Elitist Storytelling Reported in Oklahoma! (The State, not the Musical)

Over at OKLAHOMA TELLERS, Marilyn Hudson calls out "storytelling elitism." She notes that this beast has two faces, one which hires and one which tells.

One side is elitist because it sees only one type of storytelling as "true storytelling" (theatrics vs. traditional, for example). Such storytelling must be defined with terms such as "artistic", "meaningful","educational", and "professional". The folksy stylings of a country teller would never be acceptable. The telling for the sheer joy of telling a saucy or funny tale would be frowned on. The less than perfect delivery, style, or presentation of a newbie would never be heard or seen.

In her full post, it seems she's directing this at those who hire storytellers. I suspect she has one or two specific producers in mind (but I don't know the Oklahoma scene well enough to say for sure), and I'm assuming she thinking of storytelling event producers.

But a producer who doesn't want an untried teller on their stage is no different than a movie theatre booking a Hollywood film over the neighbor kid's low-budget summer film project. To exclude novice storytellers from the stage at performance events where people have paid admission isn't elitist, it's good business sense.

Telling stories for the sheer joy of telling stories is great. I'm in favor of that too. It has its place at family gatherings, around campfires, and even, in the context of performance events, at open mics or story swaps.

The other side of the face is the storyteller who has come to believe that abstract artistry is superior to heartfelt communication. They have come to believe the rhetoric of the need for lighting, props, makeup, and a "brand". They have allowed storytelling to be defined by large stage theater instead of standing on its own -and very -unique feet.

I don't know any storyteller that believes that abstract artistry is superior to heartfelt communication. (Neither do I know any that insist on lighting, props, and makeup... but then, I'm not familiar with the Oklahoma storytelling landscape.) I do know solo performers who are accomplished storytellers who do prefer to tell in theatres, use a script, but they don't call it storytelling. They insist on calling it theatre.

In an effort to parse what Marilyn might be reacting to, I found this entry of hers on a different blog:

In recent years, more and more touches of theatrics have been added to be "crowd pleasers" under the assumption that "today's child or audience" needs action and variety....
I have also seen a lot of meaningless shouting, audience participation, and over the top acting in some storytellers that was fun to watch but was a lot like eating spun sugar....it left you feeling a little empty......it was junk food that left nothing for the mind or the heart to think on and discover days later....

Every storyteller has a different style. And each teller may be at a different place along their learning curve (so that, for example, they haven't mastered the use of "meaningless shouting" in their stories... er, or rather, the appropriate use of volume and physical energy). And we all have our preferences. But I don't meet many storytellers who push their style as better than others.

But, if Oklahoma is somehow fomenting a cadre of uppity storytellers dedicated to the notion that storytelling should be defined by loud and eye-catching shenanigans performed without regard to the needs of the audience, I'm with you Marilyn, let's send those elitists back to the vaudeville circuit where they belong.

Good Things

Along with breaking the eggs, a good omelet needs some seasoning. So, to cleanse the palate, here's a list of some recent things that made me happy:

1. Just received two mint copies of Bil Lepp's story collections in the mail. I didn't even know Bil Lepp had published his stories. To my surprise, both books were autographed copies, and what's more, I didn't pay a dime for them. (Twenty-five bucks is what the market will bear right now on eBay. Not sure if that reflects acutal demand or the dire economic circumstances of West Virginia book sellers). I love how the Web enables peer-to-peer book swapping.

2. Listening with my son to an Anansi story, "Leopard's Birthday Bop" told by Ramona King

3. Discovering a delightful "new" storyteller on YouTube. I've got to hand it to Sister Unity, she's got the YouTube magic going on. Traditional tales in a nontraditional format. I love it.

4. Wiretap on the CBC (this is only tangentially related to storytelling, but I particularly enjoyed Jonathan Goldstein's recent fractured retellings of David and Goliath, and David and Bathsheba).

5. The Odyssey. Homer's The Odyssey.

Recently Cathryn Fairlee hosted an all-day telling of the Odyssey. It took seven hours, nine storytellers, and a whole lot of food to get through it-- okay, four hours for the story, and three more for the food.

Inspired by the gatherings of storytelling guilds in Canada who annually perform some epic work, such as the Canterbury Tales or the Kalevala, Cathryn has been hosting similar gatherings in California for the past three years. The first year, The Canterbury Tales, the next was The Mabigonian, and the next The Thousand Nights and One Night. But those days necessarily featured selections from the larger works. This year, she organized the tellers to get through the whole thing.

Illness took a few tellers out of the lineup (12 tellers learned a part of the story, but only nine made it that day). Stormy weather kept some of the audience away.

But what a treat... to take a day to just listen to stories. And to listen to a story that our culture knows by reference, but not by heart. Out of the twenty or so gathered to listen (and most of them storytellers), only half had ever read the Odyssey.

We're hoping Cathryn pitches a workshop to NSN for the 2009 Conference on how she organizes this. Basically, she sent out a call for local storytellers, picked a date, and divided up the books of the Odyssey. Each of the nine tellers told us the story, in their own style. The repetition of motifs and phrases, as well as the driving narrative, stitched the tellings together.

The day was not designed to be a polished performance. It was a private event, and intended as professional development for tellers. A chance for tellers to try out some epic storytelling in front of an interested and supportive audience (and they will repeat their part again in the Fall at a second hosted gathering).

And we were all very proud of ourselves for getting to hear the Odyssey in a single day.