Want to partake of some Susan O'halloran? That's right. I started with something huge.
Now you're thinking, "Slow your roll, girl! You put everything on the table! You started with your aces. How are you going to top that?"
Others might be saying, "I have no interest in building strong, diverse, compassionate, understanding communities in the world! What else have you got?"
Well...there is the keynote speaker this year. He might interest some people. His name is George Dawes Green. Apparently, he founded something called The Moth. Some of you may have heard of it.
I know, I know, that isn't everybody's cup of tea either.
So, I didn't mention the Master Classes. They will be taught by a range of storytellers and they will cover topics like podcasting - a thing about which I know nothing, the power and art of storytelling: The Griot's Gift - I'm going to this one because Charlotte Blake Alston.
Doubtless, there are still those of you saying, "So what? I just want some storytelling. That's all I'm about!"
Well, that isn't a problem.
There will be loads of storytelling. In fact, there are fringe shows. You know, those shows you won't find on offer during the kid's hour. The after hours, intimate tellings that are often on the cusp of risky or downright risky? Finge! Jeff Gere, Cynthia Changaris, Ann Harding, Dorothy Cleveland and Barbara Schutzgruber, and Norah Dooley will be strutting their stuff.
When I started this blog, I made several assumptions. I assumed people who found their way here would already be somewhat involved in the world of storytelling. What did not occur to me was that there would be people who were trying to figure out how to get into storytelling.
Recently I was on a thread, and a person made the comment, "This is all well and good, but how do you get into storytelling?"
I get this question fairly often when I'm out traveling. People want to know how to become a professional storyteller. They aren't asking how to get to the next level, no, they want to know where to begin.
This is such a common question, it even has a Wikihow page.
Most people who decide to become a professional storyteller have encountered the art and been taken with it. They see a professional up there doing their thing and say to themselves, 'I could do that'.
Here is one of the best rocking the stage. Go on with your bad self, Donald!
If you get a professional doing their thing, it looks easy. That is their power. Good storytellers seem to just bring the story to life.
What you don't see is all the work that goes into making it roll off of the tongue. So, if you are just beginning, you don't start at the art point. You have to start at the beginning.
Wikihow offers five steps. I thought I would do the same!
1.Get some stories under your belt.
You can either tell traditional stories or you can write your own, but you need to know some tales. Where do you find them? Well, you can google folktales or folklore and take your pick. You'll have to write your own personal material if that is how you wish to go.
Under no circumstances should you tell anyone else's personal stories!!!
As you learn stories, you need to make sure that you are shaping them with your own personal tastes.
Try not to completely copy an existing storyteller. Find you own style.
Craft is how you put stories together, and how you present them. This is important, because it shapes what type of storyteller you are, and what types of stories you tell. You will spend a great deal of time in this stage before you ever get to the last step.
I went to Northwestern University and studied under Rives Collins. Call your local community college and find out if they have a storytelling program. Go to festivals and conferences given by storytelling organizations and take workshops and classes.
You most likely live in a state where there is a storytelling guild. You might live near one and not know. Go to a guild meeting and get to know your local storytellers. Listen, get feedback, and consider what people have to say. The link above is for the National Storytelling Network organization that has catalogued guilds for every state. Click on your state, find out where your guild is, and enquire if there is a group near you.
I cannot stress enough that you should read about storytelling. Parkhurst Brothers, and August House publishers have a great number of books about storytelling.
d. Tell!
You must find opportunities to tell your stories to the audiences you wish to serve. Whether adults or children, you must find willing guinea pigs. Find out if you can volunteer to tell in your local public library. Find open mic nights. Do what you have to do.
3. After you are confident that you've got some stories ready, you feel comfortable telling them, and you are ready to roll out your carpet and invite the paying public into your world. You have to tell them you are alive and offering a service. That brings us to the most annoying part of this whole thing. You have to start the onerous part of the whole process.
There are lots of books about marketing. I did mention you should read, right?
4. The Business of Storytelling. I haven't written much about this on this blog, but the thing that goes here is the business of storytelling. This is the part where you schedule, produce contracts, set prices, cold call, put together email lists, contact people, and make connections with others. I don't do this part of the business, but it is an essential part of making this job work.
While all of that is happening, you get to the last step in the process.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather rinse repeat! This cycle of gathering material, crafting it, working the material, engaging with new audiences, marketing to new places, and working the art is not a fait accompli...it is a cycle.
So, there you have it. Some really basic steps to becoming a professional storyteller.
Is this a really simplified list? Yes. Will it be quick and easy? No, probably not, but it is a roadmap to becoming a professional.
"The British are coming!" Paul Revere rode alone to warn the whole of the countryside.
"I cannot tell a lie. T'was I who chopped down the cherry tree." George Washington was always truthful.
Betsy Ross sewed the very first American flag. Yes, see, a woman did something important to further the American revolution.
Sherman hated the south, that's why he burnt and destroyed so much of it.
What were the stories you learned in American history? What were the stories you internalized? What did you learn about World War II or Vietnam? Who was held up as a hero? Who was vilified? What is it you were taught about American values, and whether or not we lived up to those values?
Through much of human history, the bulk of the population were not capable of reading. Population wide education is a pretty recent development in society. Before we could read to ourselves, we had to have others tell us what was happening.
The griot, bard, poet, minstrel, folksinger, or jongleur had the job of keeping everyone informed about what was happening. Their tales were often dressed in poetry or little personal flares. People learned about the world beyond their villages by listening to the stories that were carried from place to place. The stories that pleased the population were told over and over again until they moved from mere tellings to ritual. The longer we tell the same story, the more we begin to believe it is true. We actually reinforce each other when it comes to these tales. In the end, they get added to the history of how we understand things.
The problem, of course, is that some of these stories have absolutely no bearing on the truth. They didn't happen entirely the way they were reported, and, some are made up of whole cloth.
How can we tell the difference between what is real and what is just story, and why does it matter anyway? If the stories make us feel good, and they aren't really hurting anything, why does it matter?
Well, I would like to put forward that it does matter because of a very simple, but profound truth that we overlook all of the time.
It matters what we hold up as history. It isn't enough that we only remember the shining examples of our triumphs. We must also face the darkness and the realities of those times when we, as a nation, faltered. If we cannot look into that yawning crater of failures, then we are going to head down the same road, and fall into the same craters.
This is an obvious sentiment, but it is not something that is easy to do.
Why? Why is it so hard to admit that we've made bad choices, been led by the nose by foolish or dangerous practices or ideas? Why?
Well, if we've done bad things, it suggests that the people who run our countries are just people.
No matter the country, the populace likes to tell grandiose stories about how it came to be.
You never hear a story like this:
Bob liked growing cabbages. He found a great place to grow cabbages and cleared some land. Other people followed, and before long, the area was big enough to need some kind of governance, and the people living there kind of fell into a system, and it eventually grew up into a town.
No, the stories are all about intrepid adventurers or travelers or men who couldn't lie or stout hearts who held off regiments with nothing more than hope and faith. That's the history we tell. That's sexy and it sells.
George Washington was a truthful man. He never lied, not once in his whole life because he was perfect, right? Really? Who honestly believes that? Does it make him less of a person because he might not have been honest every second of his life? No.
Did Paul Revere rouse the whole countryside by himself? No, he had help, and he was just one of at least three men who were responsible for that heroic ride. Does that take away from his accomplishments? No.
Something else I never learned was that after Paul Revere and his merry band roused the countryside, women and old men, who were the ones left home, were the citizen army who put the British on the run. Old farmers, and their wives were the 'army' which inflicted such damages on the redcoats. How come nobody tells that part of the tale? Well, maybe they do, but I never heard it in school.
Did Betsy Ross actually sew the American flag? No, probably not. In fact, she was never credited with this accomplishment in her lifetime. So, why bring this up at all? Is it because we needed a woman to have done something special in the founding? Aren't there plenty of women in history who actually did contribute? Why have we mythologized a non-event?
As for Sherman, his action had nothing to do with hating the south or being virulently anti-slavery. He burnt much of it to the ground to break it. It was in rebellion, and he meant to make sure it didn't rise right back up and start causing problems once more.
There are others out there telling true stories as well. Somehow, these stories never seem to get as much traction in our history books or rise to our notice as say, Betsy Ross. For instance, how many people know much about Ida B Wells?
February is black history month. A month where we fill in some of the history that somehow managed to get left out of the history books. We also have Hispanic history month and women's history month. We have these concentrated times because these groups are still underrepresented when we tell the history of America in our schools.
What is to be done about the fight we are waging to keep our history? There is only one thing to be done: Keep telling the stories of our history; the powerful ones, the truthful ones, the ones we turn from, the ones we embrace.
There are shameful things in our past, yes, and we need to answer to ourselves for them, but there are also spectacular successes we should celebrate. We need our history; it is the only thing that will keep us from failing our future.
There are storytellers out there telling our history in interesting and accessible ways. They are invited into schools to give a different picture of the world than the flat one students read about in books.
To those tellers who focus on true history, and not the surface kind we often get, I salute you.
The stories we tell matter. They shape how we feel about ourselves. The stories we refuse to tell because they might make us look bad, matter as well. Not hearing them robs us of our ability to grow and get better as a society.
Let us keep telling the stories that need to be heard. Let them be grounded in facts. Let us embrace them as part of who we have become. Even the difficult ones.
