Reclaiming "Storyteller" as a Label

Over at Ning, the perennial question of how to define storytelling came up around one corner of the virtual water cooler, as Katie Knudsen asked whether we need to expand our definition of storytelling or hold fast to our tradition. I responded with an answer that goes on and on and on, but focused on the role of the event producer, not the performer, as the one who holds the key to definition. Here's an excerpt:

My point is: storytelling is bigger than "roots storytelling" represented by the festival circuit, and its bigger than "personal storytelling" represented by the Moth. And you certainly can segment your audience and produce events that showcase one sliver of storytelling.... nothing wrong with that.

What doesn't make sense is trying to claim an umbrella term as your own.

Imagine if Milton Berle had tried to claim "television" as the genre for the Texaco Star Theater show, and got all the other comedian hosted variety shows to claim "well, what we do is television." Those soap operas, those news shows, they're not "television."

Imagine if track and field competitors tried to claim that basketball players weren't "athletes" because they used a ball, and had to use teammates.

I'd like to see an event producer create a series or even a festival that is truly open to all forms of storytelling.

You can read my entire post and discussion here.

"We Rock Stories. We Rock Them Hard."

How come Minneapolis/St. Paul has all the cool kids? This past weekend in the Twin Cities you could hear both the O.G. storytellers, and the new kids on the block:

http://www.rockstarstorytellers.com
http://www.myspace.com/rockstarstorytellers

The alt-weekly City Pages says:

Let's face it—storytelling may be the primordial art form, born at the dawn of language. However, modern performance telling, with its small but dedicated, heavily middle-aged audience, has just never managed the same level of cool as rock 'n' roll. But this year, a group of 10 younger local performance artists banded together to take back some of the cultural cachet storytelling deserves. Optimistically calling themselves Rockstar Storytellers, they come to the stage from a multiplicity of backgrounds, from mime to radio monologue to traditional theater to slam poetry to competitive speech. Laden with Fringe Festival credentials, the cast promises to not just twiddle your emotional dial, but to take a monkey wrench to your presuppositions about what storytelling should be.

Go monkey wrench!

Exclusive interview later this month.

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.

Facebook for Storytellers

I've created a group for storytellers to network on Facebook, the fastest growing social networking site online*. I initially did this as a means for the New Voices discussion group of the National Storytelling Network to network online (they currently are using a listserv, which is moribund, as well as monthly conference call).

I had assumed that by virtue of their age (New Voices is meant to encourage and support storytellers under the age of 30) that these "digital natives" would jump at the chance to do more online networking... so far, there does not seem to be much jumping.

The group is open to anyone. It's meant to be a tool for storytellers to use. So jump on in!

If you're new to Facebook, and reluctant to share your profile with the world, set your privacy settings to private and don't import your email address book.

Storytellers, as performing artists, are underutilizing social networking sites, both as a means to network with peers and as a tool to reach audeinces.

The largest social networking vehicle for storytellers currently is Storytell, a listserv hosted by Texas Women's University. It's been going strong since the early 1990s, but as a networking tool, it is limited in its capability since it's just email. The list has created a fiercely loyal social network, but it's a walled garden: there are no publicly available archives anywhere, and if you don't know about it, you would have a very difficult time finding it. There was some interest from the storytelling community in MySpace last year, but only a handful of storytellers were interested enough to hang their shingle on MySpace.


Further reading:
Entrepreneurs Need Both Facebook and LinkedIn
(Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends)
12 Ways to use Facebook Professionally (Web Worker Daily)
Are You on Facebook Yet? (Ann Handly, Marketing Profs Daily Fix)

*Fastest growing in the United States. If you live and work in a different country, you may need to consider other sites, such as Bebo, Orkut, or Friendster.