Dépaysement, Take II

Austin, I love you. You are warm and strange, and you are always creating, creating.

Austin, I love you. But there's someone else. There always has been. And I couldn't get her out of my hair, even if I tried.

See, it's not as simple as roux and hurricanes. It's her brown skin and saunter, the way she electrifies straight hair. Louisiana drips down my back and wedges herself under my fingernails, under my tongue. Louisiana is damp and panting.

Beyond the flash of sequins and tease of feathers and the allure of misbehaving on Bourbon Street, Louisiana spits at local color. It's rust from her mouth into her Gulf, and how she is the deep groan of a pier settling into the murky spillway. And oh yes, Louisiana does spill. She flops into the queso, the tortillas, the fried avocados I eat here. Fat and gorgeous and sweating, she purses her cypress lips and rolls her moonshine eyes at East Texas--where don't nobody make groceries--and says a novena for your sister, the one whose husband ran off last August, the hottest damn month of the year.

Louisiana takes herself a beautiful vat of brown gulf water and serves up an etouffe. And maybe she's dirty, swampy, and alligator-eyed. Maybe the races she's winning have names like "Incarceration" or "Most New Cases of Gonnorhea and Syphilis." But maybe you're just embarrassed because despite all that, she still sways her hips. 

Because just beneath her surface is a glorious and profane heritage of Haitian voodoo queens, French-Catholic bacchanalia, devastating slave labor, and sweet, backwater coonasses. And if you slide on past New Orleans, into Acadiana--into Church Point and Mamou and Eunice-- for the courir, the Mardi Gras run--you'll see where they make community matter. They go door to door to door to door, asking for ingredients for a gumbo everybody shares. To every person in town, they say, "We need you. What you got that you can give? You give us an onion, a pepper, a handful of flour, and we'll turn it into something that feeds us all. 

So Austin, what are you going to do when I show up at your door and ask? Cause you know I'm going to ask. I'll feed you, baby, if you answer when I call:

Donnez que'que'chose pour le Mardi Gras!

Second Story Link

Here is a link to Second Story: Storytelling in Chicago. Their byline is:
"We tell our stories so you'll tell yours."

http://2ndstory.com/

2nd Story is a hybrid performance event combining storytelling, wine, and music. A typical 2nd Story evening goes something like this: you hang out with your friends and eat and drink and make merry. Three to five times during the night, the lights go down, a spotlight comes up on somebody - maybe the person sitting next to you!- and they tell you a story. It's a great time, and if we do our job right, you'll leave telling your own stories.

Stories on a Shoestring, etc

here is a link to a page of resources schools on my website. You will find "Stories on a Shoestring" among other articles and handouts here:

http://novateller.com/Downloads.html

Better Late Than Never

Class notes STOR 5230: Friday, July 15, 2011
After a brief review of performance strategies and techniques gleaned from the first week of class, we participated in an ensemble exercise in which each of us offered one line phrases from our stories in a spontaneous turn-taking that challenged us to consider each narrative out of its linear plot structure.
Next, David instructed us to find our own progression of stories by “listening” for our individual entrances, as we had done on the first day of class, and then after all five stories had been told, provided us with the following director’s notes.
Whole class: David began with the reassurance that each teller had accomplished his or her primary task with a successful first performance. He then reminded us to always bring awareness to our bodies in space as instrument, taking account of lighting, seating, wall decor, etc., before we begin to tell; identified the issues of stance, breath, voice and opening remarks as areas of emphasis to which we all need to pay attention during revised tellings of these pieces; and invited each of us to participate with him during his individual critiques, calling for our own self-assessments and encouraging us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our drafts. Lastly, he explained that the teller’s task is to “pay attention” to the problems identified during critique in order to devise one’s own solutions for revisions.
Rebecca: Watch issues of breath thinness; further exploit the rich sounds of the truly lovely sentences in the piece; and attempt an increased rootedness of stance, perhaps sitting down during a revised telling.
Patrick: Watch tension in hands; focus eye gaze onto audience; and provide greater clarity of orientation for the listener through simplification of plot. Wonderful vocal variety—great fullness and distinction of articulation.
Fynn: Watch dropped gaze and diminished voicing at the end of sentences. Better to end strongly so to combat any suggestion of nervousness. Great use of space and terrific delivery of effective language in a clean, straightforward telling of the tale.
Chris: Bring fullness of voice to emotionally powerful moments instead of breathy delivery. Improve pronunciation of Hawaiian words and move towards greater exploration of the percussion of gesture and movement in the telling.
Danielle: Work to neutralize the nervous energy contained in the legs. Great choice of literary story that compliments personal sense of humor and linguistic style. Nice condensing of original text.
As a closing recommendation, David encouraged us to discover ways to utilize the potentially unsettling rush of nervous tension at the beginning of a telling so that we may be “served” as opposed to “undone” by the effect.

The Storytellers' Compass

Download and read my short 2-page handout for The Storytellers' Compass. It will give you a succinct review of this weekend's activity with stories and cards.

Go to this link and download the last file on the list, Story Compass:

http://www.novateller.com/ETSU.html

Friday Review

On Friday, July 15th, the class presented, explored, and discussed the stories from the oral tradition.

We began the day with a discussion of nervousness and heightened space, followed by an exercise designed to help streamline the performances into Olio form by reciting vivid imagery from our prepared stories, taking turns and associatively building off of our classmates.

Rebecca began with a piece from Caterbury Tales, I told "The Brave Little Tailor", Fynn recounted the story of the elves and the shoemaker, Chris told a Hawaiian myth, and Danielle told a story entitled "The Light Princess," drawing on a literary source.

This was followed by a feedback session, where we were encouraged to own the space by deciding on stylistic elements such as choosing whether to sit or stand. We were encouraged to work on eye gaze, voice work (with an emphasis on the problem of "losing breath"), and orienteering. Professor Novak suggested we consider ourselves leaders on a journey and and emphasized the discovery of personal story, citing a blog post by author Neil Gaiman and advising the storytellers in the class, when receiving feedback, to "focus on the problem and discard the solution."

The suggestion was made that we as artists must discover the solutions to the issues that arise and should be wary of taking the solutions offered by other people. However, at the same time, a problem perceived by an audience member is a valid concern that must be addressed, although our method of addressing it remains a stylistic choice.

Professor Novak revisited the concept of losing voice as an example of a choice that can be utilized effectively to convey extreme sentiment and demonstrated the technique. He also focused on centers of tension in individual performers, encouraged us to watch for distracting habits, and guided us through a discussion of making deliberate choices, drawing illustrations from Delsarte and demonstrating ways of conveying emotional and intellectual ideas through gesture and posture.

On the subject of making choices, text selection was also discussed as a topic of importance. Novak cited Ed Stivender's work with Mark Twain as a solid pairing and complimented Danielle Bellone on her selection of George MacDonald. The class then attempted, through guided discussion, to determine which pieces of Danielle's story were her own invention and which pieces were MacDonald's.

We concluded with a brief discussion of analyzing, overcoming, and utilizing tension, physical, topical, and textual, before ending our class for the day.

Ah, Monday

We began with pre-class talk about Mr. Walt Disney, and how the notion of storyboards was at first dismissed, but was ultimately found to be incredibly helpful, and time-saving. It was observed that Snow White had heart, which Alice lacked, and that accounted for much of the difference in their receptions.
What stories we tell often says a lot about who we are or what we wish to believe in. Thanksgiving, for example, is a bit of "history," that is really a reflection of what we might wish had happened. "We tell the story we want to live into."

Next we spent some time with mime (in rhyme!) We played with the pointe fixe, lines, shapes, brick or glass (or straw to be blown in?) and even a ball or seven. We observed that force comes first from your connection with the earth--effort starts in your legs and must work its way up. However, in reacting to external pressures, we often start in the extremities and work our way inward. Any idea that is charismatic enough, which is to say, I think, wholly envisioned, will invite the body in.

We then workshopped on three tellers' stories from Friday. I think the common discovery from Rebecca's, Patrick's, and Finn's stories was that we (do and must) identify with the stories we tell. That the telling is telling of our selves. These are not merely the struggles of chickens, of tailors, of shoemakers. Challenges in relationships are always absurd. We all have felt wounded pride. We look for that moment of rescue, which must somehow be magic. These connections we make during the telling, the exploration and rehearsal, need not be made explicit to the audience, but they should live in the breath of the story because they will indubitably be felt.

So how do you suss out the emotional core from the fairytale trappings?

What is the heart's truth in your story?

(Danielle)