Shout Out: Dizzy Miss Lizzy's Roadside Revue - Finn McCool

As an out-of-towner at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington DC this past July, I had minimal information to go on in selecting which of the 137 productions to see. I did what research I could, visiting performer's websites, paying attention to local reviews... but with limited time and money, I mainly chose based on content: what was the show about? When I discovered, on the Fringe web site, that there would be a "post-apocalyptic, raucous, rock and roll, retelling of the Irish legend: Finn Mc Cool" by a group called Dizzy Miss Lizzy's Roadside Revue, I made time in my schedule.



Now, as a storyteller, I'd certainly heard of Fionn mac Cumhaill (my Celtic storytelling colleagues would never forgive me if I didn't use the Gaelic spelling). Over the years, I had heard a tale here or there of this Irish warrior-king of the Fianna, but I'd never read or heard Finn's origin story (And, truth be told, hearing one too many versions of the tall tale where Finn meets Cuchulainn did not inspire me to seek it out). So now here, I hoped, in DC, I'd get to hear it... gathered in the darkness with strangers to hear a story.

Only we weren't gathered in the dark. We were in a portable tent (a good omen for storytelling) set up as a temporary venue constructed for the duration of the Fringe, with a massive soundsystem (so it could double as the party spot) and a roof to keep the summer thundershowers off the outdoor thrust stage (seating on three sides). Though not air-conditioned (and in DC in July, that fact made it into every review of each show that played there), the venue was conveniently located next to the Fringe bar.

The stacks of amps, full drum kit, microphones, and numerous electric guitars on the stage made me realize this was not going to be your average storytelling set. The programs and postcards for the show set up the frame that the legend of Finn McCool would be presented as a rock and roll revue with six bands on the bill (With just 8 performers in the show, the "bands" were created with costume changes and sometimes switching up instruments).

And so, in music and song, we were treated to Finn's origin story: how his father, leader of the Fianna warriors, was killed by Goll Mac Morna; how his mother gave him up to be raised in secret by the druidess Bodhmall and the warrior woman Liath Luachra; and how Finn obtains the Salmon of Wisdom during his service to the poet and teacher Finneces, which enables him to claim his place as leader of the Fianna and defeat Goll.

Plot points were kept to a minimum to let the music do the heavy lifting of the show: and it worked. The music ranged from ballads (both acoustic and power) to art rock to stadium rock to blues... the troupe used a wide musical palette to vary the emotions through the arc of the story, and the audience cheered every time they recognized a trope (e.g. guitar solos, power duets, drinking song choruses). I was also impressed by the quality of the performers (though the show had a thrown-together, held-together-with-duct-tape thrift-store aesthetic, everyone in it, from the costumer to the composer to the performers had bona fide professional theatre chops). The singers--most with musical theatre backgrounds and many recognized by local critics and peers with theater awards--really delivered, as the variety of songs explored a vast emotional range.


Pictured: Audience and Felicia Curry, Matthew Schleigh (as Finn), and Debra Buonaccorsi. Photo copyright 2010 by Paul Gillis Photography; used by permission

This show called to mind ancient traditions of epic storytelling, where the community gathered to listen to stories of heroes, and achieve an altered state of consciousness. At the Fringe, our consciousness was being altered not only by our willingngess to engage with the drama, but the soaring melodies and the volume of the music, but by the venue's heat, humidity, and proximity to the performers (no one was farther than 15 feet from the stage). The availability of alcohol helped, too.

Furthermore, the posturing and tropes of rock and roll passed for modern day versions of the ritual required for the sharing of such epics. So, while in an oral culture, everyone in the audience would know the story (e.g. the Ramayana) , this performance gave the audience a story in a style everyone knew, though many weren't familiar with the characters or plot.

The creators of the show made sure that before and after each song, characters explained who they were, what they wanted, and where they were going. The extra exposition here was necessary for an audience unfamiliar with this epic. Some reviewers complained that the exposition muddied the dramatic arc, but I found it was not only necessary to get the story out, but actually a clever way to continue to build the trance state you want in an epic storytelling session (My own theory: by giving the logical brain narrative, we're compelled to engage more--to find out what happens next-- which allows us to continue in the performance environment towards a trance state).

Me? I’m predisposed to enjoying epic narration (my list of most enjoyable theatrical experiences include narration heavy shows like lookingglass theatre’s Argonautika and Metamorphoses, and Mabou Mines’ Peter and Wendy… and to which, I’m adding this production), so my enthusiasm for this show might differ from the typical DC theatregoer, but all in all... I found it a thoroughly delightful way to engage with an ancient myth, and in terms of artistic craft, an inventive and masterfully crafted performance experience.

If you're not in the DC area (and won't get a chance to see future productions of Finn McCool), you can get a mere taste of it: Check out this Flickr slide show with Paul Gillis' photos (link) while you play music from the show via DMLRR's page on Myspace. (The versions there are clean, but nowhere near as thrilling as hearing them performed live by sweaty rock and rollers a stone's throw from you!)

Coming up soon: an interview with one of the show's creators, Debra Buonaccorsi

Process: Color and Advance

I'm in the process of adding some new stories to my repertoire. So, taking a page from the playbook of storyteller Priscilla Howe, I set up some informal backyard storytelling sessions, to give myself a live audience to whom I could tell these stories.

Two of the three stories are wonder tales, involving quests, with various tasks which tangle the plot, and familiar fairy tale motifs. But in this early stage, when I'm just getting to know the story, the main challenge for me is to simply hit all the plot points. And for my first run in my backyard, I managed to include most of them in my telling. Even got them in the right order.

Afterwards, reflecting on how these "first tellings" went, I realized that I was so concerned about the plot, that I left out pretty much any description that might help my listeners create the images of the story. Luckily, these stories are archetypal enough (and my audience young enough) that just saying "forest," "cave," "lion," or "giant" is enough of a prompt to get their imaginations going. But to me the story felt dry. Bare bones.

This feeling reminded me of an instructive game I learned when I was studying improvisation. The game, Color/Advance, involved two people: a storyteller and a director. One person would start telling a story, and the director could say only one of two directions:
"Advance," and the storyteller would have to keep the action of the story moving forward.
The other direction, "Color," when spoken aloud, meant that the storyteller had to stop the forward momentum of the story and stay in the moment, but embellish--go deeper--with description of the environment, the characters, or the emotion. The game was designed to get us thinking about key components of narrative.

So here was my thought about the bare bones: too much advance, not enough color.

It will come, with more tellings. The color is already there; I just need to bring it out. As I tell a story, I have visual images in my head of everything that's going on. In one sense, I'm simply describing what I see.

(Not all storytellers work that way, though many do, but I found this is a fairly useful description to explain to people how it is that I can tell a story without memorizing a text)

The trick is to translate those images into oral language, fluidly. With more tellings, it will happen. I'll begin to associate certain phrases with certain images. Over time, the language may become more and more set (but for me, never rigid).

This was a helpful revelation, as, at the same time, I was working on a new story for a local adult storytelling series, and for a change of pace, I was developing a monologue... which meant that the story was not simply plot and image strung together. I was working on giving voice to a character, and so I was considering sound, movement, attitude, and emotion in a way that I don't typically do in my "regular storytelling" (Thank goodness for all those years working towards a degree in Theatre).

All of these qualities in a character monologue are part of the "color." But this backyard lab helped me (wearing my playwright hat) by reminding me that my character could tell his story more effectively if he went beyond "this happened then this happened" to include details like "she was the kind of girl who..." and "two ogres? two ogres are stupider than one."

The Color/Advance game was an exercise to build awareness. We never came up with a formula for the proper ratio of each, and we never tried. It's been a helpful way, for me, to think about oral performance. I've noticed some storytellers tipping the scales toward too much color (taking a two minute story and stretching it into five, or ten, with description of time and place and character)-- I think the personal memoir genre encourages this. I really admire those storytellers who are economical with their color-- the details really matter to the story, they are there because they need to be. They're part of the meat, not the fat.

How about you? Which part of the storytelling process appeals to you, as a listener, or as a teller?

Color? or Advance?

Storytelling with Twitter? I don't think so.

Question: is Twitter, the social messaging utility, a good platform for storytelling?

Short Answer: No.

Not that I heard anyone say it was. But with Twitter being the "in" tool this year, and storytellers jumping in, I wanted to add my two cents.

Do I use Twitter? Yes. I appreciate its functionality for those times when I need to be connected in real time. I'm impressed that its fans have been able to build online relationships despite the tools built in limitations, namely, the 140 character limit for each message.

I don't see these two primary features (real-time messaging, and limited length) as essential to storytelling.

That there's a tool, ie Twitter, that lets me receive messages in real-time from friends, relations, colleagues, celebrities, politicians, and NASA missions is cool. I like being connected, being reminded on these people-- those that I have a relationship with in real life, well, it helps "grease the wheel" of that relationship during that time when we're not in contact. But Twitter is about the "what I'm doing now" not about "remember when we..." or "once upon a time."

Could you use Twitter to tell a story? Yes, of course. But it's an inelegant tool.

(I'll grant that when it comes to stories for journalism, however, Twitter is useful as a tool for gathering information of stories-as-they-happen, as events in San Diego, Mumbai, and the Hudson River have shown us)

But in terms of spinning narratives: using Twitter is like selecting a toothpick to paint on a canvas that's meant to fill a room.

Partly it's the 140 character limit. Now, Flash fiction is nothing new. Storytellers from Vishnu Sarma to Aesop to Jesus were using the short short form long before the publishing world took a shine to very short tales in the 1990s. Setting limits, even arbitrary ones, can prompt some very creative output, so I can see the appeal of using Twitter to share these mini works of fiction.

Some of my favorites:

This bit of magical realism/spy novel and this melodrama from David Vanadia.

This retelling of a fable from Jerrold Connors.

Two writers in particular, I've found, who use Twitter to write nanofiction. I would categorize their work as character sketches and platforms --more seeds of stories that could be than actual beginning-middle-end kernels, but sometimes worth a look:
@arjunbasu
@nickwarren (I especially like Nick's use of first person, since it plays within the Twitterverse milieu nicely)

Smith Magazine, home of the six word story, set the bar higher (or tighter, I guess. You can fit a lot more than 6 words on Twitter). It's difficult to pull off a good six-word story, so you have to wade through a lot of dross to find the gems, and then, there's not so much a haiku feeling as a "wish they served dinner instead of hors d'oeuvres"... still, Twitter seems an excellent channel for them to utilize: @smithmag

Portland Story Theater sneaks around the limitations of length and genre with a serial format:
@pdxstorytheater

Do you follow anyone on Twitter that is creating interesting stories? Post them in the comments!

(And just so we're clear: "creating interesting stories" does NOT mean "promoting their business" (story-based or otherwise)

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So maybe you're not looking for Twitter to deliver bite-sized stories. Maybe you just think it'd be cool (for this year anyway) to receive real-time messages from working storytellers. In that case, here are some current storytellers with active or semi-active Twitter accounts:

Baba the Storyteller: @Djeliba
Hope Baugh: @Hope_Baugh
Karol Brown: @Browntones
Buck P Creacy: @BuckPCreacy
Lynn Duddy: @storywoman
EthNohTec: @ethnohtec
Tim Ereneta: @tereneta
Stephen Hollen: @mountainstories
Sean Buvala: @storyteller
Terry Free: @TerryFree
Rachel Hedman: @StorytellingAdv
Priscilla Howe: @priscillahowe
Dale Jarvis: @DaleJarvis
Carol Knarr: @ckanrr
Debra Olson-Tolar: @storytolar
Laura Packer: @storylaura
Ellouise Schoettler: @ellouisestory
Tim Sheppard: @TimSheppard
Dianne de las Casas: @storyconnection
BZ Smith: @bzsmith
Teresa Clark: @teresaclark
Limor Shiponi: @Storyteling
David Vanadia @Vanadia
Eric Wolf: @Ericwolf2

(Yes, I left out a bunch of "organizational narrative" and "corporate storytellers" who are very active on Twitter. That's by design. They've got their own blogs. When the day comes that they tell a story around a campfire, then I'll add them to my list here.)

TED Talks - J.J. Abrams: The mystery box

Hearing about Carmen Deedy's experience at TED in 2005 got me thinking. I certainly appreciate that the TED conference organizers invited a storyteller... that they felt it important to have an oral storyteller share the stage (I'm missing information here, though, it's not clear to me if Carmen was invited as a "performer" or a "thinker," or even if TED makes that distinction). By the limited accounts available on the web, she certainly made an impression (not bad, considering Bono was the main attraction that year), but I wish I knew more.
In her plea for the importance of story, did she merely rely on the personal story?
When she said that "the storyteller has been relegated to the secondary or tertiary role in the community," was she merely bemoaning the loss of tradition. Did she acknowledge the role of technology (or was she simply stepping into an assigned role of the vanishing anthropological relic)?

TED has not published the video of her talk, so for now, the questions remained unanswered.

I'm including here a TED talk from 2007 from J.J. Abrams, the writer and director (Alias, Lost, Cloverfield). Now here's a storyteller who's unabashedly awed by technology... because it allows him (and inspires him) to fully express his creativity. I'm including his rambling TED talk here, not because I think Abram's evangelizing of the democratizing power of technology to create is that relevant, but because his metaphor of the "mystery box" acknowledges fundamentals of our art form: that mystery is the catalyst for the audience's imagination, that witholding information makes the imagination work harder (and makes stories more satisfying), and that a story's narrative is not its content.

Also, I'm a huge fan of Lost.



If you were asked to perform at TED, what would you say?

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.

Reflections from the Fringe: Improv Storytelling

So I've completed my run of You Go First at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, a show which was essentially an experiment conducted on the hypothesis that if you drop two experienced actors with a long history of improvisation on a stage with no script, no games, and no suggestions from the audience, that something interesting would happen.

We would create scenes in the moment, and either play them until the lighting technician turned out the lights, or we both left the stage. What happened next is that one or two of us would come back out onstage and start a new scene.

Often I would enter to start a new scene having no idea of how to set the next scene. For one thing, if I entered first, I had no way of knowing if my partner was going to come out and join me for a two person dialogue, or if I should start a monologue.

A few observations about the kinds of stories we ended up creating:

1. Many of our stories involved characters who used the Web to conduct part of their daily lives (whether it was looking up an address for a store to checking email to blogging to reading Wikipedia). The immediate challenge was the question of how do make that theatrically interesting? Because a stage picture of someone sitting down at a computer is not that compelling.

We figured that out quickly-- you make the search for information have high stakes-- essential to the character, so that the narrative depends on how this character reacts to finding or not finding this information.

I found it interesting the way different audience members reacted to our references to the digital landscape. On one night, blank looks from a couple in the audience made it fairly clear that the term "Wikipedia" held no meaning for them. On another, a reference to "poking" got giggles from a few in-the-know Facebook members in the audience, but if you were in the audience that night and aren't on Facebook, that phrase didn't have any meaning to you (although we made sure it did to the characters we were playing). Later in the show my partner did a monologue about MySpace in which he described what one could do with MySpace, mainly because it fit with the theme of the show we were creating (the theme of identity, and how we present ourselves to the world) but happily it gave context to those in the audience who weren't familiar with it.

Given that we were performing in San Francisco, a very "wired" city, we made a lot of presumptions about the extent that digital devices permeated our audiences' respective lives. No doubt we were guilty of overestimating the relevance of our own social networks.

But storytelling is filled with opportunities to introduce new words and new cultures. In fact, that's one of the benefits that storytellers hype when they try and drum up business in schools. Your students will learn new vocabulary, learn about cultures that are new to them....

Being aware of this, I once asked a group of fourth and fifth graders, "Do you know what a jackal is?" A few did, and volunteered that information with the group, and then I started with "This is the story of the Brahmin, the Tiger, and the Jackal."

"What's a Brahmin?" three of them cried in unison. My own children are similarly inclined to interrupt me at every opportunity to learn a new word.

Actually, I had to remove the term "crone" from my adult version of Rapunzel, because adults in my audience (even the storytellers!) didn't know what that word meant (and truth be told, I introduced the word in the moral to the story, so there wasn't enough context to decipher that I was referring to the witch who had imprisoned Rapunzel).

2. One of the storytellers who came to see the show was fascinated with the moments in between the words. "You two were listening so well to each other you could almost see it," she told us.

In the absence of a script or game, listening is the most valuable tool an improviser has onstage.

But I think that it has been my experience storytelling that allowed me to be comfortable standing onstage, in front of an audience, and not saying anything. The improviser inside me knew a story would come out eventually. The storyteller in me trusted that the audience could wait.

I don't think a handful of seconds is an unreasonable amount of time to not say anything onstage. Would you be comfortable not saying anything for 5 seconds in front of your audience? for ten? fifteen?

3. In improv, we're trained to jump to the next most obvious scene. If we set up audience expectations that a story will go somewhere, we should go somewhere, rather than delay.

In one story, where my character was convinced that another was stealing/dissolving my identity in bits and pieces, we chose to draw this story out, adding depth and color and backstory. Seeing how my character was dealing with other people besides his antagonist. Yes, it was delaying the inevitable. But I don't regret adding the extra texture. I like to think it made the inevitable final scene more satisfying.

In the moment I was mostly focusing on what was happening right then and there, but I knew in the back of my mind that we already made the call of how the story could end (my character would disappear completely) and the question was back there: when would we do that scene, if at all?

Funny how in traditional storytelling, knowing the ending ahead of time (we know how Jack and the Beanstalk is going to end-- and stick around long enough, you start to internalize the Aarne-Thomson tale types, and think, oh, this is AT 1620, I know how this will turn out) doesn't take away from the experience.

In fact, and I can't remember who said this (Duncan Williamson???? I'll have to track it down)-- knowing the ending and knowing the plot points are an essential part of enjoying traditional tales.