March 04, 2008

Oh I Wish I Were An Oscar Mayer Weiner

"An Angry White Guy in Chicago" is the blog of Chicago producer/writer/director/performer Don Hall. It should be required reading for any small theatre producer in this country. That includes storytelling event producers, and storytellers who perform for adult audiences.

Recently, he posted a video from Weird America of a man obsessed with hot dogs. A guy who devotes all of his creative energy to hot dogs. Don writes:

With our esoteric devotion to what has become, like opera or ballet or jazz, the province of a small, SMALL portion of American society (more people have webbed toes than see live theater monthly in this country) and our deep belief that other people will care if we only could reach them, aren't we much the same as Hot Dog J. Frank - The Willy Wonka of Meat?


Watch the hot dog video, then read Don's post.

Then read it again with the following substitutions:
Replace "Fringe theater" with "storytelling."
Replace "live theater" with "storytelling."
Replace "theatre artist" with "storyteller."

1 comment:

About Sean Buvala said...

Tim, I feel much better. I was having eggs withdrawls. LOL.

Go to the food channel.

Replace their "cook" with our storyteller

Replace their "cooking" with our storytelling

Replace their "audience" with our "What? People make a living with storytelling? Oh, I saw one at Walmart this weeekend reading Dr Suess books to kids? Oh, wait, that was just a store employee? Okay, wait, people tell stories for a living?"

That channel has much to teach us.

Into the wind,

Sean