I had a wonderful, wonderful first day of shows at the 2010 Indianapolis Fringe Theatre Festival yesterday.  I met some lovely new people (including Australian comedian Lou Sanz – see the little informal video we made after her first show, above) and reconnected with some dear friends.

And…I saw four satisfying shows!

“Andrea Merlyn’s Book of Secrets” – Theatre on the Square (TOTS).

The Act – Local transgender magician Taylor Martin performs as Andrea Merlyn sharing stories from her 50+ years of performing all over the country, meeting all kinds of people.  She incorporates magic tricks with props – including the Book of Secrets itself – plus clips of recorded music, a few costume changes, a bit of lip-synching, a mouthful of bubbles, and more into her stories, assisted by Taylor Martin’s wife and two other stage hands.

The Art – The stories from Andrea’s life fit neatly into the overall story arc of 1) being at a magic show, 2) getting to go back stage to chat intimately with the magician at intermission, and then 3) going back out with her to enjoy the second act of the show.  A repeated reference to the singing Chipmunks ties the beginning of the piece to the end of the piece in a very satisfying way.  The show is neatly staged and tightly put together – neither rushed nor padded.  The patter made me smile and sometimes laugh out loud.  I was sitting near the light booth and even heard the tech guys chuckling from time to time.  Some of the magic tricks are performed competently but transparently: you can guess how they work, so you just enjoy sharing Andrea’s delight in presenting them.  However, the sleight-of-hand in the bubble trick is seamless, and a trick towards the end that incorporates an unknown audience member is “hey, how’d she do that?!” amazing. 

The Appeal – There is a schmaltzy, homemade, bravely-adult-but-still-joyful quality to Andrea’s work that is very appealing.  She has been through a lot and she pretends to be jaded, but she’s not.  She obviously loves everything about magic – from collecting antique magic props to sharing her vast knowledge of magic history – and she obviously loves working with live audiences.  You definitely feel seen, heard, and acknowledged when you are in her audience.  There is at least one other 2010 IndyFringe act that incorporates cross-dressing, and there is at least one other that incorporates magic, but I guarantee you that none of the other acts are quite like Andrea’s.  Taylor Martin’s magic show, starring either Andrea Merlyn or one of Taylor’s other personifications, is also one of only two acts that have been part of the 6-year-old Indy Fringe Festival from the beginning.  (Andrea shares the honor with Phil the Void.)   If you have never seen one of Taylor Martin’s shows, you have not truly Fringed in Indianapolis.  If you have seen Taylor’s work before, don’t worry:  the 2010 show includes a lot of new material plus a trick from Andrea’s “greatest hits” collection.

The Audience – This is an “adults only” show only because a parent might have to answer some awkward questions from a child about why that man is wearing make-up and a dress, and because children might not be interested in all of the stories.  Also, Andrea uses the “s” word once.

“Please Don’t Use My Flannel for That: A Memoir” – Phoenix Theatre, sponsored by Storytelling Arts of Indiana.

The Act – Australian writer/stand-up comedian Lou Sanz gives “a reading” from her memoir-in-progress.  The chapter she shares is about her selling a screenplay as a 19-year-old (I think) and coming to Hollywood from Melbourne to fulfill her dreams.  She has the most outrageously bad luck when she gets to the United States – everything from falling in with a racist pimp she calls The Cowboy to falling in “love” with a heroin user/dish washer that she meets at Denny’s.

The Art – Lou speaks from beside or behind a music stand that holds her writing, but this show is so much more a crafted and polished performance piece than a mere reading.  For one thing, if Lou hasn’t memorized the whole thing I’d be surprised, she is that comfortable walking away from the stand and interacting with her audience.  Also, subtle but effective lighting choices, subtle incorporation of props such as eyeglasses and balled up pieces of paper, even Lou’s choice of what to wear (leopard print top over cute black shorts plus glittery purple eyeliner and red, red lipstick at the performance I saw) add layers of artistic polish to the show as well.  Her word choices and her story-shaping make for brilliant writing.  Her deadpan delivery and deliciously impeccable comic timing make for brilliant performance art.  I wish I could hear and see the next chapter in her memoir as well!

The Appeal – Beyond the basic appeal of excellence in literary and performance art, if you like your IndyFringe experience to have an international flavor, this show is filled with fascinating cross-cultural references.  Plus, there is the delight of Lou’s Australian accent. 

The Audience – I heard both men and women roaring with laughter at this show.  This show is definitely only for adults, and only for adults who are not easily offended by shocking language and content.  This show’s humor is sophisticated but it does include references to things like finger raping and dick-kicking, never mind the occasional “f” word.

“Deep in Love/For Adults Only” – Phoenix Theatre, sponsored by Storytelling Arts of Indiana

The Act – Local (I think) musician Vincent Howard plays some sprightly jazz compositions on a portable electric piano before MC Jacques Carry warms up the audience further with a short, funny joke about love.  Then storyteller Deborah Asante shares a story or two from her repertory of adult love stories.  The selection at each of her 2010 IndyFringe performances will be unique.  On the night I was there, she told a longish story that had come to her “in a dream.”  It was about an African-American woman in 1948 who farmed and made a little extra money by providing room and board to “colored travelers” that couldn’t stay in whites-only hotels.  One of her guests was a man that became both lover and threat.  Deborah also told a shorter story about a woman and her frog pet.  Deborah said that she had shared that story before at a Fringe Friday event, but I had never heard it before.  Even if I had, though, I like hearing stories more than once to see what I get from them on repeated listening. 

The Art – Every performance artist is a storyteller of a sort, but when I use the word “storyteller” I usually mean someone who shares stories aloud in the oral tradition – i.e., tells the stories rather than memorizes them word for word or reads them aloud – in a well-crafted way, and who tells them as herself rather than pretending to be someone else.  There is no “fourth wall” between a storyteller and the audience.  Deborah is a master at this art form.  She quickly develops excellent rapport with her audiences; her pacing is comfortable, effective, and sometimes even trance-inducing; and her delivery, for the most part, is beautifully economical: no unnecessary “he saids” and “she saids,” for example.  At the performance I saw, there was one moment in the first story when Deborah struggled and struggled over how to convey the intimacy and animosity inherent in the two lovers’ breathing into each other’s mouths.  The struggle surprised me because it was so out-of-character for Deborah’s usually seamless work.  However, ultimately she did find the words to make us understand, and the struggle ultimately enhanced the portrayal of the characters’ struggle, so maybe it had been a conscious artistic choice all along.  At the performance I saw, Deborah wore a stunning white dress embellished with sparkly white appliqué’s.  She was not in costume, but she was dressed up, which made me feel that she respected the storytelling trinity: the stories, the storyteller, and the story listeners.

The Appeal – Deborah Asante’s storytelling style is warm, frank, and compassionately humorous.   I have heard her tell many times before over the years but it has usually been stories for children and/or family audiences.  It is a rare treat to get to hear some of her adults-only stories.  Vincent Howard’s music is icing.  He will be at all of Deborah’s 2010 IndyFringe shows except for the last one.  At her final show next Sunday, Deborah will share her stage with a “blues woman” whose name I didn’t catch.  More icing is that if you fill out a form at the end of the show, you get a copy of a romantic suspense novel written by one of Deborah’s friends, Crystal Rhodes.  It is called Sweet Sacrifice.

The Audience – The content of this show, at least the night I saw it, is earthy and definitely for adults only, but it is not x-rated.  It uses sexual innuendo and words like “orgasm” but not the “f” word (that I remember.)

“Phil the Void: Spontaneous Dumbustion” – ComedySportz.

The Act – L.A.-based stand-up comedian Phil Van Hest has brought another of his world premieres to Indianapolis this year.  The new material is a richly layered, pee-your-pants-funny story based on a specific and sincere spiritual awakening that Phil had recently.

The Art – At the performance I saw of this solo artist’s show, two very distinct forms of artistry were going on. 

On one level was Phil the performance artist working his gifts of language mastery, cerebral surprises, comic timing, physicality, and story making. 

On another level was Phil the compassionate and perhaps reluctant healer-artist (for lack of a better word) doing what he had been called to do in terms of energy management by the universal boss in that particular moment. 

A woman I sometimes (meanly, I admit) call the Honker was in the front row, laughing her signature laugh inappropriately loudly, long, and often.  Other people in the audience who don’t know that she is an institution in the Indianapolis theatre community were grumbling loudly about her distracting behavior, thinking they could influence it.  I have been one of those grumblers in the past.  I sympathized with both my fellow audience members and with Phil.

But I could see also see the Honker’s face and she was obliviously locked on to Phil, looking at him with such love and need that her laughs were like orgasms. 

I know from love and neediness, too, so I just watched her and Phil while still listening to, and enjoying, Phil’s surface show.

In the meantime, a man in the other side of the front row started texting someone about the Honker.  (I was sitting behind him.) 

Phil mostly stood in front of The Honker and, again for lack of a better word, was a channel for whatever divine energy was trying to feed her.  He delivered the show that he had come to deliver, and it was excellent, and he even managed to connect with the rest of his fans in the audience, but he also stayed fully present and judgment-free for that particular woman while she got what she needed.  Only when Texting Guy took out his phone and started thumbing it did Phil react.

“Are you texting her?” Phil asked the man, pointing to the man’s date.  “Because that’s less rude than whispering to her, right?”  Everyone laughed.  I was surprised at first that Phil would let the Honker’s rudeness go unaddressed but call out Texting Guy.

A little later in his monologue, Phil referred to cell phone usage causing brain damage.  He paused and looked over at Texting Guy, who was still thumbing the phone in his lap.  More laughs from everyone.

Phil came out of his story even more then to say, “At least he’s holding it down here…” Phil cupped his hands around his crotch, then grinned at Texting Guy and stage-whispered “Sorry! Sorry!” before saying aloud to the audience “…Where it won’t do any damage.” 

More laughs from everyone, including Texting Guy.  At the end of the show, I saw Texting Guy tell his girlfriend to wait a minute so that he could go up and shake Phil’s hand.

And only at the very end of the show did Phil acknowledge the Honker with words.  He said to everyone, “I have CD’s of last year’s show for sale.”  He looked at the Honker and said, “You’re on it.”  He laughed a little and added something like, “I sometimes wonder if you’re going to burst.  You remind me of a whistling tea kettle.”*  She just smiled at him, relaxed and satisfied.

Now would I prefer to see any show without the distractions of the Honker?  Yes.  But I can’t help thinking, also, that I have been her.  And Phil’s energy management artistry reminded me that many people have been compassionate with my neediness, too.

His artistry last night also reminded me of a conversation that he and I and a previous IndyFringe artist named Brent McCoy (aka Clown at Work) had on the back porch of the Chatham Tap last year.

“The audience is a beast that is on my side,” Brent said.  “If I treat it right, I can tame it.”

The audience was on Phil’s side last night, and they would have torn the Honker to pieces if Phil had let them.  Instead, he managed the energy in the room so that there was no blood shed and everyone went away with something good.

That, my friends, is artistry.

The Appeal – As I mentioned earlier, Phil shares with Taylor Martin the honor of being the only two performers that have been part of the 6-year-old Indy Fringe Festival every year from the beginning.  I don’t know if Phil-as-Healer/Channel will be part of every performance – he is, after all, just this regular guy from L.A. at the end of the day – but “just” his advertised stand-up comedy show is treat enough that it will be selling out by the end of the festival.

The Audience – Phil’s work is definitely for adults only, and only for adults that are not offended by politician-bashing, homophobe-bashing, sexual explicitness, the “f” word, the “p” word, the “a” word, and so on.  But beyond that, Phil’s work appeals to both men and women, to adults of all generations, and to comedy-lovers, story-lovers, shock-lovers, and philosophy-lovers.

The Indy Fringe Festival continues at six venues on or near Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana (USA) through Sunday, August 29, 2010.  For a schedule and more information about the shows, please see www.IndyFringe.org.

‘See you at the theatres!

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com and www.twitter.com/IndyTheatre.

*Phil mentioned in the comment box for this post that for the record, what he actually said was, “You remind me of a teakettle in distress.”  I promised I would revise my “record” accordingly and have hereby done so, laughing again.  HB

On Saturday, May 1, 2010, I drove to the Indiana History Center in downtown Indianapolis to hear professional storyteller Olga Loya present “Nepantla: Between Worlds.” 

This event was produced by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana Historical Society as part of the Printing Partners Storytellers Theater series.

I had been looking forward to this event ever since Olga mentioned her “Nepantla” piece at the 2008 Going Deep: Long Traditional Stories Festival.   It was, as I had expected: enjoyable, uplifting and thought-provoking.

Nepantla: Between Latino and Anglo Cultures

Olga is a bilingual storyteller.  She smoothly switches back and forth between Spanish and English in a way that feels as if you’re tuning back and forth between radio channels.  If you know Spanish, you laugh first.  If you don’t know Spanish, you laugh a moment later but in the meantime the beautiful, incomprehensible sounds wash over you in a pleasing way.

Not that everything in this program is funny.  In the first part of the evening, Olga shares experiences from her childhood in the barrio of East Los Angeles, California.  The stories within this larger story include a funny folktale that her grandmother used to tell her, by request, over and over again…but also a few more painful, and even “just” plain interesting, experiences along Olga’s journey to find a comfortable label for herself.  She incorporates various personal, family, and public history stories as she tells the arc story of going from MEXICAN-American to Mexican-AMERICAN to Chicana to Latina.

Nepantlas from the Audience

Just before the intermission, Olga reads aloud her list of “nepantlas” that she has been collecting from her audiences around the United States.  The list is very long, and I didn’t think that we, her Indianapolis audience, would have anything to add, but people did raise their hands when Olga asked, “What is an example of a nepantla, a way of being between worlds, in your own life?”

“Daughter/caregiver” someone said.  “Working for someone else/being my own boss,” said someone else.  “The technology shift from TV and paper to digital…” “Western medicine/eastern medicine…”  “Having hair to being bald!” 

Everyone laughed at that last one.  Then Olga said, “Now find a partner and tell your partner about a nepantla in your life.”

I scooted over to talk with Alice, a teacher that often volunteers her free time to help with Storytelling Arts events.  I won’t tell you what Alice shared with me because I didn’t ask her permission first, but I can tell you that the first nepantla that came to my mind was: my rewarding day job/my rewarding theatre blogging job.

Nepantla: From Rage to Forgiveness

After the intermission, Olga shared a monologue that she had written.  She performed it not as herself but as the character of the narrator, Maria Chavez, a woman whose only son was murdered by a fellow gang member, also a very young teenager.  The story is called “I Will Kill You!” because that is what Maria says to the murderer as she passes him in the courtroom after he receives only a light sentence because of his youth.

Over time, though, Maria visits the boy in prison and tries to understand what happened.  She learns that he is from a very rough background and has no one to take him in when his year in prison is up.  After a lot of soul-searching, she invites him to live with her.  He is understandably reluctant after what she said to him in the courtroom, but he has gotten to know her a little since then, and she reassures him that it will be all right.  And he simply has no where else to go, so he accepts.  She raises him as her own.

At the end of the story, Maria asks the now older and healthier, happier, more mature boy if he remembers what she said to him in the courtroom.  He says he does.  She says, “I did kill the boy who killed my son.  You are no longer that boy.” 

Oh, my, it is a moving story!  Olga tells it in a completely believable way.

Olga told us afterwards that it is based on a true story and that her monologue had its genesis in a newspaper article, a dream, and a TV show.  Olga read in the newspaper about a woman who had taken into her home the young gang member that had killed her only son.  Olga thought at the time that it would make a good storytelling piece, but she didn’t do anything with it.  A little later, Olga dreamed of the words “I will kill you!” on a movie marquee.  And a little while after that, there was a woman on Oprah’s television show (I don’t remember if it was the same woman from the newspaper article) whose son had been killed by a gang member and who was talking about her path to forgiveness.

Olga took all of these inputs to her writing group and over time worked them into a written story, which she then developed into the powerful performance piece that we got to hear.

Nepantla: Between Oral Tradition Storytelling and Theatre

The house lights were fairly low, so from the beginning the evening felt more like a theatrical event to me than a storytelling event, but I enjoy both, so I didn’t mind.  I think the lines between platform storytelling shows and solo theatre shows often blur, anyway.  Many performance artists live in nepantlas of form.

What makes or breaks a professional storytelling event for me beyond the storyteller’s crafting ability is her (or his) here-and-now, intimate connection to her audience.   In the first half of the evening, Olga engaged her audience directly and effectively as herself (no theatrical fourth wall.)  In the second half of the evening, even though she was performing a first-person monologue as a character named Maria Chavez, the fourth wall was still down, and Olga’s connection to us in the audience was still warmly and fully made.

Other examples of nepantlas of form:  In the storytelling segment, Olga incorporated bits of recorded music into her telling along with various casual dance steps.  (Sound and lights run by IHC employee Don Drennen.)  In the theatre monologue segment, Olga incorporated eye contact and an approach to sentence patterns that directly engaged the audience.  (An example might be “Do you know what I mean?” although I don’t remember for sure if Olga used that exact pattern.)

Olga didn’t wear a costume, but she was dressed up in what I interpreted as a sign of respect for her audience and her art form.  She wore a dressy black pants-and-top outfit under a gorgeous, cut-velvet, ruby-red shawl at first.  During intermission she replaced the heavy shawl with a lighter, filmier red overblouse.  Large, gold, hoop earrings flashed from her ears.

Box Office

“Nepantla: Between Two Worlds” by Olga Loya was a one-night only event.  Bob Sander was the MC.  Signing for the hearing impaired was provided on stage by Joyce Ettinger.

This was the last program in the 2009-2010 season of the Printing Partners Storyellers Theater co-produced by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana Historical Society.  I don’t think the 2010-2011 season has been announced yet.  However, the door prize at the Olga Loya event was a pair of tickets to next season’s first program: a storytelling concert by Donald Davis and Carmen Deedy that will take place some time in the fall.  I have heard that Carmen Deedy is an amazing storyteller, but she has twice stood me up (me and the rest of the audience) and I have yet to hear her tell, so I’ll believe that part of the billing when I see her actually standing on our stage.

However, I could listen to “just” Donald Davis for weeks and weeks and he is as reliable as the sun, so I am looking forward to that no matter what.

‘See you at the theatres!

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

Follow @IndyTheatre on Twitter.com, too!

On Saturday, March 13, 2010, I drove downtown to the Indiana History Center to see bilingual storyteller Peter Cook in “A Feast for the Eyes.”  This event was presented by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana Historical Society.

This was my third or fourth time hearing/seeing Peter share stories here in Indianapolis.  He is based in Chicago, but he has shared his performance art all over the world and has been a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.

I love his work.

Multi-Disciplinary

Peter is a professional actor and poet as well as a professional storyteller, so his telling style is wonderfully physical and full-bodied (yes, like a good wine.)  He has impeccable narrative timing and he brings a delicious bounty of specific images to the content of his stories.  He uses his excellent improv skills to fully engage the audience. 

He also brings (for lack of a better term) “high-level communication skills” to his storytelling programs. These, for me, are a little bit different than either performance skills or language mastery. 

I mean, all good storytellers are good, at least partly, because they are able to “say yes” to whatever moment they’re in and because they love words and respect their power.  All good storytellers also build community through the shared experience of their telling.

All good bilingual tellers do this, too, plus build bridges between communities.  Peter does all of the above and more.  He gently and humorously nudges people into moving past the boundaries of the communities that they live in every day and into feeling more comfortable with, and hopeful about, the diversity of the larger world.  But he ALSO nudges people (me, anyway) into realizing that just because they are very comfortable with their preferred method of communicating (i.e., spoken and written English words) does not mean they could not also be good at, or at least competent with, other methods (e.g., nonverbal visual images.)

Peter has been Deaf his whole life.  He was raised to be oral in English and now is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) as well.  (ASL is different from signed English.  It is a unique language, with its own sentence structure as well as its own vocabulary.)  I think that the combination of this experience plus his training in, and dedication to, various aspects of performance art, plus “just” who he is as a person, is what makes his storytelling concerts such a treat.

How He Works – Signing, Voicing…

Whenever I have seen Peter perform, he has brought a specially trained, bilingual, hearing person with him.  Peter is alone on stage, but his colleague sits in the front row, facing him and holding a microphone.  She (or he) voices what Peter is signing, if necessary.  She also signs to him the spoken English responses of hearing audience members whenever Peter asks them a question.  The signing-impaired (hearing) members of the audience don’t always need voice interpretation, but sometimes it enhances Peter’s movements, gestures, signs, and facial expressions.  He doesn’t always need to look at the signing, but it’s there if he wants to refer to it.  Deaf members of the audience, of course, just watch Peter and sign their responses to them.  The house lights are up, which is best for any kind of live storytelling.

All of the other times I have seen Peter perform, his colleague was Candace Hart.  She was there in the front row this most recent time, too, but I think she was serving as an assistant coach for two interpreters-in-training.  Peter teaches ASL interpreters at Columbia College when he is not on the road performing.

I’m just guessing, though, about the two interpreters at this show.  In any case, both were excellent from my point of view (or ear, or whatever.)  Brittany Foster was the signer and Kat Katona was the voicer.  Brittany also stood on the stage at the beginning of the show and signed to the Deaf members of the audience what the Storytelling Arts of Indiana representative, Bob Sander, was speaking as he introduced Peter.

I guess I can’t truly assess the effectiveness of Brittany’s interpretation because I don’t know ASL.  You’d have to ask some of the many Deaf people that were in the audience that night.  However, I trusted Kat Katona because her voicing sounded authentic, not memorized.  I am sure that she had practiced with Peter many times before the show and knew the stories he would be telling, so her voicing sounded fluid and confident and expressive, but it also sounded as if she were watching Peter in the moment and translating that, not reciting from a plan or putting her own spin on things.  If he changed his mind about a sign, she changed the word or phrase she had started to voice.

She also knew when to shut up and let us hearing people have the pleasure of understanding Peter directly.  I don’t know if that came from rehearsal or from being able to recognize which parts of his presentation were official ASL signs and which parts were artistic amplifications, but in any case, I loved that Kat knew when to get out of the way aurally.

…Miming and Improv

The fact that much of the show is not voiced is part of what makes it so empowering to everyone present.   On Saturday night, Peter began by tossing a small, imaginary ball to someone in the audience.  That person threw it back, and Peter threw it to someone else.  He moved up into the audience in the raked (not flat) house of the Frank and Katrina Basile Theatre space and interacted with people very directly and humorously until whole clumps of people were tossing a very large, imaginary ball to other clumps of people.

It was delightfully energizing.  When Peter invited everyone to move down closer to the stage, most people did.  Who wouldn’t want to be closer to this warm, funny, communicative man?

In the second half of the show, after intermission, Peter asked for three volunteers to help him “make a movie.”  My hand shot up and yay!  He picked me!  He also picked Beth Millet, who is on the Storytelling Arts of Indiana Endowment Board and serves as webmaster for Storytelling Arts.  He also picked a man whose name I did not catch. (‘Sorry!)

Peter led the three of us in a pantomimed baseball game that became more and more hilarious as the “movie” sped up.  Oh, my goodness, it was so much fun to be even a temporary member of Peter’s mime troupe.

At another point he asked for a “hand shape” from the audience.  Someone held up their hand pointed like a gun.  Peter then asked for some people and places.  People gave him “Batman” and “the Indy 500.”  He improvised a funny story using those three elements.  We played this improv game more than once and each improvised story was a hoot to watch.

The Storytelling

My favorite part of the well-planned and well-seasoned evening, though, was the collection of fully-crafted narratives that Peter shared.

Let me first say another word or two about how he set things up:

Peter dressed all in black, with his long hair pulled back into a ponytail.  He told us that his “name sign” is a gesture made behind one’s head, as if gently pulling a ponytail. 

He joked early on about the traffic he experienced coming south from Chicago on I-65, thereby establishing us in the “here” part of here-and-now storytelling and introducing our common ground.

At another point early on, he asked for a show of hands of how many Deaf people were in the audience…how many hearing people…how many people who knew sign language.  Asking a low-risk but obviously useful question is a classic, reliable way to engage and ground a live audience.  Peter built on that by asking the signers in the audience (Deaf or hearing) to share with him some signs that they knew.

Someone signed “drink.”

Peter signed (and Kat voiced), “What kind of drink?”

“Wine.”

“What kind of wine?  What year?”

He made the point through this and other examples that American Sign Language is just as robust and meaty and nuanced a language as English is.  This encouraged the hearing members of his audience (me) to watch him as attentively as they normally listen to hearing tellers.

With all of this good (and fun!) preparation, the story trance that came to me during Peter Cook’s more formal storytelling came via a different path than from hearing tellers, but it was just as deep.

The Stories

One story was a hilarious, personalized variation of an urban legend.  In Peter’s version, his principal kept a white ape in a cage in a tunnel under Peter’s school when Peter was a kid.  The principal showed the white ape to Peter and a couple of his friends, but warned them to never, ever touch it.  Of course, they had to sneak back on their own to see it again. 

I’m not going to tell you what the surprise ending was to that story, but I will tell you that Peter’s telling of it was edge-of-your-seat exciting and suspenseful.  Each character in the story was crisply delineated and the pacing of the telling was tantalizing.  I am shivering with glee, again, remembering. 

The final story had a different kind of universal resonance.  It, too, was richly detailed.  It had funny moments, but ultimately it was a more serious personal story from Peter’s real life.  It invited everyone to make the effort to communicate, but it was not the least bit preachy.  I loved the layers of meaning in it:

When Peter was a teenager, a hearing girl asked him to dance, and even kissed him.  After the dance, he bribed his hearing younger brother to call her for him on the telephone.  She agreed, through Peter’s brother, to meet Peter again at the next monthly dance.

But when Peter got there, she told him she couldn’t dance with him any more because he couldn’t communicate with her.

He told us how devastating that had felt and I bet everyone in the audience was right there with him.  Who does not remember and wince at adolescent rejection?

He told us that he could have done several things to try to convince her that he could communicate with her – he could have written her a note, or whatever (and I thought he had already proven a lot about his resourcefulness and willingness!) – but what he did was kiss her goodbye on the forehead, walk away, and try to get on with his life.

Years later, she came up to him at a party or a storytelling event or somewhere.  (I forget.)  He felt shame and humiliation again “because that was the last feeling I had had with her and those feelings stay in our bodies until something replaces them or we do something to release them.”

But then she signed to him, “The problem was not that you couldn’t communicate with me, it was that I could not communicate with you.”  In the years since he had last seen her, she had learned ASL!

I bet everyone in the audience – hearing or Deaf – could relate to that validation, too.

At the end of the story, Peter said to the audience something like “It takes two to tango…May I have this dance with you?”

Everyone applauded “Yes!” either by clapping their hands (hearing people) or by making jazz hands over their heads (Deaf people.)  It was a wonderful story and it had been a wonderful evening.

Post Script

I enjoyed the evening very much, but I left the theatre thinking about the two times that I had taken ASL classes here in Indianapolis at the Indiana School for the Deaf, and tried another time on my own using videotapes from the library…and failed miserably each time.  My cousin Heather is a professional ASL interpreter and I have always admired her skill.

“Hopie, maybe you just like the sound of your own voice too much,” I told myself sadly as I drove home after Peter’s storytelling concert.

But now, as I am writing about that final story several days later, I realize that the point of the story for me is not whether or not I am capable of learning sign language.  There are many right ways to communicate if one wants to badly enough.  For me, the more important message is that there comes a point in every relationship where you ask two questions: “What am I willing to do to make this relationship work? (I.e. – Do I really only love the sound of my own voice or do I also love this other person’s as well?)” AND “Is this other person willing to meet me half-way? (I.e. – Is this person worth the trouble?)”

I also wonder what unreleased humiliations I am carrying in my own body and how to release them.  Hmm.

Yup, it was a wonderful, wonderful evening.

Box Office

Storyteller Peter Cook was only in Indianapolis for that one day, but another professional storyteller, Anne Shimojima, will be here next Saturday, April 10, 2010.  She, too, is well known and respected among storytelling fans but unfortunately I have never heard her tell before.

She is giving a workshop on Saturday morning as well as a storytelling concert on Saturday night.  Both will be at the Indiana History Center. 

Here is the Anne Shimojima press release I received from Ellen Munds at Storytelling Arts of Indiana:

Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana Historical Society proudly present storyteller Anne Shimojima, for a workshop at 10 a.m. and a performance at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 10, 2010.

In 2006, Anne interviewed her 91-year-old aunt, who experienced the difficult days of the war and living in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. This blossomed into a family history project which she will share during her workshop presentation, Hidden Memory. Learn how you can preserve family memories using photographs and interviews. This workshop was presented at the National Storytelling Conference in 2008. 

Anne has delighted audiences of all sizes with her graceful and spirited tellings of folktales from her Asian heritage and around the world. For us, she will tell, Tales of East and West where listeners will travel the pathways of the human heart with folk tales centuries old and yet as timeless and current as the human race. “One of the most compelling storytellers to be heard anywhere, Anne Shimojima is mesmerizing! Like a gifted sculptor, Anne has a talent for cutting away all that is extraneous, leaving only the essential story in all its glistening beauty behind.” Rives Collins, McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, Department of Theatre, Northwestern University.  

Anne has a rich knowledge of story and a keen ear for performance.  She has performed at the JustStories Storytelling Festival in Chicago, the Wild Onion Storytelling Festival and the Illinois Storytelling Festival. This is her first appearance in Indianapolis. 
 

Both events will take place at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center, located at 450 W. Ohio Street. Tickets for the workshop are $30. Tickets for the Saturday night performance are $15 in advance or $18 at the door. To order tickets or for more information, call the Indiana History Center at (317) 232-1882 or (800) 447-1830 or purchase tickets on-line, www.storytellingarts.org. Free parking is available at the Indiana History Center in its parking lot at the corner of West and New York streets. 

‘See you at the theatres!

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

Follow @IndyTheatre on Twitter.com, too. 

On Tuesday, February 9, I drove to the Indy Fringe Theatre Building in downtown Indianapolis for the second monthly “Jabberwocky” event of 2010. The first one had been a lot of fun, so I looked forward to the second one as well.  The “Jabberwocky” series of “rendezvous of Jabbers who share their life stories” is produced by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indy Fringe Festival, and supported by IndyGo (Indy’s bus system.)  It is held on the second Tuesday of every month.

The theme for the February evening of stories was “Once Upon a Time.”  Philanthropist and arts supporter Frank Basile was the MC.  The featured tellers were Phoenix Theatre actress Gayle Steigerwald, Theatre on the Square director/actor Ron Spencer, and school media specialist/storyteller Celestine Bloomfield.

I enjoyed listening to all of them!

This was Gayle Steigerwald’s first foray into spoken word storytelling as opposed to acting.  Even though she confessed to being very nervous about performing without a script or other actors to play off of, she was a natural at storytelling!  She shared stories from her life as a professional actor over the years and made us all laugh again and again in sympathy.   Oh, my, I am laughing out loud again, remembering some of her tales of missed cues and mishaps back stage.

I think this was sort of a new experience for Ron Spencer, too, although maybe he has had more experience standing up in front of audiences as himself because he has to give so many curtain talks before shows.  I also assume he has to give presentations to his theatre board.  In any case, he, too, shared interesting stories from his theatre life, some of which were quite poignant.  For example, I was surprised to hear that he had followed his heart to Korea at one point, and directed one of his first shows there.

Both Gayle and Ron mentioned how grateful they were to the Indianapolis Civic Theatre (aka “Civic”) for introducing them to the theatre arts when they were quite young and for giving them their first encouragement as actors.  I hadn’t known this about either of them, either.

Celestine Bloomfield has been sharing stories with all ages of audiences all around Indiana for several years. I have heard her tell just about everything from ghost stories to historical stories to funny stories for families.   This was an all-adult audience, so she took the opportunity to share an adults-only Anansi story about the time when that trickster Spider Man stuck his penis up through a hole in a big log that lay across the path that women had to walk to fetch water from the river.  His purpose was to convince women that they should give men (who all lived in a separate village at that time) a chance.  As each woman stepped over the log, straddling it, she felt something…good, and lingered there for a while, rocking enthusiastically until she…was finished.

As I say, I have heard Celestine tell many different stories many, many times before, but that was a new story for me.  I am laughing and saying, “Oh, my goodness!” again, now, remembering it.  She told it well.

Later, just before the open microphone portion of the evening, Celestine pulled volunteers from the audience to come up and read aloud the steamy parts from her collection of romance novels.  Each of the volunteers gave it their best, and I admire Celestine for wanting to involve lots of people, but the energy of this activity felt odd and forced.  It also went on too long.  I think it might have squelched some shy people rather than encouraging them. 

At any rate only a couple of people volunteered to share stories when Frank said the microphone was open.  One was a joke story told by a man about how (supposedly) women urinate differently at different stages of our lives.  He told well, too, demonstrating the punch line with mouthfuls of water.

But oh, my, it was an odd, odd ending to the evening.

But you know what?  Unpredictability is one of the aspects of a live story swap that I love most.

Also, this was a particularly blizzard-y Tuesday evening, so no one wanted to linger a long time anyway, even though the building was warm and there were two kinds of yummy, hot, hearty, vegetarian soup to eat.  But I bet that on another, slightly balmier, evening, if we had just waited a little bit, the oddness would have worked itself out, and other kinds of stories would have come up again. 

Anyway, I was glad that I had put on my snow boots, cleared off my car, and driven downtown for this event.

In March…

The next “Jabberwocky” will be Tuesday, March 9, 2010, again at the Indy Fringe Theatre Building, 719 East St. Clair Street, Indianapolis (near the intersection of College Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue.) Doors open at 5:30 p.m.  Program begins at 6:00 p.m.  $10 admission includes hearty soup and bread.  There will also be a cash bar.

The theme this time will be “Off-key Musicians.”  Here is the blurb from the Storytelling Arts of Indiana website:

It’s not so much a night of tone-deaf musicians, or music played in the wrong key.  It’s more about the time when the show did go on, and it really shouldn’t have.  Funny.  Embarrassing.  And sure to hit all the right notes.  Join Jenny DeVoe, Jose Valencia, and Becky Archibald for an evening of off-key stories followed by an open-mike session.  During the open-mike session stories are limited to 3-5 minutes in length. The evening host is Travis DeNicola.

IndyGo Route 5, Route 11, Route 17 and Route 21 serve the Indy Fringe Theatre.

‘See you at the theatres!

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

Also follow @IndyTheatre on Twitter.com.

(“Alphabet Soup Love” photo, above, is by” basheertome,” from the Creative Commons section of Flickr.com.)

On Sunday, January 24, 2010, I drove to the Frank and Katrina Basile Theatre in the newly renovated Indiana History Center in downtown Indianapolis to hear the premiere performance of “Root Doctors, Midwives, and Fried-Mice Pie: Medicine in Early Indiana.”  Storyteller Susan Grizzell was commissioned to develop and present this piece by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana Historical Society as part of their Sharing Hoosier History Through Stories Series.

Not all public speaking involves storytelling.  This piece as presented was more of a read-from-notes lecture than a storytelling – more about this in a moment – but the information was interesting and Sue delivered it warmly.

She stood behind a podium next to a lace-covered table on which were several onions and an egg and something else that size that I couldn’t identify from where I sat.

She shared a wealth of information from a variety of cited sources about early medical practices throughout the young United States, not just Indiana.  Much of it was ghastly, so the audience shivered in delight and gratitude that we no longer rely on, for example, axes under the bed to “cut the pain” of childbirth, or “cupping” and mustard poultices to raise welts on a patient’s skin to “pull” the illnesses out.  We gasped and cringed at the thought of removing birthmarks by rubbing them with the hand of a corpse, too. 

We laughed out loud at the thought of boiling a piece of pork meat in a patient’s urine three times and then feeding it to a pig or dog (but not your neighbor’s) so that the animal would die instead of the patient.

By the end of the program, though, when Sue was throwing the onions into the audience and prescribing them for various ailments, I felt impressed but…dissatisfied.  I felt impressed by all of the research that had obviously gone into this presentation – and I believed Sue when she said that there were many more treatments and recipes “on the cutting room floor.”  However, I had come to hear stories and at the end of the program I didn’t feel that I had heard any stories, only references to stories, if that makes sense.

Every once in a while it would seem that we were going to settle in to a story – something with people that we could get to know, having problems we could sympathize with, finding solutions that we could rejoice along with, or experiencing tragedies that we could empathize with, or whatever – but no, too quickly we were on to the next bit of information. 

I think, for example, that I would have liked to have been led by the storyteller more deeply into the personalities and actions that were part of the rivalry between the “heroic”-style doctors and the new root doctor, Thomas Chin, in the settlement where after a while everyone was putting up a shingle and calling himself a root doctor, even the man who had been a constable three weeks ago.   There are all kinds of potential humorous, cultural, and otherwise engaging story elements to unpack and flesh out in that one sentence.

And if all that wasn’t already neatly packaged and ready to learn and tell in the primary sources, then I am okay with the storyteller imagining and filling in what was not in the primary sources.  A well-crafted story can usually give the feelings and motivations and truth of a topic more effectively than mere facts.  I also think it is possible to craft a story while still respecting the facts.

I know that Sue knows how to do this because I have heard her do it many times before.  I think she just ran out of preparation time this time.

For another example, I think I would have liked to linger in a story about birthing practices.  Sue went into storytelling mode about this sub-topic at one point, telling about one specific birth and the people who were present at it, and tying it somehow to her own experiences as a mother.  You could tell it was storytelling and not fact-telling then because everyone went deeply still for a moment, listening.  But too quickly, before we had time to feel the relief with the pioneer family or share their grief or even just process however the story ended, we were on to the next piece of information.

There are other “story embryos” among the wealth of information that Sue gathered.  Maybe some of those, if more fully developed into stories, would be even more interesting to an audience of story listeners than the ones that caught my attention.

So…as is, this piece is a very interesting talk on the subject of medicine in early Indiana, but I think it has the potential to be a great example of the art and craft of storytelling.  In fact, Sue herself hinted at the end of the premiere that she hoped to continue to work on shaping the piece into a more narrative form.  I hope she does.  I expect that Sue will get a chance to present this piece a few more times this year around the state as part of the Sharing Hoosier History Through Stories grant.  I hope I get to hear it again as it evolves!

Box Office/Mailbox –

Below are excerpts from the press releases I received about the next two Storytelling Arts events (with a link embedded by me to my thoughts about the first “Jabberwocky” event.)  I am looking forward to both of them.  And how cool is it that the “Jabberwocky” series at the Indy Fringe building is supported by the Indianapolis public transportation system!  I admire whoever thought of that sensible partnership.

Indianapolis – Storytelling Arts of Indiana and Indy Fringe Festival present the second Jabberwocky (a rendezvous of Jabbers who share their life stories) on Tuesday, February 9th at the Indy Fringe Theatre, 719 East St. Clair St, doors open at 5:30 p.m., the program begins at 6 p.m.  Tickets are $10 at the door which includes hearty soup, bread, snacks and a cash bar.

What do actors, librarians and teachers all have in common? Stories that begin with Once Upon a Time. This is a night of lustful humor, Harlequin romances and good stories by Ron Spencer of Theatre on the Square, actor Gayle Steigerwald and storyteller Celestine Bloomfield. After the heavy breathing subsides, audience members get their chance to jump in and share a tale or two. Stories shared during the open-mike portion should be limited to 3 – 5 minutes.

Jabberwocky is supported by IndyGo. IndyGo Route 5, Route 11, Route 17 and Route 21 serve the Indy Fringe Theatre.

Jabberwocky is a monthly event based themes to get every day folks to share their life stories.  Upcoming theses include Off-Key Musicians on March 9th, and Worst Case Scenarios on April 13th. Indy Fringe Festival and Storytelling Arts of Indiana have a history of collaboration. Most recently, Storytelling Arts of Indiana sponsored a stage during the 2009 Indy Fringe Festival which featured several storytellers. To learn more about the 2010 Indy Fringe Festival visit, www.indyfringe.org and upcoming storytelling events visit, www.storytellingarts.org. 
 
 *****

Indianapolis- Talk of the Town: The Tenth Annual Benefit for Storytelling Arts of Indiana is scheduled for Saturday, February 20, 2010 at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center.  The evening hosted by Lou Harry of the Indianapolis Business Journal includes a dinner, silent auction and storytelling performance, Stories for the Journey Home, told by Carmen Agra Deedy who is known for her razor-sharp wit. 

Carmen Agra Deedy is an award-winning storyteller who was born in Havana, Cuba. In 1960, she emigrated from her homeland during the Cuban Revolution, a move that has profoundly affected her life and her work. Her parents, strong proponents of human rights, decided to leave after four tumultuous years in the midst of a revolutionary environment. They took Carmen and her sister and found sanctuary in the United States under the JFK Cuban Refugee Act of 1963. They settled in Decatur, Georgia, where they coped with the separation from loved ones still in Cuba and slowly acclimated to cultural differences. The Agra family ultimately succeeded in starting over and rebuilding their lives.

While Deedy’s storytelling reflects these themes of separation and deprivation, she shapes and crafts her stories with humor. Also essential to Deedy’s experience are her strong sense of perseverance and her dual heritage, drawn from growing up steeped in the riches of both Latin American and Southern culture. 

This event begins in the Startdust Terrace Café and moves upstairs to the Frank and Katrina Basile Theater located in the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center, 450 W. Ohio St. Tickets for the entire evening are $80 per person. Tickets for the performance only are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. To order tickets or for more information, call the Indiana History Center at (317) 232-1882 or (800) 447-1830 or purchase tickets on-line, www.storytellingarts.org. Free parking is available at the Indiana History Center in its parking lot at the corner of West and New York streets. 

‘See you at the theatres!

 Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

Follow @IndyTheatre on Twitter.com, too!

P.S. – The headshot I received of Susan Grizzell from Storytelling Arts of Indiana was too big of a jpg file, apparently, for resizing via Flickr.com or Wordpress.  Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to make it work, unfortunately.  ‘Sorry!  But as a sort of substitute, I do like the “Herb Bundles” photo by Carolina Gonzalez, because Sue referred to herbs a lot in her talk.

On Sunday afternoon, October 25, 2009, I drove to the newly-renovated Indiana History Center on the canal in downtown Indianapolis to hear storyteller Patrick Ball and musicians Shira Kammen and Tim Rayborn (a duo known collectively as “The Medieval Beasts”) bring to life a piece called “Telling the Flame of Love: The Legend of Tristan and Iseult.”  It was presented by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana Historical Society as part of the Printing Partners Storytelling Theater series.  It was sponsored by Lewis & Kappes, Fred and Midge Munds, Tom and Pat Grabill, and Ryan Zumbahlen.  Cathy Covey was the sign language interpreter.

It is a relatively new piece, I think.  Usually Storytelling Arts director Ellen Munds only brings to Indianapolis storytellers and storytelling shows that she has heard and seen before in other venues around the country.  When I asked her after this show where else she had seen it, she said that she had not, in fact, seen it before.  When Patrick Ball had told her about it, she was intrigued.  She trusted him enough based on past experiences to hire him based just on his description of the piece.

I’m glad she did.

It is as rich in imagery, language, and melody as a tapestry is rich in color and texture.   It is sort of a tragic, Romeo-and-Juliet-type tale of star-crossed lovers, but it is a much longer and more complex story, with many more mistakes and misunderstandings, many more dragons and battles and bits of magic, and a more complete (one might also say more stupid, or more romantic) surrendering to love. It is also related to the animosity between all of Cornwall and Ireland, rather than just the animosity between two families.

Patrick stands and tells the once famous but now lesser-known story of Tristan and Iseult as if he is addressing a roomful of “my lords and ladies” in medieval times.  He tells with his whole body – indeed, with what seems like his whole heart, mind, and soul.  He ends by saying that he hopes our having heard this story will keep us from “the bitterness of love.”

In between sections of the story, Patrick sits at a fairly large Celtic harp and plays.  The sound is ethereal.

Sitting near him are Shira and Tim, surrounded by authentically medieval-style instruments, including two smaller, medieval harps, a psaltery, a hand drum, a lute, and a vielle – a stringed instrument that looks something like a violin.  Shira and Tim introduce us to these instruments before the story begins so that we can give our full attention to the story, not be distracted by wondering what the instruments are called.

Sometimes all three performers play together.  Sometimes Shira or Tim sing and/or play, individually or together.  I couldn’t understand many of the songs because they were in Galician or medieval German or 14^th century English or 13^th century French or one of several other languages that were completely foreign to me, but I loved listening to the gorgeous aural landscape of the songs.  I also loved hearing the emotion and (it seemed to me) precision and expertise that these special musicians brought to their singing and playing.

On Sunday afternoon, all three performers listened carefully to each other and seemed perfectly synchronized.

I couldn’t always understand what Patrick was saying, but that was mostly because some of the place names were unfamiliar and because the sentence patterns and his accent were more British than what I am used to.  He also speaks rather quickly in this piece.  I had to concentrate harder than I sometimes do with other storytellers (or even other times I’ve heard Patrick tell) but the richness of the language and imagery was worth the extra effort.

Because of the intense level of listening required, this is not a piece for young children.

I didn’t look at my program until later, but the cast of characters listed there was interesting and useful.  (“Ah, yes, the evil dwarf, Frocin!  I remember him.”)  If I had looked at it sooner, it might have helped me become familiar with the sound of the characters’ names more quickly as I listened to the story.  I noticed during the second part of the show after intermission that some audience members were now following along in their programs not only the list of characters but also the list of pieces of music, which were grouped according to sections of the story:  “The Childhood of Tristan,” “The Quest of the Lady with the Hair of Gold,” “To Philtre,” etc. 

I think if I had never heard or read any version of the story of Tristan and Iseult before, and if I did not have the details in the program, I would have had a very hard time keeping up with the twists and turns in this epic.  But maybe not.  And anyway, I’m not sure I would have minded.  Epics are supposed to be meaty enough to deserve multiple listenings.  This one certainly does.

I left feeling that I had experienced a unique treat.

Box Office

This was a one-performance only event, but the next event in the Storytelling Arts of Indiana/Indiana Historical Society calendar is…hey!  It is my own presentation of “Of the People: Stories and Images of Abraham Lincoln.”  It will be this Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 7pm in the Richardson Chapel of Franklin College.  It is paid for by a Sharing Hoosier History Through Stories grant, so there is no charge for admission.  Maybe I will see you there?

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

Email: amarylliswriter at gmail dot com

Twitter: @IndyTheatre

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.)

Storytelling Arts of Indiana’s 1st annual (I hope!) Liars Contest at the Indiana State Fair was a huge success!  Six adults and three youths from various places around Indiana each shared some sort of tall tale to an audience of between 80-100 people from the stage of the Opera House building in the Fair’s Pioneer Village.

There were three professional storytellers serving as judges: Celestine Bloomfield, Sue Grizzell, and myself.  Storytelling Arts director Ellen Munds added up our three sets of scores at the end, so I can’t speak for the other judges’ scores, but mine were very close.  I enjoyed all of the tellers, but I scored the top three adult winners about the same but for different reasons.

The official blue ribbon for first place went to Gus Pearcy from Danville, Indiana, pictured* above.  Some Indy Theatre Habit readers will know Gus as a producer of theatre shows for the Wayne Township Community Theatre.  They just closed a musical there this weekend called “Tick, Tick…Boom!”  I hadn’t known Gus was going to be at the Liars’ Contest.  I was delighted to see him at the registration table, and even more delighted when he told a very polished piece of hilarity about how the nickname “Hoosier” came about.   Hah!  I am laughing again, remembering it.

   Second place went to John Applebee from Springport, Indiana, pictured* at left.  I loved his confident timing and his comfortable, down-home storytelling style.  I also admired the way he built his story about his neighbor’s mule so as to take us by complete surprise with the punch line.  Hah!  I am laughing again, remembering it.  I did not see that ending coming AT ALL.

  Third place went to Ernie Taylor from Zionsville, Indiana, pictured* at left, talking to two of his fans.  He, too, had a very natural, relaxed-and-relaxing storytelling style and an easy rapport with the audience.  The words “gentleman” and “beloved” come to mind, now, when I think of his time sharing stories with us today.  I just felt good being in his audience.  I also admired the way he had carefully arranged his many short “lies” about his hometown and his travels into one longer (but still within the strict 5-minute time limit) piece.  It gave us a strong and lovely sense of place as well as a lot of laughs.  I am relaxing and smiling again, remembering it.

Indianapolis resident Marcia Baker’s adaptation of a Japanese tall tale to a Beanblossom, Indiana setting was a lot of fun.  Dick Reel (I’m sorry: I am not sure of the spelling of his name!) from LaPorte, told some good “lies,” too.  I carefully wrote down the last contestant’s name…but on my score sheet instead of in my notebook!  I’m sorry that I can only tell you that his nickname is “Hank.”  He told a serious and heartfelt autobiographical story about re-connecting with the man who introduced his father to God.  I don’t think he understood the nature of this particular storytelling contest, but I admired his sincerity.

The three youth tellers were Mary Sander, age 12, and Zoe and Maxwell Richardson, a brother and sister aged 10 and 12 respectively.  Mary won first place for her funny-punny story about A Fish Named Noah.  Maxwell told about a substitute teacher who was also an alien.  Zoe told about her adventures with her talking cat.  Mary lost a point or two because she went over the time limit, but she still won first prize.   I think Zoe took second and Maxwell third, but again, the scores were very close.

In case you’re thinking of entering a storytelling contest some time, below is what we judges were told to look and listen for.  We put a check in one of five columns for each category:  1=lowest, 5=highest.  Then we added them up to make a final score for each teller.   We each sat in a different part of the audience, and we each filled out our score sheets on our own.  There was really no time or place for discussion, anyway, because when the contest was over, the audience stayed put to hear who won right away.

• Technique – delivery, confidence, general stagecraft.
• Story Development – development of the story in time available.
• Originality – new material or fresh handling of a familiar tale.
• Effectiveness – in the judges’ opinion, taking audience response into consideration.

It was a very hot day at the Fair today outside in the sunshine, but a cool breeze blew in through the barn-like doors of the Opera House building.  There was a good sound system for the tellers to use, and very little noise from other events around the Fair.  There were a few people in the audience that I knew were already Storytelling Arts fans because I had interacted with them at other events.  However, many more raised their hands when the MC asked who was at a Storytelling Arts of Indiana event for the first time.  I hope that Storytelling Arts of Indiana and the Indiana State Fair collaborate to offer this event every year from now on.  I hope that all of this year’s contestants return to tell again, too! 

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

P.S. -  One of today’s judges, storyteller Celestine Bloomfield, will be sharing some of her favorite stories at the same place – the Opera House building in the Pioneer Village area of the Indiana State Fair – this Thursday night from 7:00-7:30 pm.  The event is free with Fair admission.  I have already committed to being at the Indy Fringe Preview Night on Thursday night, but if I could be in two places at once, I would love to hear Celestine tell again.  Her telling style is exuberant!  H.B.

*I bought an iPhone this past Friday – my first cell phone of any kind, ever (eep!) - in order to be able to easily add a few unique visuals to my blog.  Today was only my first attempt at taking photographs ”at the scene,” so please excuse the fuzziness.   I also thought I had taken a face-front headshot of Ernie Taylor but it sure wasn’t in my phone when I got home!   Hmm.  Anyway, my next iPhone/blog project will, I hope, be a series of “Indy Fringe Moment” videos.   Wish me luck!

On Saturday night, April 4, 2009, I drove downtown to the Indiana State Museum to hear visiting storyteller Megan Wells share the epic story of “Helen’s Troy.”  This event was part of the Barnes & Thornburg Storytellers Theater series.  It was presented by Creative Street Media Group and sponsored by Lewis & Kappes through Storytelling Arts of Indiana.

I am very grateful to all of the organizations and individuals who made this event possible because it was uniquely powerful, uniquely moving.  I had to pull my car over on the way home because I had some delayed-reaction weeping in addition to the tears that I had shed during the telling!  I welcomed the catharsis.

I had heard this piece once before, at the Going Deep Long Traditional Stories Retreat in Bethlehem, Indiana in 2008.  It was even better the second time.

When I said this to Megan afterwards, she said, “I’ve grown up, too, as I tell it.  Thank goodness it’s storytelling.  If it were theatre, I’d be stuck” (in the younger version of her telling it.)

Earlier that day I had taken a workshop with Megan and around twenty other people at the Indy Fringe building.  Megan introduced herself by saying that she had started out in theatre, completing a master’s degree and winning a “Jeff Award” for directing in Chicago.   In other words, she had experienced a lot of success by doing theatre.

However, after several years she began to feel that something was wrong in her theatre work.  She realized later that the problem was that she couldn’t touch the audience.  “I knew art – plays, poetry, and so on – but I didn’t know these people.”  At the time, though, she just knew she needed a change.  She went into corporate communications work then, and did that for ten years.

In the corporate world, she started telling little stories to help people understand each other better.  Someone from the oral tradition storytelling community saw her and said, “That’s storytelling.  What you’re doing is the art form known as storytelling.”

She told us that she said, “Huh?  Storytelling?  What’s that?” and added to us that “That is still what we’re living in.  People don’t get it.”  People don’t get what oral tradition storytellers do unless they have experienced it for themselves.

In fact, Megan still didn’t really get it herself until she visited the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee and had a “spine-cracking alignment.” She began to realize that storytelling – what I call “oral tradition storytelling” or in other words live, face-to-face, in-the-moment, well-crafted-but-non-memorized, spoken storytelling –  is “a perfect, perfect meeting of the highest of our images and the deepest of our intimacies.”

Megan has now been working as a professional storyteller for eight years.  She told us that she recently had another big shift or crisis of confidence or whatever you want to call it.  Suddenly she felt that in all of those eight years as a storyteller, “I’ve just been rehearsing in public!”

But then she realized that the nature of storytelling is that you improve all the time.  You never really know you’re a storyteller.  Storytelling guru Jim May sympathized with her when she talked to him about it.  He said, “You don’t really become a storyteller until you die.”

Rather than overwhelm her, this realization freed her.  She shared it with us, I think, so that we, too, could relax and stop having impossible expectations of ourselves, and feel free to learn and play and grow in her workshop and in life.

“It’s okay to lower the bar,” she said.  “We’re all storytellers.”

I appreciated Megan’s humble attitude and her empathetic permission giving, and I did learn a lot(!) from her workshop about ways to keep playing and working creatively with my own stories, but her storytelling concert on Saturday night was nonetheless something very special.  We may all be storytellers, but we do not all tell as effectively as Megan does.  Her background in writing and other forms of communication, her background in theatre, and her commitment to continual freshness, all inform her storytelling in many rich ways.

Her command of language is exquisite, for example.  In her workshop she urged us to not only create images in our listeners’ minds but to deepen their connections to the story by moving past “like” phrases to metaphors.  A “like” phrase is better than offering a listener no image at all, but it still makes a pause in the rhythm of the story.  It creates a little distance in the listener’s mind because he (or she) has to stop and remember what the thing is, and then figure out how the thing in the story is like that thing.

It’s the difference between saying “Cinderella was clever as a fox” and “Cinderella twitched and knew instinctively the smell of her stepmother.”

Megan told us that being able to do this without resorting to memorization is a skill that develops over time.  ”Keep working your language,” she said.  “After a while, your mouth is doing the work for you.  The turns of phrase are right there.”

Her ability to gracefully incorporate a lovely costume – a flowing peach and cream tunic belted with purple and worn over cream leggings and bare feet – and a few simple set pieces provided by the host venue - a folding screen, a bench, a couple of stools – and to use the whole stage as her telling space in a very natural way are examples of how her theatre training informs her telling.  I imagine she made very deliberate decisions about how to “block” this piece, yet it is also flexible and portable enough to be shared just about anywhere – an outdoor stage, a classroom, a museum auditorium – with very little extra preparation.

Megan is always herself on stage, but she is also dozens of other characters.  Of course she is the complex title character, Helen.  Helen who was raped by Theseus and later blamed for so much tragedy because her face was beautiful enough to “launch a thousand ships,” but who also knew love and passion and motherhood.  The beautiful, half-immortal Helen, daughter of Leda and the god Zeus, who seduced Leda as a swan.  Helen, who loved two men equally: Menelaus and Paris.  Helen who finally came to know that she was more than her beautiful face.

Megan is also Helen’s well-meaning but deceitful mother, Leda, and Paris’ mother, Hecuba, and several other women, including the goddess Aphrodite.

She is also Menelaus, Helen’s clueless but good-hearted husband, and Agamemnon, his war-hungry brother. She is also Helen’s loving brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and irresistable Paris, the Prince of Troy, and Odysseus and Apollo and Prometheus and more.

All of these people with the hard-to-spell names from ancient times become real people, with names that are pronounceable and motivations that are understandable (if not always admirable) through Megan’s telling of all of their stories within the epic story of “Helen’s Troy.”

It is comforting to know that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that both male and female energies are important.  But it is healing to see that something as horrible as a rape or an abandonment or a mistake or even a slaughter is not the end of the story, even though it feels that way at the time.

“Helen’s Troy” is in two parts, divided by an intermission.  At the end of the evening on Saturday, when everyone in the audience was on their feet applauding, Megan bowed, held out her arms, and said, “You did that!  You made the pictures in your head!”

Which is true.  But still…it was Megan who had pulled the ancient story fragments together for us and showed us the way home with them as Helen finally found her way home from Troy with Menelaus to the Elysian Fields.

 ”Thanks, again,” Megan said, as we continued to clap.  “And…and…may you find love at home, too!”

Yes, indeed.

********** 

Megan Wells’ telling of “Helen’s Troy” here in Indianapolis was a one-night only event.  However, the final event in the Barnes and Thornburg Storytellers Theater series is still to come on Saturday night, April 25, 2009. 

The guest that night will be storyteller/folk musician John McCutcheon.  He will share a piece for adults and teens called “Politics, Love and Other Small Miracles.”  It will be presented by Storytelling Arts of Indiana in collaboration with St. Luke’s Methodist Church.  The performance will occur at 7:30 pm at St. Luke’s, 100 West 86^th Street.  Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door.  To order tickets or for more information, please call (317)232-1637 or visit www.storytellingarts.org/store/category/Tickets.

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

This is the fourth of four posts in a series about the third annual “Going Deep: Long Traditional Stories Retreat” held in Bethlehem, Indiana, on March 19-22, 2009.

The Storytelling

On Saturday night, the last night, I and the other retreat participants walked over to the Schoolhouse from the Storyteller’s Riverhouse to hear a version of “Gilgamesh” written and performed by David Novak and presented by A Telling Experience.  Priscilla Howe introduced the show.  Steve Boyar was the stage manager. 

Yes, stage manager.  David comes to oral tradition storytelling from theatre and, I learned later, from busking (street performance art that in David’s case includes clowning and mime.)  His “Gilgamesh” piece incorporates the best from all of his backgrounds – the intimacy of storytelling, the interpretive skills of acting, the physicality of busking, and the design elements of theatre – to let his audience see that this 5000-year-old story is still a good one, and still relevant.

Steve is a storyteller, too – in fact, he and David met through one of David’s storytelling classes – but in this production he is content to stay completely behind the scenes.  He told me later that the story is a little different every time.  As the stage manager, he doesn’t follow written cues.  He said, very modestly, “I just know the story.” 

I imagine that being the stage manager of this storytelling show is a very organic and intuitive activity.  Even though David and Steve have done a lot of work ahead of time and deeply considered each aspect of the show, the two men also co-create each performance as it goes along.

When the audience arrived Saturday night, the chairs had all been turned to face the small, raised platform at the end of the schoolhouse’s meeting room.  The space had been outfitted with several theatre lights and extra sound equipment.   Seven bamboo poles were stuck in weighted burlap sacks so that they stood upright.  There was a pattern of smaller poles almost in a star shape – or maybe it was an arrow? – on the back wall, between two free-standing bamboo screens.  Draped on the floor in front of the platform were two long pieces of brown plastic, with shards of clay and two or three loose bamboo poles strewn across them.

You can see a picture of a portion of the “set” with the house lights up in Priscilla Howe’s account of the “Going Deep” retreat on her blog.

I was delighted to learn later that every time David and Steve present this piece, they cut new bamboo canes from near their homes in Ashville, North Carolina.  In my mind, this honors both the transience of oral traditional storytelling and the stagey quality of live theatre.

The “Gilgamesh” storytelling piece incorporated portable theatre lights, too, and several pieces of recorded music. 

David wore black trousers and a subtly-striped, black and grey, short-sleeved shirt.  He looked as if he had respected his audience enough to dress up, but his clothes also allowed him to move very freely, even incorporating joyful and impressive acrobatics from time to time.

The story was completely new to me.  It went something like this:

Gilgamesh is the proud ruler of a magnificent city called Uruk.  He is two parts female (from his mother, who was a goddess) and one part male (from his father, a human man.)  He is raised mostly by his mother, but then a goddess makes and civilizes a friend for him, a man called Enkidu.  Gilgamesh and Enkidu at first want to fight each other, but then they become best friends and witnesses for each other. They share many adventures, each of which has meaning.  When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh seeks immortality to ease his pain.  After more adventures, more learning, and more pain, he finally finds peace instead.  “Love the person you’re with, and eat the bread while it’s still warm.”

Oh, I am not doing justice to the nuances of the plot or the characters at all, but it is a powerful, powerful story, especially as David and Steve present it.

Later, when I learned the word “bromance” (buddy story about straight men) from a TV-watching colleague at my day job, I immediately thought of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. 

And David and Steve, for that matter.

I wish I had thought to ask them what their wives think of this show.

This version of “Gilgamesh” is much more than a re-telling of the first recorded bromance, however. 

My experience of the piece was as layered as the piece itself.  I laughed a lot – sometimes in recognition, other times in surprise.  At times my face was wet with tears.  Other times I was almost unbearably turned on.  And still other times I felt just plain pleased to be taken not only to ancient Sumeria but also to the nineteenth century and George Smith’s re-discovery of the ancient cuneiform tablets, and, through brief references to pop culture, to various decades of the last century.  David (and Steve) made the whole, complex piece very easy to follow.

There were two parts divided by a ten-minute intermission.  At the end, David passed around a loaf of bread that Steve had baked during the show.  We all pulled off pieces to chew.  It was delicious!

The Workshop

The next morning we all gathered in the living room of the Storyteller’s Riverhouse for David’s workshop.

He said he didn’t have any of the handouts or other things that we had enjoyed in the first two workshops of the retreat, but “I will give you myself as much as I can.” 

This is no small gift.  David’s mind is as well-stocked as the great library of Alexandria.  He also has a knack for exegesis, for exploring and explaining something point by point, word by word, or in this case, artistic choice by artistic choice. 

His “Going Deep” workshop was therefore more of a companionable, conversational lecture than an invitation to self-reflection or a hands-on introduction to ritual, but it was textured and fascinating, rich with both personal insights and scholarship.  Even though it was very different from either Liz Warren’s workshop or Marilyn Omifunke Torres’ workshop, I found it equally satisfying.

David had brought an iPod in a small case that converted into a nifty little stereo system. He played the pre-show music as we all were getting settled with our notebooks and coffee cups.  He had also brought a small crate of books.  He spread them out in a loose pile at his feet, ready to hold up as he mentioned them in his talk.

He began by saying that he planned to go through the show again, sharing information about the artistic choices he had made.  However, first he wanted to give everyone a chance to integrate the stories from the previous two nights as well as the one he had told.  He asked everyone to help him create a conversation of images and moments from all three pieces, “Like an overture in musical theatre weaves together the themes of an entire piece.”

He said, “Present whatever image occurs to you as you’re remembering the stories.  Listen to the images that others present and relate your images to those.  But just speak the images, don’t talk about them.  We’re not having a discussion yet, just weaving connections.  It’s okay to have some silence in the conversation, too.”

Someone said, “The red horse in the Grail story…” and we were off.   Afterwards, I did feel more deeply connected to all three of the stories.

David said that he does this exercise with his storytelling students before they tell.  They share images from their own stories, listening for possible connections and resonances.  Then when the students listen to each other’s full stories, they listen in a more coherent, woven manner.

It also helps them begin to move into teller mode.  “Beginning storytellers are often caught in a fixed text,” David said.  “This exercise challenges the grip of the literary mind…The challenge is to move freely within the story…The mind of a storyteller is different from a writer or a reciter.”

I want to try this exercise with my own storytelling students.

For the rest of the morning, David took us back through the “Gilgamesh” story.  He played bits of music from the show – some of which he had created himself using “Garage Band” – and explained each bit’s purpose, such as foreshadowing, or focusing, or filling in emotional gaps, or mirroring the fusion of elements in the story, etc.

He referred to other stories and to other artists’ performances.  He referred to ideas, quotes, books, poems, songs, and theories. He referred to issues and information from his personal life and his own journey as a storyteller.  He brought forth from his own mind and heart all kinds of items to deepen our connection to the Gilgamesh story through his explanation of his own creative decision-making for this piece.

I scribbled notes as fast as I could, only speaking up to ask how to spell things like “trochaic tetrameter.”  I took way too many notes to share all of them here.  I’ll just share a few of the many, many items that intrigued me in David’s talk:

• On the importance of having and being witnesses: “How can we know another until we know ourselves? And yet how can we know ourselves until we know another?”
• On the challenge of providing an epic experience in a modern setting: “We are not a tribal, traditional community. We don’t have a common principle of silence, where you don’t speak what everyone knows already (so our art has to fill in some of the gaps for our listeners)….There’s more to it than just the story. There’s the experience. How to make it immersive?”
• On honoring the original source: “If you just read aloud a translation of the cuneiform writing, you might think you were honoring the original story, but it would actually be like just reading aloud a libretto from a musical comedy or just reading aloud Shakespeare. You would not be honoring it… (And anyway) there is no such thing as a definitive text. The first written story of Gilgamesh was still recorded a millennia after the story was first told.”
• On being fearless as an artist: “Some artists think that being fearless is about coarseness and crudity. It’s not. Being fearless is not the same as being disrespectful. Anyone can be insulting. The challenge of the modern artist is to try and mean something. The truly dangerous thing is to be sophisticated and nuanced. Real nakedness is enigmatic.”
• On building a long piece that keeps the listeners engaged: “Bertoldt Brecht said, ‘As soon as your listener knows what you’re going to say, they stop listening.’ So  you have to break the expectations.”
• Gilgamesh felt abandoned by the goddess, but at the end he realized that he had never left her hand.

I hope I get to hear David Novak’s telling of “Gilgamesh” again some time.

By the way, David sent me some production photos, too, but I loved the sexy ambiguity of the show poster, so that is what I used here on my blog.  You can see photos of David and learn more about his work on his website, www.novateller.com.  More reviews and information about his “Gilgamesh” piece in particular are here.

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com