2010 Capital Fringe Festival Wrap Up: Lessons Learned

I returned recently from ten days in Washington DC telling stories at the 5th annual Capital Fringe Festival. I'll have more to say both about my run of shows and the other performances I encountered, but here's a quick summary of some of my experiences.

1. Solo performers support solo performers.
2. A hundred and thirty shows to choose from? Doesn't matter how good your postcard is. You need buzz, targeted marketing, and personal connections. And, in DC in the summer, an air-conditioned venue.
   
3. And a good title.
4. Be nice to the venue manager. Among other things, she's in charge of the air conditioning.
5. Whether there are 12 people in the audience or 50 people, you still have to deliver.
   
6. Media outlets don't have storytelling critics. So if they send a theatre critic to review your show, they may not understand what you're doing.
7. Don't forget your vocal warmup.
8. Or your pants.
9. It is possible to do a show without air conditioning (in Washington DC in the summer), but it's not pleasant.
   
10. It is possible to do a show without a vocal warmup, but it's not pleasant.
11. It is possible to do a show without pants.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Simple idea, brilliant execution: take a fable that most people are likely to know, and ask them to tell it. Splice the tellings together.

Designer John Liu did just that with his Nikon camera:

Art of Storytelling *new from John Lui on Vimeo.

Which Would You Rather Hear?

Great story or great storyteller: which do you prefer?



(hat tip to Sean, who reminded me that this question was first put into my noggin by Priscilla Howe, who asked the question on her Storytelling Notes blog early in 2009: link)

What Transports You?

(Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I've had lots of ideas, but as it takes me about 90 minutes to 2 hours to write a blog post, it's been difficult to carve out time. So I thought up an experiment: with video, I could blurt out my thoughts for a few minutes, and shazam!, instant blog post. (While my internal editor is harsh when it comes to the printed word --a 15 minute burst of creativity turns into a couple of hours of wordsmithing and copy editing-- but when it comes to improvisation, my editor is okay with "what you see is what you get" )



So, when do stories transport you?



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Read more about the story listener's state of transportation in "The Enchanted Imagination: Storytelling's Power to Entrance Listeners," by Brian W. Sturm, American Library Association, September 27, 2006. Link.

The Storyteller's Fire (David Novak)

Stumbled across this audience warm-up: an old outdoor education standby for focusing the attention of a large group of campers, adapted here by storyteller David Novak for storytelling.

File this in the "why didn't I think of this before?" drawer.