Indy Theatre Habit

Last Saturday night, my friend David picked me up and we drove to downtown Indianapolis to the Indiana History Center to hear “Disquieting, Disturbing, & Dreadful Tales” told outside on the canal.  We shivered more from the cold than anything else – neither of us was fully prepared for the sudden dip in temperature that night – but we enjoyed the stories, too.

The event was co-sponsored by the Indiana Historical Society and Storytelling Arts of Indiana.  There were five professional storytellers, including the mistress of ceremonies, Sue Grizzell.  They live in various parts of Indiana.  All five are recipients of the Sharing Hoosier History Through Stories grant sponsored by the two organizations over the years.  On Saturday night the featured tellers took turns standing or sitting before a microphone on a small raised platform decorated with pumpkins and bales of hay under two poles of bright theatre lights plus the regular lights from the IHC’s patio area.  As a group, the tellers offered a nice sampling of subtly different telling styles and stories from all over the world.

Bob Sander

The first teller was Bob Sander.  He is a co-founder of Storytelling Arts of Indiana and proud of the fact that he has lived here in Indianapolis his whole life, minus a few years in Bloomington to study at Indiana University.  I have often heard him tell the story of the haunted house that he and his college buddies shared there, and at first I thought he was going to tell that story again on Saturday night. However, he only used a small section from that story as part of his introduction to another story.  He had carefully crafted a way to bring us from the immediacy of every-day life to the timelessness of “Story.” 

(He did not tell us that that was what he was doing; that is what it felt like to me.  I appreciated the care he had taken to allow us to fall fully into what some tellers call “the storytelling trance.”) 

He told us about the squirrels that he had heard scrabbling in his attic on Saturday afternoon, and how they reminded him of the rats he used to hear scrabbling right on the other side of his bedroom wall in Bloomington, which reminded him of a certain story that young Charles Dickens’ apparently sadistic nursemaid used to tell him before bed.  It is a creepy-funny story about generations of a family named Chips and their negotiations with the Devil.  Their bargains always involve a certain rat that can speak.

Bob held an accordion in his lap and told us to think of it “as more of an accessory” than a musical instrument.  Its rhythmic musical wheezing did add a delicious layer of aural texture to his telling. 

My friend David laughed out loud at the French accent that Bob gave the Devil in his story.  David told me later that he also loved the sing-song-y bits of rhyme in the story.  For example, there was a catchy refrain that went “Chips, old boy…Chips, ahoy!…I’ll…have…Chips!”

Bob invited engagement from his listeners not only through the use of music and the tension of the story itself but also through the way he sometimes stopped at the end of a sentence to let the audience fill in the last word, as if he himself had forgotten it. It was a very subtle way of checking in with the audience – “Are you still listening?  Are you with me?” – and giving the audience a way to answer “Yes, yes, we are” without leaving the story.

After the Dickens story, Bob told a funny and gruesome little story about what happened to the finger of an audience member who noisily squeezed his empty Coke can during a previous storytelling event.

I enjoyed several aspects of Bob’s time on stage, but I confess that what I appreciated most about it was that he didn’t preface or end his set with jokes at the expense of the women with whom he shared the stage.  That was a refreshing change from every other time I’ve heard him tell or MC in the last fifteen years or so.

Cynthia Changeris

Cynthia Changeris was next.  She now lives in southern Indiana where she runs a bed-and-breakfast on the Ohio River, but originally she is from North Carolina.  Her accent reflects this.  I love to hear the warmth and lilt that are always naturally in her speaking voice.

On Saturday night she began by telling us about a ghost that guests have seen sitting at the kitchen table at her Storyteller’s Riverhouse.  I have been there many times for storytelling retreats!  I have never seen a mysterious woman there with long, black hair…or have I?  At one of the larger retreats before I had met everyone?  Hmm.  Anyway, it was fun to think about the possibility.

Like Bob, Cynthia grounded us in her real, home life before taking us more deeply into Story.  She moved us from her bed-and-breakfast into a story about a store keeper who lived long ago in the days when milk was sold in bottles.  He was surprised by a troubled-looking woman who entered his store and only pointed to what she wanted.  She left without saying a word and without paying for the two bottles of milk.  The storekeeper said, “Hey!” and tried to make conversation with her, tried to tell her that if she needed help, he would do his best, but she didn’t turn back. 

It happened again the next day, so on the third day the storekeeper gathered a friend or two to secretly follow the woman.  They followed her to a place with a fresh grave and watched her disappear into it!  They moved closer and heard a kind of wimpering from deep in the earth.

They got permission to dig up the grave.  When they opened the casket, there was the woman, lying dead but looking much more peaceful than at the store.  In her arms was a living baby, crying.  And surrounding them, in the coffin, were six empty milk bottles.

I had heard Cynthia tell this story before, and I have heard several other people tell it, too, but it still moved me. Sometimes the pleasure of listening to stories comes more from the journey than the destination.

Cynthia also told us a story about a family lost in a small boat at sea whose lives were mysteriously saved when the salt water surrounding them changed to drinkable water.  After they were rescued, someone gave them the scientific explanation of how the miracle had happened.  But no one could explain away the voices the family had heard out in the boat, telling them to “Drink!  Drink!  Drink!”

She closed her set with a story based on an actual event from history.  In 1933, John Harris did ride his wife’s coffin to safety during a hurricane.  Cynthia told us about the love story behind the bizarre event.

I always think of the words like “warm” when I hear Cynthia tell, but the girl sitting next to me said to her friend, “That was a cool story!”  They went over to talk to Cynthia during intermission.

Intermission

Popcorn and candy, coffee and wine, and maybe other refreshments, were for sale on the patio behind the audience.  I think I saw a table of storytelling books and CDs, too, but I stayed away for once.  Dedicated Storytelling Arts volunteer Fran Long had probably coordinated the set-up of the Resources Table, but I don’t know who was actually staffing the tables besides Storytelling Arts of Indiana’s executive director, Ellen Munds.  Storyteller Marcia Baker and Storytelling Arts co-founder Nancy Barton staffed the ticket table at the top of the stairs.

I was delighted to see Don Drennen running the lights and sound for this event.  He was “my” sound-and-light person the last time I told at the Indiana History Center and it was a real treat to work with him.  Also, since my year as an Encore Association judge is over and I have turned in my ballot, I can tell you that I loved the show that Don directed earlier this year at the Wayne Township Civic Theatre.  It was a musical called “Tick…Tick…Boom!”  It is in the running for Best Musical with only one other show: Footlite Musicals’ production of “Miss Saigon,” which I also admired very much but for very different reasons.  If it were up to me, this year’s Best Musical award would be a tie, but I guess we’ll find out when the Encore Awards are finally announced on October 26.  The judges vote independently.  No one but the Encore accountant knows the winner before the Encore Awards ceremony.

Anyway, Don is definitely a creative theatre man and I think he probably couldn’t resist offering a teeny bit of theatrical razzle-dazzle to the oral tradition storytelling event Saturday night.  Or maybe the third storyteller, Lou Ann Homan, who also has a theatre background, asked Don for a special effect and he said, “Piece of cake!”  At any rate, Lou Ann’s two stories had a subtle, eery reverb (I think that’s the word) from the microphone at the end of them.  I have to admit: it was pretty nifty.

Lou Ann Homan

LouAnn Homan lives in a small town in northern Indiana.  Her story crafting always includes rich sensory details, starting with artful visuals.  On Saturday night, she wore a hunter green wool cape that contrasted beautifully with her red curls.  David leaned over to me and said, “She’s wearing socks on her hands!  I want what she’s wearing!”  She was actually wearing striped, fingerless mittens, I think, but I agreed: they looked like just the thing for this particular chilly situation.

Her stories took the mood of the evening into a darker, even more chilling place.  She told us two stories that were based on factual events: one about some body harvesters in 1800s Edinburgh, Scotland who went too far, and one about a certain mysterious painting that now hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.  I could smell the cigarette smoke in the second story as she talked about it.

I think the quiet vividness of LouAnn’s telling made all of us in the audience even more sensitive to the sounds going on around us just outside our story sharing space in that contained-but-open, urban setting.  Most of them – like the sirens, the planes overhead, and the flute carillon from the Eiteljorg Museum just down the road – we willingly tuned out.  And the occasional gurgle from the water in the Canal behind us was soothing.  But you know how you jump a mile when you’re listening to ghost stories around a campfire out in the woods and suddenly an owl hoots?  Well, at one particularly intense moment in one of LouAnn’s stories, one of the horses pulling a tourist carriage out on the street suddenly snuffled loudly.  I heard the person behind me jump a mile and say to her neighbor, “What was THAT?!!”

I laughed along with her because I had jumped, too!

Celestine Bloomfield

The final storyteller of the evening was Celestine Bloomfield.  She lives here in Indianapolis but is originally from “da region” up north around Gary, Indiana.

Celestine always says that she never knows ahead of time which story she will tell.  I don’t know her process exactly, but I imagine she tries to go on stage with a trusting heart, mind, and spirit.  And then, while a part of her is saying hello to everyone, another part is sort of waiting and listening and looking until she knows which story wants to be told in that particular time and place.   Sometimes her “hello” takes a while.  Other times, she is able to jump right in and hit the ground running.

Saturday night was one of those times.  I was almost too cold by then to listen well, but it seemed to me that Celestine was “in the zone.”  She told us that yes, she was from Gary, but “my people are from North Carolina,” same as Cynthia’s, and something in one of Cynthia’s stories had reminded her of another story, about how a place called “The Devil’s Rock” got its name.

When Celestine finished telling that story and we had applauded, she laughed and said, “But that’s not the story I wanted to tell you. That was just conversation.”  We laughed, too, and settled in for a truly riveting telling of Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Black Death.”  A voodoo revenge story was a perfect way to end a whole evening of disquieting tales.

Next Year?

This was the first year for this particular storytelling event.  I hope that it is the beginning of a tradition.  Next year, I will bring piles and piles of blankets, and maybe some socks for my hands, no matter what the weather services predict.

In the Meantime

If you would like more information about this year’s tellers, Bob Sander, Celestine Bloomfield, and Cynthia Changeris are all listed in the storyteller directory on the Storytelling Arts of Indiana website.  I’m not sure why Lou Ann Homan is not listed there this year, except that I know the tellers pay to be in it, so maybe she is just trimming expenses.  She does have her own website: www.louannhoman.com.

The next Storytelling Arts of Indiana event will be “The Flame of Love: The Legend of Tristan and Iseult featuring Patrick Ball and the Medieval Beasts” on Sunday, October 25, 2009 from 4:00-6:00pm at the Indiana History Center.

I do not know The Medieval Beast musicians (Shirra Kamen and Tim Rayborn) but I have swooned over Patrick Ball many times before.  He often incorporates a Celtic harp into his storytelling.  He lives in California (last I heard) but his roots are Irish.

For more information and/or to buy a ticket, please visit www.storytellingarts.org or call the Storytelling Arts of Indiana office at 317-576-9848.

Here is a direct link to more information about “The Flame of Love” program.

Maybe I’ll see you there?

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com and @IndyTheatre on Twitter.

(P.S. – I’ll figure out a photo to head this post later, if I have time.)