Indy Theatre Habit

Last Friday night, after a pummeling massage that left me groggy followed by a light nap and a delicious dinner at the Storyteller’s Riverhouse, I grabbed my umbrella out of my car and walked over to the antique school house for the second night of storytelling at the “Going Deep: Long Traditional Story Festival” in Bethlehem, Indiana.  Tonight we would hear Priscilla Howe tell her version of the medieval story of ”Queen Berta and King Pippin.”

To prepare, Howe read this story in its original, old French.  The story was first written down by Adenet li Rois in the 13th century.  The people on whom the story was based actually lived in the 700s.  Howe also read several translations and adaptations, but kept returning to the original as she developed a contemporary English, spoken-word interpretation of it.  She is also working on her own written translation of the original.

It is the story of a young princess in Hungary.   She is known as Berta of the Big Feet.  Now, before you laugh, you should know that at that time, big feet were seen as a sign of nobility.  Berta was also known as Berta the Debonair, which at the time meant generally pleasing, i.e. - kind and generous as well as beautiful.  It was an endearment that could be used for either a man or a woman.  Berta had long, golden curls and gorgeous eyes.

The King of France, meanwhile, had been married to a woman he loved very much, but she had died and he had no heirs.  King Pippin’s friends and advisors were urging him to marry again, but he was more interested in fighting wars now and having adventures.  Finally, more to shut his friends up rather than because he had any interest in the topic himself, he said something like, “Well, who do you think I should marry?”  They told him about Berta the Debonair, Berta of the Big Feet, Berta who would bring him a useful alliance with Hungary as well as make him a good wife.

King Pippin agreed, and wrote a letter to her parents asking for her hand.

Berta did not want to leave her mother and father and the home she loved, but her parents, who had spent a lot of time in France before they became King and Queen of Hungary, assured her that she would love the French court.  Her mother said, “And don’t worry: I am sending our dear servant, Margiste, with you, plus her daughter, Aliste, and their cousin, Tybert.  They love us because we freed them from slavery.  They will take good care of you in France.”

Aliste happened to look very much like Berta - same hair, same eyes.  (When I heard this, I thought, “Uh-oh!”)

And sure enough, Margiste et al actually had no love for Berta or her family, and as soon as they arrived in France, Margiste devised a way for her daughter to take Berta’s place in the king’s bed, posing as his new bride.  The real Berta was bundled up by Tybert and taken into the forest to be killed.

The captain of the soldiers who accompanied them took pity on Berta, however, and let her escape into the woods rather than kill her.

Listening to Priscilla Howe tell about the betrayed princess and the deceived king, and later about the hermit and the white stag in the woods and about the two strong-willed mothers, I felt caught up in both the timelessness of the story and the specificity of it.  Howe incorporated touches of French language into her telling, which made it feel very romantic.  She told the whole piece in a very elegant, and somehow simultaneously strong and delicate, way.   I heard a courtly story about rightness - right behavior and right pairings - and reputation and loyalty and familial devotion…but also a deeper story about how tragic it is when the divine feminine and the divine masculine are split within a person, and how satisfying, how healing, it is when they are restored to each other.

This was the premiere of this relatively unknown long story as a “finished” piece.  Howe had, of course, tried out all or parts of it on practice audiences before taking it to the “Going Deep” festival, but we were the first public audience to hear it.   It was a treat!

The next morning at her workshop, Priscilla shared information about how she chooses and develops a long story for telling.  People also wanted to talk about what the story had brought up for them.

One woman said that she loved that it was a Hero’s Journey that happens slowly and without violence.  Berta stays with friends in the forest and waits productively for who she is and what she was (the real Queen, Pippin’s true wife) to come and find her.  Sometimes patient waiting is more fruitful than frenzied activity.

The morning discussion was quite spirited, though, with lots of shouting.  People shouted about the archetypes in the story - what they meant and how best to present them - and about questions of historical accuracy vs. accessibility for modern audiences.   I found it interesting that such a beautiful, and beautifully-told, story evoked such strong opinions from its listeners.

We took a bathroom break after a while, and when we came back, Howe taught us a grounding song:

“Standing like a tree with my roots dug down,

Branches wide and open…

Down comes the wind,

Down comes the rain,

Down through a heart that is open to be standing like a tree…”

We sang it in a round, crouching down in a circle to dig our toe-roots and finger-roots firmly into the ground, then stretching our branches high over our heads, and finally bringing our hands together in front of our hearts before doing it all again.  I love this song!

When we were all back in our seats, Howe said that she often relies on daydreams to help inform her storytelling.  She asked us to tell a partner about a recurring daydream.

We counted off to find partners this time, and I ended up with Steven Kardaleff.    He was from Oklahoma.  I found out later that he is a theatre director there as well as a storyteller.  I didn’t (don’t) know him very well at all, but I knew that he had been executive director of the National Storytelling Network at one time and that he was famous for his Hodja stories.

I daydream a lot, but I did not think I had any daydreams that would be appropriate to share with a man I hardly knew.  Steven didn’t seem to know what to say to me, either.

However, once we were both sitting together and, well, daydreaming about what we might talk about together without risk, I remembered that I sometimes dream about winning the lottery.  There!  I could share that daydream without embarrassment.

I also shared that I often “daydream” purposefully.  For example, when I was first learning to use a microphone for storytelling, and I was nervous about it, my then coach, Ken Oguss, told me to imagine my audience smiling back at me with approval, hearing clearly everything I said and enjoying what they heard.

“Visualizing!”  Steven said.  “You visualize!”

We didn’t know if visualizing was the same as daydreaming, but Steven was reminded of an acronym that was developed by Alan Monroe in the 1930s and eventually used a lot in advertising:  ANSVA.  It stood for “Get people’s attention.  Develop a need in them.  Offer them a solution.  Help them visualize it.  Encourage them to take action.”

I had never heard of this acronym.  I appreciated learning something new!

When we came back together as a group and people were sharing what they had learned from talking about their daydreams with their partner, I realized that what I had learned was the importance of daydreaming itself: even if you don’t think anything useful will happen, it is important to make space for it.

“Hammock time!” Howe said when I talked about this.  “It is important to make space in your life for Hammock Time!”  Yes!

Then Howe led us in a couple of timed writings a la Natalie Goldberg.  Howe said that she uses timed writing as another way to “get underneath” a story that she is developing to tell.  Sometimes she just sets a timer and freewrites about one of the characters.  Other times she makes up a personal ad for him or her, or a real estate ad for, say, the home in the forest.  Sometimes she writes letters to and from the characters.

She also told us about “log lines.”  This is a screenwriter’s term for the 2-3 line summary of a story, also known as the “elevator speech.”  It is what you say to pitch your story idea when you find yourself sharing an elevator with a potential producer for your movie. 

Howe said that it can be useful for an oral tradition storyteller, too, to compress his or her story into two or three lines.  To do this, she uses the following structure:

“Somebody wanted….

“But…

“So….

Repeat as needed.

We broke for lunch feeling energized.

After lunch, the poet and palm reader, Rebecca Henderson, and I were letting our food digest in the living room.  We started talking about “Pippin,” the musical, and wondering about whether or not that Pippin was the same as King Pippin in Priscilla Howe’s story.  We didn’t know, but we had a good time remembering and singing as much as we could of the songs:  “Corner of the Sky” and “Magic to Do” and so on.  I am looking forward to seeing this show live for the first time when the Wayne Township Community Theatre produces it this summer on the west side of Indy.

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Priscilla Howe and Sean Buvala (www.storyteller.net) ran a “marketing camp” last February to help people who are interested in being fulltime professional storytellers to succeed at it, rather than become starving artists.   The next “Outside In Storytelling Boot Camp” will be in August. 

The dates and tellers for the 2009 “Going Deep” festival have not been set yet, but I will post them here as soon as I hear about them.  You may also want to follow the “Going Deep” blog for more info.

Hope Baugh - www.IndyTheatreHabit.com