Skills of a Lifetime Are Useless: Rethinking Performing

I have a degree in theatre from Northwestern University!

I trained with Rives Collins!

I was mentored by Nancy Donoval, Sue O'Halloran, Beth Horner, Jackie Torrence, Janice Del Negro, Jim May, Syd Lieberman, Donald Davis, Jay O'Callahan, Dovie Thomason and many others!

I know how to read an audience. I know how to find the sweet spot in the story that reaches out and grabs people's hearts.

I know how to approach an audience and find a place where we can build a community together.

I know how to use stories to reach through generational and cultural barriers.

I know how to craft stories for different age groups, and adjust those stories in the blink of an eye if I feel the need to do so.

In the world of a global pandemic, none of those skills matter.

Why?

I didn't train to be a sound engineer!

I didn't train to be a video editor!

I didn't train to be a film director!

I didn't rain to design lights!

I didn't train to be a tech director!

I didn't train to design soundtracks!

I know how to tell stories.
I know how to tell stories to live audiences.

That's what I got.

Unfortunately.....

Yeah, typically it is monkeys, but I like frogs

1. I cannot see my audience.

There could be five, or five hundred people in the audience, and I cannot see them. Even if they are on the screen I cannot see them. I have to focus like a laser on the camera. If I don't, it will look like I"m not looking at anybody.

2. I cannot hear my audience.

So many of my stories are about creating communal sounds, chants, calls, and expressions, that without them, the space around me isn't full of anything. It is very odd.

3. I cannot interact with my audience.

I cannot take a quick poll of a raise of hands, point to someone who is having a particularly good time, laugh with someone, share a quick look with a particular person, or identify someone who is lost or looking confused and bring them back into the fold. In fact, I can't do anything at all when it comes to making individual personal connections.

4. I do not have a cohesive audience.

I am at my home, and every other person is somewhere in their own spaces. They cannot hear or feel or sometimes even see other people listening. They are having their own private little show, and they are not drawn in or carried along by the energy of anyone else in the audience.

I don't have one audience I have twenty or more. Each one encased in their own little room.

5. I am a floating head in a box.

I do not have the full use of my whole body. My movements have to be curtailed, I have to be aware of what the camera sees, blurring effects, my background, and anything that comes into camera view becomes immediately distracting because everything else has been carefully eliminated so as not to be distracting!


Luckily, I am not yet dead. This means I can still learn some new things. Actually, it means I must!

We are all on a learning curve.

Nobody knows what this looks like.

I have been recording stories since the second week of March. I finally got the hang of it in the last two weeks of May.

I have done more reading about lights, and movement, and the camera, and microphones, and Zoom, and Vimeo, and who knows what else in the last three months.

I have joined groups, asked for help, left groups, asked for help, started groups, asked for help, cocooned, reached out, gone into despair, recovered from despair, shouted my defiance, sheepishly apologized for being a jerk, learned programs I never knew existed, spent money I didn't know I would ever need to spend, worked through fear, anxiety, worry, and frustration.

Then, days ago, the world turned itself right-side up.

Everything started humming. I have found peace in the storytelling work.


1.  I imagine the person or the audience. I imagine how they are reacting, and I tell as if they are right there with me.

2. I make space for the reactions that I feel belong there.

3. I interact with them anyway, and anyone watching can play or not

4. Every single audience is having their own personal experience, and that is lovely

5. I am engaging in a form of media that more people have seen than storytelling. If this is a way to introduce them to my art form, then so be it.

Most of my shows are pre-recorded.

I started uploading shows to our Vimeo with password-protected content. The client can access the content and share it, but nobody else can. When their time ends, we change the password, and the show goes back under lock and key.

I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it. Then, on Tuesday, a pop quiz arrived.

One of the services I offer to libraries is a customized intro. They give a shout out to the Friends of the library or something like that. It is a promo that's just for them.

One of the things I figured out how to do was detach the audio from a clip and replaced the image. So, I got this idea.  I recorded the shout out, took out the video, and replaced it with the sponsor's logo.

I was feeling all clever. 

Apparently, the sponsor saw it and decided that they wanted something better. They have their own studio department, and they whipped up a smooth commercial for summer reading, sent it to the library, and said they wanted to replace my "commercial" with theirs.

The library sent me the sponsor's spot, said they could do the substitution. All I had to do was give them the footage of the show.

Our new business model does not allow for people who are "renting" the material to download it.

Two months ago, I would have had to wake up my son and ask him if he could do this. Six months ago I would have taken it to my daughter and asked her if she could do it.

This morning?

This morning I downloaded the commercial.

Went into my back up disc, found the original show, put it back on my laptop

Loaded the new commercial and the old footage into my editing software

Replaced the old commercial with the new one

Downloaded the new show onto my laptop

Went to Vimeo and isolated the video that needed updating

Replaced the old show with the new one without needing to change the link, and finished my breakfast.

My old skills are not much use right now, but my new ones?

My new ones are pretty awesome.

Happy Learning!

Syd Lieberman: A Father, Grandfather, Teller, Teacher and Friend

In Loving Memory

I met Syd one of the first few years I was a professional storyteller.  He has always been generous with his time and advice.

His stories always made me smile, and I loved sharing the stage with him, or just sitting back and watching him work.

He left us to continue his journey beyond on Tuesday, May 12th, 2015.  Wherever he is now, you can bet his eyes are sparkling, he is smiling that mischievous smile of his, and everybody around him is laughing and thinking.

If you have a moment, head over Syd's site and listen to one of his stories.  It is a fitting tribute to a man who loved tales!

G-d speed, Syd!

Being A Touring Storyteller Is Like Being Shackled to a Galloping Unicorn: Amazing and Disconcerting.

The odometer on my 2006 Saturn

Before we made this the running around town car last February, I put 256,125 miles on it.  

An itinerate performer’s life is not a stable one.  We travel to everywhere from Miami Gardens, FL to Lima, Peru.  Our daily lives can be described as many things but the word ‘routine’ is not one of them.  This is not such a problem if you are single, don’t have pets, and are not needed for anything in particular in your community.  This becomes much more tricky if you have pets, children, spouses, social obligations, or some kind of side job that requires stable hours.

Pets like to eat and they need attention.  Not so easy if you are gone all the time!

When I went into storytelling twenty-six years ago, most of the storytellers I knew had gone into the field as a second career.  They’d had their children, raised them, and then, in their retirement or second life, they’d become storytellers.  Most of the ones who’d chosen it as a primary career were men whose wives had stepped in to take on the role of stable parent.

Being neither a man, nor old enough to have retired from a previous career, my husband and I had to look at this a bit differently.

I went to my friends for advice about how they dealt with the touring schedule and family.  Jim May, Milbre Burch, and Syd Lieberman gave me invaluable advice about what to expect while touring.

After careful consideration, my husband and I decided upon a simple idea.

My chaotic life could not create chaos for the rest of my family.  We divided up the work in a way that seemed very unfair, but couldn’t be helped.

David anchors the family in place.  He drives the kids to school and collects them at the end of the day.  He volunteers at their functions, goes to their various activities, helps with homework and makes sure that meals are on the table.  He organizes their chore schedules, keeps track of their calendars and plays games with them.  In other words, he took on a major amount of parenting work.

David also took on the role as business manager, PR guy, and personal accountant. 

My job?  Write books, travel the world, create and teach workshops, make recordings, and tell stories.  

Yeah, I know, it is out of print.  Hey, I'm just supposed to write the things!

For ten years now I flow in and out of my family’s manicured life.  I join in when I get home.  I help with the housework, cook, drive the kids around, help with their writing, and stand about being everyone’s cheerleader.  Then, like smoke I vanish for a while. 

When my kids were little, it was a frightening to them when I left.  They had no understanding of time.  When I left and didn't come back right away, they feared I might never return.  As far as they knew, I disappeared into the ether the second the car left. 

We used several things to help our kids cope with this dismay, and incorporate the travel schedule into their lives.

We put a calendar up by the front door.  It was mommy’s travel schedule.  If I was gone, the name of the place was on the calendar and there was a star on the days I would return.  They crossed off the days and could look forward to when I would return instead of feeling that vague sense of discomfort because they didn’t know when I would appear.  Some families put up a map and use push pins so that kids can see where their parents are going. 

Still keep a calendar by the door.  Not as big a deal, but they still like to keep an eye on when I'll be back.

These days you can also Skype and email, but the calendar and the map are tangible ways to help your kids understand the time involved.

Despite our best efforts, there were the plaintive requests from our children that I not leave.  Children, as everyone knows, are not above emotional blackmail, and they are excellent at manipulation and breaking your heart. 

We explained to our children that everyone in the family has something that they contribute.  Daddy was there to keep their lives running smoothly and keep them safe.  The kids were supposed to learn, play, and grow up.  Mom’s job was to make sure we had a house, clothes, food, cars, toys video games and so forth.  If I didn’t travel, we wouldn’t have anywhere to live and there would be nothing to eat.  They accepted that, and if they started getting upset, we would remind them that it was important for me to travel.

Travel isn’t easy for me either.  I miss exciting events, the daily discussion of what is happening in their lives, the discussions that can only happen when I am sitting in the kitchen and they wander through.  I miss teacher conferences, award ceremonies, presentation nights, and project presentations.  I missed the tooth fairy, and birthday parties, and I don’t even like to think of what else I just wasn’t on the spot to experience. 

Still, the reason they do so well is because their lives are such that they only have to worry about homework, getting their chores done, what their friends are doing on the weekend, and planning their future.

My kids with their younger cousins

They are older now and accept that travel is part of my life.  Still, every now and then, when I am preparing for a trip, my seventeen year old gets that sad little note in his voice, as he demands, “Where are you going now?” 

They don’t have to like the fact that you travel, but they do need to understand why you do it.

Being able to make a living as a storyteller is a privilege that not many people have.

When I’m listening to the latest event I can only watch on video, or hear in a retelling from one of my children I remind myself that I am very lucky.

Happy Touring!