Intergenerational storytelling

On Monday of this week and Thursday of last week, I was at Ottawa (KS) High School working with high school students and elders from the community. This was the fourth or fifth time I've done this intergenerational project.

We have a few goals:

• Build bridges between the generations through storytelling
  
• Teach basic storytelling skills
  
• Have fun

Right, I know we don't put that last one on proposals, but it's an important component. If the participants aren't having fun or being challenged in a good way, they won't take much away from the experience.

In this program, there are always some elders who have done this before. They're a great group, some of whom have been friends for ages. Ottawa is a small town, so everybody seems to know everybody else. We make sure that the elders are sitting with the kids. They chat a bit before we begin.

I usually start with a short story. I ask what the audience noticed about how I told the story. Then I ease the participants into telling some of their personal stories to each other. Donald Davis' book Telling your own stories is invaluable here.

We talk about the use of the senses to create a strong story, about how to portray emotion in a story, about how stories are structured.  We play games that underline these ideas, we take apart a story, we tell and retell stories.

I especially love hearing the elders connect with the kids. John talked about being a gunner in WWII--he began by saying, "You know that park across from the tire store, the one with a cannon in it? Well, I've shot those..." At the end of the second session, I heard a student talking with one of the visitors. She was saying, "Do you know my grandparents? They live near where you do." 

On Friday, the kids have an assignment due: they have to write their reflections of the workshops. The teacher will send these to the Area Agency on Aging, who sponsors the workshops. These will be used to justify having the program again. One of the visitors said, "I hope you write good reviews. I look forward to this every year." So do I.

The Story Is True

That's the book I'm loving at the moment, The Story is True by Bruce Jackson. Here's what he says in his introduction:

The Story Is True is about making and experiencing stories as something people do, as one of our basic social acts. It's about how stories work, how we use them, how they move about, how they change, how they change us. It is about stories we tell friends, family and strangers, and it is about stories made for us at a distance, such as movies, television programs, newspapers and books. It is about when it is appropriate to tell what kinds of stories, and when it is permissible to tell stories that don't make sense, stories that are crazy or incoherent or disconnected...

One of the reasons I'm enjoying this book so much is that Jackson uses examples from his own and others' lives--that is, stories. Though my work is usually concerned with "stories made for us at a distance," I'm fascinated also by the weird stuff we all tell each other.

Back to performance storytelling for a moment. In the beginning of Chapter 8, Jackson quotes John Barth in On with the Story: Stories. Here's the first part of that quote:

[I]t's in a story's Ending that its author pays (or fails to pay) his narrative/dramatic bills. Through Beginning and Middle the writer's credit is good so long as we're entertained enough to keep turning the pages. But when the story's action has built to its climax and started down the steep and slippery slope of denouement, every line counts, every word, and ever more so as we approach the final words...

This hit home. I've been working on Queen Berta and King Pippin, as I've got the World Premiere (yeah, I know how ridiculous that sounds, but I like it) next Friday. Two nights ago I told it to my friend Mianne, in hopes that it had smoothed out since the last run through. It has. She liked it.

The story fairly barrels along. I was aware the other night of how quickly I told the last part of it. The above quote reminds me to take a little more care at the end. Because I know what happens, I tend to rush. It's important to allow the audience to savor the story, let them enjoy the satisfying ending.

When I tell a story I take the listeners out on a journey. Unless there's a very good reason, I bring them home (yes, there are a few instances where we stay out in the forest, but it's on purpose). That's the piece John Barth is talking about, I think. If I do it right, the audience is pleased with the story, and so am I.


P.S. If you're near Lawrence, KS on Friday Feb. 15, come on down to the Lawrence Visitor's Bureau/Union Pacific Depot at the corner of Locust and N. 2nd (across from Johnny's Tavern, in case you want good pizza and a beer before the show) at 8 p.m. Queen Berta and King Pippin is for grownups and older kids (PG-9). The cost for this Post-Valentine's Day show? I'll pass the hat for a love offering, of course!

People tell me stories

Is it my face? Is it because I was brought up to be polite? Does my raging curiosity show? Is there something specific and nonverbal I do to invite other people's stories?

Long before I was a storyteller, people told me their stories, often out of the blue. Since becoming a storyteller in 1988 it has happened even more, or maybe I'm just more aware of it.

A few years ago, a new neighbor stopped by to ask if I'd seen that her car's window had been smashed. I invited her in for a few minutes (I thought), and she told me her entire story, even acting out some parts. I heard all about her Jamaican boyfriend, her past as a used-car salesperson, her business selling jewelry on E-bay, her life in California and subsequent move to Kansas, and much more. She punctuated the story with a raised right hand and an emphatic "Swear to God!". Did I mention that she was wearing leather pants and cowboy boots?

A few weeks ago I was in between performances at a school and heard all about the custodian's son's divorce and the problems he was having with his kids. One of them ran away but is home now, thank goodness.

This morning I was at McDonald's having breakfast (the coffee is always better there than motel coffee). A scruffy man sat down at the table next to mine and struck up a monologue--certainly not a conversation--about finding $850 in an unmarked envelope and what he did about it and why. I also learned that he doesn't like cold weather.

It's only very rarely that I put these accounts into stories I tell in performance, and when I do, they are camouflaged. I do, however, repeat them in casual conversation.

For the most part, I don't mind hearing strangers' personal stories. We're all so odd in our own ways, all so much alike. What a world!