Audition time for Chicago's SKALD

WNEP Theater has announced its annual auditions for SKALD, their annual Storytelling Festival.

Here's why I love SKALD (despite the fact I've never seen it. Living two thousand miles away makes it a little hard to drop by):

1. The name references the traditional Viking bard/storyteller;
2. Unlike most storytelling festivals in the United States, this one has an open audition process.
3. "Rooted in the oral traditions of nearly every organized society, storytelling is theater stripped of all its ‘dazzle camouflage’ and focuses strictly on the qualities of story and teller."
4. In an homage to traditional storytellers of old, they have a competition of improvised storytelling.
5. Winners get bragging rights (wouldn't you like to be crowned Supreme Skald of Chicago's Premiere Storytelling Festival?)
6. They get kids to tell stories.
7. WNEP's been doing this for nine years --and will likely continue to do it-- with little to no support from the storytelling community. (A side benefit is that while everyone has to stick to seven minutes, there's no pressure to do safe, mildly humorous nostalgia stories. You bring one story, any genre. The resulting mix is what it is.)

In or near Chicago? Drop a line to Don to schedule an audition.

Thought Leader: Eric Wolf

Well, it's no surprise (to anyone who's taken a glance at the links in the left column of this blog) that storyteller Eric Wolf would turn up on my list of thought leaders in the storytelling community.

It's a pity that Eric Wolf named his podcast "The Art of Storytelling With Children," if only because I don't consider children my main audience, so I ignored his show for a long time.

My mistake.

Eric Wolf's roster of guests reads like a who's who of presenters from regional and national storytelling conferences.

What's more: while talking with Eric, the guests, all of whom share practical advice and hard-earned wisdom, don't limit themselves to storytelling with children.

From marketing to artistic process to community outreach to education, Eric's guests will provide anyone interested in storytelling with useful information from diverse perspectives.

(And yes, if you work with children, you will also get practical advice on performing for those audiences).

Each podcast takes the form of an interview, done via conference call, recorded as is, and then archived on the Web. The beauty of the conference call feature is that it allows listeners to participate, and ask questions of the guest.

The work Eric is doing here is profound in so many ways. It's elegantly simple, and yet, within the storytelling community, it's avant garde:
First, he seeks out people that he wants to learn from. He's not setting himself up as the expert. He's inviting the experts onto his show. (Also, his interview style does a fine job of modeling attentive listening)
Second, he invites us to not only listen in, but participate in the discussion, both on the conference call, and via comments on each episode's web page.
Third, he maximizes accessibility: you can listen via iTunes, you can download any of the shows, or you can just click around on the Web site and listen.
Fourth, he makes this invaluable learning resource available for free.

Just last year I was bemoaning (on Storytell, my personal choice of virtual community when I want to beat my head against a wall) that as a national community, we are still stuck in a travel-far-away-and-overcome-obstacles-to-get-wisdom model. Very mythological. Very Joseph Campbell. But very frustrating in this digital age.

I'm glad to see that someone has taken the technological tools available and created a new model.

I know you didn't create the podcast for my sole benefit, Eric, but I have to say thanks.

Thought Leader: Rachel Hedman

Voice-- A Storyteller's Lifestyle is the blog of Utah storyteller Rachel Hedman.

While nominally a blog with practical tips and insight into the nuts and bolts of storytelling, ranging from story crafting exercises to microphone technique to room presentation, Rachel also tackles larger issues in the storytelling community, such as diversity, technology, or the "generation gap." It's clear from her regular and varied postings that she is passionate not only about storytelling but about the storytelling movement.

Whether she means to or not, by virtue of her age (she's twentysomething), her blog provides the storytelling community a window into the concerns and the opinions of the up and coming generation of storytellers... especially in regards to how the storytelling community can best welcome and embrace generational change.

Rachel also posts like clockwork: twice a month, usually on the 1st and 15th, which usually provokes me into paroxysms of panic that I'm posting too infrequently.

I'm really glad she's contributing to the discussion of where the American storytelling revival is going and what it's doing. I don't always agree with her analysis and proposed solutions, but that's precisely why I'm compelled to read her blog... to consider another viewpoint on an issue I'm also passionate about. And I'm sure that her blogging will continue to inspire and challenge me.

Thought Leader: Limor Shiponi

Back in July 2007, I was bemoaning the fact that the storytelling community did not have a "lively agora," a place online to generate the kind of conversational buzz the same way a conference could.

I made this complaint on an email list which once, a decade ago, could have laid claim to such a description, but which has since happily slid into irrelevance.

Little did I know that others peeking at the list would take my complaint as a call to action.

Limor Shiponi, a storyteller, musician, and professional life coach in Israel, quickly set up her own blog, aptly titled "Limor's Storytelling Agora."

Since then, she's not only shared tips and tricks of storytelling, but used her blog to generate conversation. One area of interest of hers is the role of narrative in video games-- an industry still in its infancy which desperately needs to understand the role of storytelling.

Limor hasn't posted anything recently. Go back and look at her past postings. What do you think of her coaching tips? Her exercises for understanding the connection between folktales and personal tales? Do you agree with her assessments on the role of narrative? On the primacy of orality in the storytelling act? Leave her a comment... see if that will get her posting again.

Not Your Mama's Bedtime Story

A school in my neighborhood is hosting their first ever storytelling festival in October. One of the parents there who is helping to organize it, is a local journalist, and thought this an appropriate time to do a survey of the local storytelling scene. She interviewed me via email, and later came to see a performance.

For someone writing about storytelling from the outside, I thought Autumn Stephens does a very good job... and kudos to the The East Bay Monthly for letting her go in-depth (the article weighs in at over four thousand words). (Link)

I'm hoping the photo here, by Lori Eames, helps get across the serious themes that stories can deal with, rather than encourage audiences to say "Hey, dude, when are you going to bring out the skull?"

At the Fringe

One of the many reasons this blog is off to a slow start is that I'm gearing up for a show at the 2007 San Francisco Fringe Festival.

My show, You Go First, is not a storytelling show. Instead, I'm diving back into my roots in improvisation for this one.

One of the challenges of performing at a Fringe Festival is that you are your own producer (unless you've convinced someone else to take that role). The Festival gives you a stage, a person to help with the box office, a person to help out during the 60 minutes you are actually in the physical theater, and includes a description of your show in a program. But everything else (like filling the seats, promoting the show, making the costumes, securing rights, hiring musicians) is your own responsibility.

Having an improvised show (no set, no costumes, no props) simplifies things a bit. Cuts down on rehearsal time, too. (I'm relying on the performers decades-long experience in the craft, natural talent, and trust to pull this off onstage).

But there's a lot of details to attend to (in addition to a full time job, a family, the start of a new school year, etc.)... so I've been neglecting the blog. Been doing a "soft open." Once I'm up and running I'll announce the blog and let people know it's here.

As for Storytelling and Fringe Festivals... I have presented both a workshop and a poster session at the National Storytelling Conference on "Storytelling at the Fringe," as a way of explaining what a Fringe is, why storytellers would want to be there, and even help organize the National Storytelling Conference Fringe. I'll post more about that later.

If you're not familiar with Fringe Festivals, Slash Coleman has a new blog, "Fringe or Die," that is a nuts-and-bolts introduction of how to do it. He explains what Fringe Festivals are here.

What is Breaking the Eggs?

Hello. My name is Tim Ereneta, and I'm a storyteller. I'm also a story listener. On occasion, I've been a storytelling producer.

I've started this blog, Breaking the Eggs, to discuss the practices and preferences of oral storytelling, particularly in the American storytelling revival (although comments and discussion from "outside the bubble" would be most appreciated). This revival, which sprang up in the 1970s (documented and chronicled in Joseph Sobol's The Storyteller's Journey) seems to be on the verge of dying out. Some disagree, and see the potential for new growth. I see both trends, and am putting my money on a sure and steady slide into cultural irrelevance.

I'm sure I won't be able to keep myself from injecting my own experiences as a performer out of here, so it won't all be theoretical. Hopefully, it won't all be centered on my career.

I love listening to stories, particularly in a performance setting, and am stating up front my personal bias towards storytelling as a performance art. Now I can recognize and appreciate good kitchen table storytellers, who can hold forth around the office or a party or after church... but what's really satisfying is sitting in the dark with a bunch of other strangers and listening to a storyteller weave her spell.

Provided, of course, there's good lighting and amplification.

And intellectually, I know that every person I meet has unique and important stories from their own life journey to share. But what nourishes my soul are the old stories. The fairy tales, the folk tales, the myths. And for me, they come to life not on the page, or on DVD, but when a living, breathing person is speaking the words on a stage.

I'll sit through three hours of "the day Grandpa fell off the ladder" stories to hear just ten minutes of folktales.

Are we clear on my biases up front?

One more thing. I have found the storytelling community, made up of amateurs, professionals, and semi-professionals alike to be a generous and giving group... and also stubborn as a mule. (The double edged sword of storytelling... like Patrick Ball once quipped, borrowing a phrase about the inhabitants of Ireland, "six million storytellers in search of a single listener"...). Specifically, in my experience, I have found that getting new ideas to stick can be difficult. And if the idea involves technology, it is downright impossible. (I exaggerate, of course. The storytelling community is only about twenty-five years behind the times.)

I've noted with interest the lively opinions of the theatre blogging community. Some of the bloggers are professional critics. Some are academics. Some are in the trenches as directors, producers, playwrights, and actors. They tackle everything from hiring practices to casting choices to the commercialization of Broadway to the economics of theatre to the very purpose of art. (Tony Taccone, Artistic Director of the Tony-award winning Berkeley Rep, decries this trend as moving discussion in the artistic community in the direction of talk radio.) Granted, theatre blogging is a small community, and many of these bloggers admit the risky position they take as both a vocal gadfly and a participant in an artistic community. And like any form of blogging, it can be hard to dialogue when everyone is chattering incessantly.

Storytelling is a much smaller community than theatre. And "platform storytelling," that is, storytelling as a performing art, is an even smaller subcommunity within the community of storytelling.

I may be shooting myself in the foot here, as I too aim to play both sides of the platform.

I am fortunate enough to have spent time in the company of forward thinking individuals who contribute mightily to keeping storytelling alive in our time. Many of them even have open minds and fresh innovative ideas to make it so. (Now if I can only get them to use the Web!) In the spirit of their generosity and drive I offer up this blog as part of my contribution.

Part of the reason for starting this blog is to open up discussion on the ways that the Web has and will continue to transform storytelling. And how the storytelling community (or the individual storyteller in his or her own community) can embrace aspects of technology to enhance their professional and personal connections.


Why "Breaking the Eggs" for a title?

It's been said that "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." I suppose that's where Gerald Fierst got the title of his Intensive on Storytelling in the 21st Century at the National Storytelling Conference in 2004. The conference description noted:

Narrative information is being conveyed with new constructions of language, image and technology. The Producer’s SIG has commissioned a storytelling work that will test the boundaries of beginning, middle and end. Attend this performance and continue on to debate how we communicate, what is narrative, where will story go as language is redefined by changing cultural images and new technologies.

All well and good, and many of us were excited about this... but the commissioned work never appeared at the conference. Gerry quickly assembled a substitute panel, each of whom presented or talked about new forms and formats of storytelling, but the discussion, while lively, didn't address new directions in narrative so much as it became a rallying point for those frustrated with the homogeneity of regional storytelling festivals curatorial visions.

Like many such encounters at conferences, this one kept me thinking for a long time... but the passion and excitement of discussion of ideas that happens at conferences is hard to sustain once you return home (but that's part of the hero's journey, right?).

This blog, then, is offered as a boon for the community-- or, if that's just too self-serving-- a gadfly to stir Pegasus to action (ooh! look! mythological reference!)-- or perhaps just a sturdy kitchen bowl into which we can all toss in a few eggs and make an omelet.