your listeners will be glad you did.

Sue went beyond just sharing the news and issuing the challenge: she has posted the before and after texts of each version of the story.

Take a look:
Sue Black's A Storytelling Challenge - More Meaning with Fewer Words
Sue's "Before"
Sue's "After"

See what you think. Did Sue's trimming improve the story?

I can see how the trimmed version is cleaner. Neater. Oh, but having read the earlier version, there are a couple of details I miss. A couple of Sue's 'little darlings.'

I'll admit: I have 'little darling' issues of my own. In college I wrote a one-act play (staged twice, at two different universities) that was a satirical allegory filled with jokes, puns, and arbitrary character choices. Clocking in at one hour and five minutes, it was thirty minutes too long, although at the time I would have denied it. A teacher of mine that I held in high esteem wanted to know when I was going to stop hiding what I wanted to say behind joke after joke and just say it. I never rewrote the play because for years I couldn't bring myself to take out the parts that amused me so much when I first included them.

And now, as I turn my editor's eye and ear to my Giant's story, with the aim of tightening it up, and shortening how long it takes to tell, I ask myself, "what does the story need?"

And I can see that some of the very 'little darlings' that inspired the story to begin with are going to have to go.

There are also a few questions that Nancy raised about the story. Questions left unanswered. Some of them, I want left that way. But some of them, I don't want the audience to be thinking about-- so I need to add information to the story.

What's your experience with trimming the fat? And getting rid of your 'little darlings?'

Photo credit: Scissors, by Brian Kennish