Home Audience

A question came up during the recent YES StoryLab led by Priscilla Howe about things storytellers have tried in their online storytelling shows that haven't worked.

I thought of one. I wouldn't say it was a total disaster. Things just didn't go quite as expected.

First of all, we had already talked in this StoryLab, as many of us do these days, about seeing or not seeing the audience online. Do we use a platform that allows us to see everyone? Do we want to see people? Do we set up the screen to gallery view or speaker view? Do we let some or all of the audience members unmute?

What didn't come up during this StoryLab was having audience members actually in the room with you while you perform online. I have tried this.

As I admitted in one of my recent Facebook Live shows (as a relevant part of the story I was telling), although I do not get very nervous about speaking in front of people, I do get quite nervous about playing musical instruments and/or singing in front of people.

I had to get over the singing thing, kind of, when I worked in the public library doing regular preschool story times. I'll admit that I always sang in my speaking voice, not my singing voice, as this was as much as I could bring myself to do. But it was enough. And I quickly learned from the children that they really didn't care about whether I was a good singer. We had a great time singing together.

This knowledge has buoyed me and has allowed me to continue telling one of my most favorite stories, Pete Seeger's The Foolish Frog, in performances for children, even though I no longer have a job that requires me to sing. During most of the singing parts, the audience sings with me, and we all have fun.

I decided to tell The Foolish Frog during a Facebook Live performance. I also decided to attempt telling the story with guitar accompaniment, which I hadn't done for an audience before. And to try to actually use my singing voice.

I was concerned that because I wouldn't be able to see or hear my audience-- because I would't have that obvious reinforcement that we're having fun even if we're not all the most best musicians, I might find this challenge I had set for myself too challenging.

So I recruited my children to be my live audience. I could at least see and hear them participating in the story.

Great idea. But it didn't happen like that. They got shy about being on camera and participated very little. You can see for yourself.

Although my plans went agley I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be and did okay singing by myself.

I think there are some things I could do better if I wanted to try having my kids as a live audience again. Most notably, my camera set up didn't really allow me to look at them and the camera at the same time, and the camera was hard for them to ignore. If I could set it up so they could forget the camera and feel like I was telling just to them I think they would participate more.

But, do I need my kids to be a live audience? Well, I don't think I do. I prefer having a live audience. But I tell my Facebook Live audience that I can feel their good energy when they participate at home, even though I can't see or hear them. And I honestly think I can. I find it easier to keep my energy high for Facebook Live performances than I do for performances I just record for a camera.

I feel you singing with me and we are all having fun!

Fourth Wall

"Does the actor who plays Matilda's dad really not like people who read?"

Virginia and I went to see the musical Matilda recently. Near the end of intermission, Matilda's dad and brother came on stage, while the house lights were still up. They sang a song about how smart people who watch the "telly" are and then Matilda's dad talked directly to the audience. He asked people who like to read to raise their hands. He asked for the name of one of the women in the front row and then made fun of her for being a bookworm.

I thought this was a nice way to gather the audience back to their seats for the second half of the musical. But I hadn't realized the impact this part of the show had on Virginia. She was confused about whether the man was in character or not.

During the rest of the show the "fourth wall" was up. The actors did not interact with the audience. And with the stage lights up and house lights down, they couldn't even see the audience. What happened at the end of intermission was totally different. The actors could see us and invited interaction. The fourth wall was down.

I find it especially fascinating that to Virginia, the fourth wall helped signal that what was going on on stage was acting. A lack of fourth wall, to her, signaled authenticity. She thought it might not be acting, but the actor being himself and expressing true opinions.

This is relevant to my research. In studying reality storytelling, I am very interested in how people both perform and deliver authenticity. Storytelling in general does tend to be more interactive than staged plays and musicals (although, not always). And in reality storytelling being "real" seems to be especially important. It makes sense that the fourth wall has a relationship with, at least, the appearance of authenticity.

I appreciated seeing the fourth wall from the perspective of someone for whom live theater is a more new experience.

Repeating History

They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I struggled with history in grade school. The entire curricular area of "Social Studies" was my worst subject. Possibly this came from the memorization of states, countries, and capitals that inevitably accompanied geography lessons. I do remember thinking that history was boring, but I can't tell you now what specific part of history I found so uninteresting.

I mostly just knew I wasn't good at Social Studies. In high school, while striving to get into the highest level Math, Science, and Language Arts classes I could, I held back on Social Studies. My Junior year I declined to take Advanced Placement (college level) American History and happily signed up for Gifted American History instead. My teacher (who taught both classes) gleefully told us on the first day that since we were gifted, she expected we could do the AP curriculum without the benefit of the extra ten points. (Ten points were added onto your final grade in AP classes, effectively bumping you up a letter grade.) I almost died when she said that. I was trying to get into a class that was easier, not harder. One of the things that probably saved me, was an assignment to read a historical fiction novel that related to what we were studying that year and then schedule a private discussion with the teacher about the book. I read The Grapes of Wrath which is my favorite book to this day. (Possible foreshadowing of my ability to access history through story.)

My senior year there was no Gifted option for the two semester-long Social Studies courses we had to take, Government and Economics. I took them both as AP courses and spent the year in the back of the class writing dirty poetry with my friends, making very little effort to learn anything. I got a good enough score on the Econ exam to get college credit. Near the beginning of our Economics text book it said that if you had a parrot who could say "supply and demand" you had an economist. I guess I was the parrot.

Me as an economist

I scored too low on the Government exam to get college credit. I answered all of the Government essay questions with (not dirty) poems.

I continued to struggle with Social Studies in college. As a Latin/English double major I had to take an American History class and Political Science. If I had taken AP American History in high school and gotten a decent score on the exam I could have gotten out of it in college. And if I had scored better on the AP Government exam I would have gotten out of PoliSci. Unfortunately my credit for Econ didn't exempt me out of anything.

I withdrew from a huge lecture hall American History class I was failing during my Freshman year. I later took PoliSci taught by a graduate student who had a smaller class, realized that format worked much better for me, and held out for American History taught by a grad student before I signed up for it again.

And then I was done with Social Studies forever!!!!

Except not really. As an English and Latin major I frequently learned about the historical context of the things I was reading. This was okay with me because it was "interesting" history, related to things I liked.

But now that I am a storyteller, history won't seem to leave me alone. When John and I moved to England, I researched and created a story about Boudica, since we were moving to the region she was from. I was rereading authors I had translated in Latin classes, so the project was well within my historical comfort zone.

Most of the volunteer work I did in England, though, was with the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library. I knew that the library was a living memorial for Americans who were stationed in Norwich during World War II, but when requesting to volunteer with them, I had focused more on the fact that they had a collection of American books. I did some programs on American culture for them - reading pictures books, telling stories. But they also wanted programs related to World War II. I taught myself quickly from their books. Soon I was telling school children about my experiences as an American in Norwich, how my experiences related to the experiences of the Americans who were stationed in Norwich during WWII, and then all about the airplanes.

After we moved back to the Atlanta area I got involved in a couple of shows that had me researching Georgia history. I portrayed Mayhayley Lancaster, a legendary south Georgia seer, at Frolona Fest, a roots music festival put on by Frolona Farm. I also researched the Battle of Atlanta to add some real Civil War history to an old ghost story I told for BATL.

Most recently I have been invited to perform at the National History Fair. I will be telling stories from mythology and ancient history as well as discussing some of the historical context surrounding the stories.

Telling stories of Trojan women at UGA's Athenaze in 2007

The middle schoolers who will be at the National History Fair are so very different from who I was in middle school - namely someone totally disinterested in history.

Students have reworded the quotation I opened with: Those who fail history class are doomed to repeat it. I never officially failed a history class, but I did a pretty good job of not learning in a few. Now history repeatedly works its way into my storytelling life. I do not see myself as doomed, though. I see myself as fortunate to have a second chance to learn it right.

The Universe in Your Cup

I've started reading A Salmon of Doubt (trying to read stuff from my bookshelves at home), and I haven't even gotten to the stories yet. I'm still in one of the many introductions, learning all kinds of delicious things about Douglas Adams. As much as I love and admire him, I'm going to have to disagree with one of the things he's said.

He didn't have a great deal of success until Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But that was wildly popular and there was demand for more books. Supposedly he complained that when you write your first book you are drawing on, say, 25 years of life experience. But then, you publish another book about a year later, and only have one more year of experience to draw on. Soon you are "running on empty."

As a relatively young storyteller, I have fallen into the trap of thinking that I don't have enough experiences on which to build my stories. But, time after time that has proven to be simply untrue. And it's not just because I'm getting older. I'm finding stories I already have much faster than I am living new ones.

I think the reason for this is the microcosm. Each moment is filled with infinite experiences and stories. I can mine the same exact experience and find something new to tell about it.

For example, I am currently compiling stories from my study abroad trip to Rome. Several years ago, when I started to get a little more "real" about my storytelling, and was specifically hoping to merge my mythology interests with personal stories, I tried to work on a piece about Rome.

The only thing I could come up with was the Milky Way story, which I love and have performed with great success.

In the last couple of years, thanks to prompts from Carapace and Stories on the Square, I have also told stories about my failure to learn Italian and how that impacted my stay in Rome, and an unfortunate incident in Pompeii involving lots of wine.

Add to that some ideas I've been pondering about the Forum, and a few more things that popped into my head while thinking on the newest Carapace theme, Bad Behavior, and that overall Rome trip story is practically telling itself.

See I thought I had this one experience. But really I had so very many experiences during one six week time period. Looking at that same time through different lenses, digging deeper into specific topics, continually gives me more and more material.

The same thing happens with my naughty stories, my band stories, my parenting stories...

I don't think my creative efforts will ever exhaust my supply of life experience. Each and every moment is too rich to become used up.

I am so glad that storytelling has helped me to see that.

Empty Characters

This past weekend I attended the American Association of School Librarians conference and one of the many sessions I attended was a panel discussion on boys reading and fantasy, consisting of the following authors:

Jonathan Auxier
Jon Scieszka
Adam Gidwitz
Neal Schusterman
William Alexander
Tony Abbott

So it was bound to be good, right?

This idea came up in the discussion about rich characters and empty characters. But "empty" wasn't a bad thing. An empty character is one that, yeah, might be hard to describe other than "heroic" or something like that. But, because the character is "empty" the reader can see him (or her) self as that character. Examples mentioned were Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. Their friends are all rich characters, but these leading men don't have quite as much that defines them, and that's a good thing. The speaker even mentioned Tintin, who is drawn with minimal detail, even though the rest of the illustrations are detail rich. The reader can put himself in Tintin's shoes.

Of course this made me think of the stereotypical, archetypal characters that come out of the oral tradition. They usually have only one or two defining characteristics and are not very complex. The wrath of Achilles, anyone? Walter Ong describes how writing has allowed us to come up with more complex, more psychological characters. And yet, we still love our empty heroes.

Is it because we are nostalgic for the epics of the past? Is it because the ancient bards were on to something? Is it because we need to be connected to, to be a part of, our stories?

Another question came up about building upon folktales, myths, legends, etc. and one of the authors told the following joke:

A magician became so great a magician that he told everyone not to call him a magician anymore, but to call him a god.
The God of the land heard about this and they decided upon a duel of the gods.
The God of the land grabbed a handful of dirt, spit in it, molded it, blew on it, and away flew a bird.
The man who was once a magician grabbed a handful of dirt, and just as he went to spit in it, God said, "Hey! Use your own dirt."

The point was that all stories are built on what came before. No one is using their own dirt.

I think this was easier to see during the oral transmission of stories, because there was less focus on the author of a story. Think of how we don't know the author of most folktales, and there are so many different versions. They aren't written. They are collected.

Each telling of a story was slightly different. Stories were constantly both old and new. Connected to an earlier time, but being what they needed to be in this time.

The empty character is an invitation. The storyteller, the writer, knows he has used someone else's dirt. Now he is inviting the listener, the reader, to use his. Come on, he says, be my character.

Practical Storytelling

On the one hand, story-telling is a pastime or a form of social intercourse, associated with leisure, gregariousness, and travel. On the other hand, it may have a practical application, enforcing a point and enlivening a discourse with a parable or example. Because wit and humor add an extra seasoning to the sauce of narrative, the humorous anecdote has always been effective for the purposes of homiletic or forensic illustration, as demonstrated by the popularity of collections of stories and jokes for speakers. Thus the medieval Latin collections of exempla, or illustrative stories for use in sermons, which drew upon the storehouses of classical legend, fable and merry tales, served as a link between the folk literatures of ancient and modern times as a forerunner of the jest-book. (from A Treasury of American Folklore edited by B. A. Botkin, page 407)

Anecdotes and jokes make up an important part of the folklore for any culture. When most people hear the word 'folklore' they probably think 'folktales.' They think of Johnny Appleseed or Brer Rabbit; characters with full length stories attached to them. Anecdotes and jokes are different in format from folktales and it is because they serve a different purpose.

Botkin describes this purpose as illustrating a point. Anecdotes and jokes are not meant to be used alone, but woven into a larger argument. For example, if I am making the argument that jokes are funnier when told aloud, I might illustrate my point with this joke:

'Ask me what the secret to comedy is.'
'What's the secret to...'
'Timing. '

My argument would conclude: part of what makes a joke (or anecdote) effective is how you tell it. And in making this argument I have demonstrated how jokes and anecdotes are meant to be used in a larger context.

Notice that Botkin specifically mentions the use of anecdotes and jokes in speeches. This book may have been published in 1944, but there are plenty of professions in which public speeking is an essential skill today. In his introduction to 'Anecdotes and Jests,' Botkin goes on to talk about Abraham Lincoln as a lawyer and polititian. Plenty of writting goes into lawyering, but once a case is in the courtroom, it is effective storytelling that is going to sway the jury. And as for polititians, they have to convince us to elect them, and alot of that convincing is done in speeches.

I have previously stated that some words mean more when they are spoken aloud. Jokes do. And when someone is trying to earn our trust, tyring to get us to believe in them, their words do, too.

The Relationship Between Sound and Sense

A word has three main parts: the written representation of the word, the spoken representation of the word, and the meaning.

First we may ask, 'What is the relationship between the written word and the meaning?' In some languages, the relationship is clear. For example, in a pictographic writing system, the written word is meant to illustrate its meaning. This does not mean that anyone can automatically read the language without any training. With complex thought comes the need to write about abstract concepts. You and I may understand that this <3 is a heart and can be used to mean 'love.' But someone from outside our culture might not read '<3' as 'love.' A native reader of a pictographic language, upon encountering a word he or she has never seen before, may be able to figure out what it means based on the way other symbols work and knowledge of the culture. However, he or she will not know how the word is pronounced.

What about languages that use an alphabet? In these languages symbols represent sounds, rather than meanings. A finite number of symbols can be arranged an infinite number of ways to transcribe the sounds of spoken words. Thus, what ends up on the page is almost entirely divorced from the meaning. Take a look at the word 'cat.' It in no way resembles the cute furry animal. A reader of this type of language, upon encountering a word he or she has never seen before, knows how the word is pronounced, but does not automatically know what it means.

Now let us consider the connection between sound and sense. In some instances the connection is clear. This is the case with onomatopoetic words. If you say 'woof,' what you mean is 'woof.' The sound is the sense. There is evidence of this in the fact that although different languages have slightly different words for animal noises, it is not difficult to figure out what animal is being imitated when you come across a variation you have not heard before. If you can hear a word and deduce its meaning from its sound alone, then there is a strong connection between sound and sense.

But aside from onomatopoeia, is there a connection? Because the spoken word developed from a need to communicate, I believe there must have been a more obvious connection once. Primitive man did not randomly make up sounds and assign them to meanings. There was a reason the words he said meant what they meant. Our present day languages have their roots in this meaning-rich communication and perhaps those underlying connections are still hidden in there somewhere.

Let us step away from the literal for a moment, however. Speech can mean more than the sum of its parts. In a world with Twitter and text messages, talking is not obsolete. Could it be that when we take the time to speak to one another, we are saying something?

I am a storyteller and a librarian. I have allegiances to both the spoken and written word. Speaking could never replace writing. Writing allows for complex and creative thought that is not possible without an external reservoir ('external' being, outside the brain), whether that be a piece of paper or a computer. On the other hand, I do not believe writing can ever truly replace speaking. The reason for this is the connection between sound and sense; both the fact that some words just mean more spoken aloud, and the fact that the act of speaking can be more meaningful than the act of writing.

Through this blog I hope to justify some of the ideas I have put forth in this introduction by writing about my experiences with sound and sense. And, yes, I do recognize the irony of defending the spoken word in a written medium.