Of Gwenda

 

   Once again the stars blew the window open, and that smallest star of all called out:

“Peter!”

Then Peter knew that there was not a moment to lose. “Come,” he cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the night, followed by John and Michael and Wendy.

–– J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Once upon a time, in the open palm of a plum tree, behind the house, beside the graves, a young girl sat with open book, staring through word windows into realms of wonder.

Her name was Gwenda. She grew up, as she knew she must. For she knew “all children, except one, grow up.” She became woman, wife, mother, and grandmother. She may have closed those windows briefly for more pressing matters, but she opened and peered through them again. Then, to the betterment of the waking world, she shared what she saw. For Gwenda had the second sight of a storyteller. She saw stories in ways no others do. She shared those stories in ways no others had. We listened and learned to see anew the storied realms she came to know so well. Like Wendy Darling, she told stories to us lost children and adults.

Then one day she began to tell the stories she saw through the windows before her desk:

Moon, full to bursting, caught in the dogwood tree, makes a path on dark water, pointing back at itself.

One light in a window across the lake, someone else is awake.

—–

The sky! On fire! Inflamed by that great star that holy writ and scientists say will do us in but now, fills the canvas of early morning with magenta, scarlet , orange and yellow.

—--

Robin calls: chirrup, chirrdown chirrup chirrdown

on and on without stopping 

Yesterday the Carbon Monoxide alarm went off beep...beep...beep... beep

on and on without stopping

One says wake up it's a beautiful day

the other: Value your life. Yes.

—--

I looked at the leaf of a silver bell tree. Half as big as my little fingernail. And that leaf contains...oh, yes, an epidermis that defends, shields, and protects from bacteria, insects and all other pests. And in the leaf's kitchen are the palisade mesophyll that deal with gas and that's fitting. The veins contain vessels...tiny boats... that tote food, water, and minerals. (Sounds a lot like our innards. We have what heals as well as harms inside.) I'm not fooling, all of this is really going on in every leaf appearing this spring. Seems like you could hear it. We should have a full symphony orchestra playing the Hallelujah Chorus just for the trees.

—--

The wood warblers are back. I heard

one singing zoo zee zeezeezee. The same

repeatable line like the Robin's chirrup over and over

coming from the tops of the white pine tree.

This one in my pine tree is a black throated green.

–––

She spoke to us from ordinary windows and revealed a world of wonder. Her voice, sonorous and sweet, became a daily missive in written words. We, who once listened with eager ears, then listened with open eyes.

She enriched our hearts, our minds, our world.

Then the stars blew the window open… “Come,” she cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the night…

And we will come. In time. She showed us the way:

Second star on the right and straight on until morning.

THE MATRICULATION OF GWENDA LEDBETTER

 

In September, 2006, Gwenda LedBetter performed Friday's Father at the North Carolina Stage Company in Asheville, NC. One reviewer for a local paper wrote:
"I think LedBetter is a wonderful storyteller. It is no wonder that she is so celebrated in Asheville and across the state. She has a tremendous speaking voice, a fabulous turn-of-phrase, great humor and acting skills." - Meg Hale, Daily Planet, September, 12, 2006

Audiences were invited to offer reviews as well. Here is a representative sampling:
"Last night I was privileged to witness Gwenda Ledbetter re-create her life in her one woman show, "Friday's Father". Her performance was utterly luminous and incredibly transporting. It attained a level of expression surpassing mere acting.

"Time and the aging process have not been physically kind to Gwenda and John, her husband. Yet, last night, Gwenda LedBetter transcended all that "old" stuff with an elegant, soaring portrayal of her life and times that left this old man in tears--tears of joy and sadness."
 

"When Gwenda finished her story, tears filled my eyes and I was left speechless..."
 

"Gwenda - A role-model for us all. Your life - mine - all of our lives are stories. In yours I relived Father coming home too. Thank you for your gifts and generosity."
 

"The beauty and the power of showing us at the most tender times. Wonderful!"
 

"Your storytelling touches my soul."
 

"Thank you Gwenda, for touching our hearts and giving comfort."
 

"Your performance enriched material which was rich in itself - full of the salt of life itself. Thank you."
 

"Thank you for the great experience of sharing and connecting stories in a spiritual way!"
 

 

"Thank you for sharing your beautiful story of your father. I so loved your language of love in your heart. I blame my father for nothing, I forgive him for everything."
 

"Your story makes me proud to be human."
 

Audiences reference soul and spirituality; write of feeling touched, connected, and transported. This is a dramatic event: a single individual, speaking of particular places, people, and events, which brought about a collective epiphany that makes the audience, in the words of one listener, "proud to be human." How was this accomplished?
 

Gwenda LedBetter enters the stage and greets the audience. She gives thanks to her supporters and then invites everyone to breathe with her. We take three deep breaths because 'three tells all'. We are calmed and centered by this simple ritualized act of breathing together. Twice more in the evening she will invite us to take three breaths together, each time with the same effect. After our first breaths she speaks, "My father, George Brian Ewell, was tall, about six feet three ... and skinny." She forms an image of her father as if creating the frontispiece for her story. She describes his walk "A cowboy lope, kind of a gallumphing." She tells us that when she became a storyteller she gave that gallumphing walk to a bear in the story Sody Salaradus. At age 76 Gwenda LedBetter demonstrates that the art of storytelling is the art of becoming a storyteller. For, even as she shared herself with us, she was becoming a storyteller. By beginning in an ordinary prosaic voice and transforming into a poetic voice, Gwenda transforms from an ordinary person talking into a formal storyteller, conjuring. She continues to move easily between these two qualities throughout her program.
 

In 1961 Gwenda LedBetter began work as a professional storyteller in Asheville, North Carolina. She worked as storyteller-in-residence for the public library and on local television as 'the story lady. Her new stage work, Friday's Father, gives us a glimpse of the young storyteller in the making. She offers us a compelling discourse on growing up in the shadow of an alcoholic father while being steeped in stories. She filters her experiences through the stories she has read. Her speech is peppered with allusions to classic folk and fairy tales. They flow from her with the ease and grace of one familiar with her territory, the way a seasoned forester speaks easily of the minutiae of the woods. The connections she makes bring about revelations and resolutions to intense personal enigmas. Without giving answers, her stories lead to forgiveness, acceptance and love.
 

We learn that her mother's first child, a boy, miscarried. She wonders if things would have been better if she had been a boy. She recalls a story about a peasant who wanted a son and tells Hans My Hedgehog with no further effort to explain the transition and none needed. The story leaves us, she says, with a question about forgiveness and we are back in the larger narrative of her childhood. This ranging through and among the stories of experience and the stories of tradition characterizes the evening. She creates a sense of place that operates on many levels: a geographic place, a place in time, and a place in the human experience where pain and resentment meet love and forgiveness. The result, judging from the reviews, was epiphanic.
 

How is this different/unique from other storytelling performances? How is this different from typical Olios? Is Gwenda's performance breaking new ground? How is her performance contributing to storytelling?
 

Here is a performance event in which a single individual recounts and reflects on experience in a manner that is discursive. Although this is not uncommon in storytelling, my intention is to look at how this kind of performance works and what distinguishes it from other forms of theatre.
 

Imagine that you move to a new house in a new city. You are a stranger to the place and the place is strange to you. Over the course of your first several months at this new house, you learn your way around by running various errands: shopping for groceries, going to the theatre, walking in the park, and so on. In time, your new house has become your home: you have made friends, learned the back roads and short cuts, and are conversant with the place as a "local". You are now less of a stranger to the place while the place has become less strange to you. You accomplished this by moving across the territory; by "getting around"; by running about; by discourse.
 

Discourse, from the Latin discursus, means "a running about." By way of discourse, then, the storyteller performs a conversational act that moves from one idea to another typically resulting in a thematically unified composition. To converse is to become familiar with someone or something. Discourse and conversation make up the root actions of a storytelling performance.
 

Essential to this act is the presence of the author. That is, the one from whom the discourse originates. The authority of this person allows for the attainment of "a level of expression surpassing mere acting." Because Gwenda is speaking for and about herself, she is not acting as herself.
 

The act of affecting authorship (as an actor must who impersonates the author) creates a problem of belief. We know, always, that the actor speaking as the author is not the author. When the speaker is the author, we more readily believe we are listening to the voice of experience. The extent to which we are capable and willing to believe the voice of the storyteller, greatly affects the extent to which we are willing to receive the experience. Storytelling, in essence, is concerned with the transferring of experience. We first observe, then we believe, next we experience and finally we understand.
 

Theatre art, in seeking to create a sense of belief, employs a variety of devices. The actors might wear masks or otherwise mask their behavior to embody that of a character. An actor might be employed for each of the people of the story. The stage may be constructed to affect a specific place or to evoke the world of the story. Lighting, costuming, sound design, are other devices serve to direct the audiences experience. The storytelling revival, in an effort to be anti-theatrical has developed its own theatrical form. The use of general lighting allows the storyteller to see the listener. A simple platform limits stage action. Simplicity in design of stage and auditorium affects a sense of the ordinary. The impression sought is that of a common room in which actor and audience are members of a community engaged in a kind of town meeting. The use of large tents, born of necessity, is now emblematic of the storytelling movement. Tented spaces with row upon row of folding chairs addressing a lecturer’s platform, suggests a religious revival setting wherein the audience is congregation and the storyteller is preacher. In modern storytelling performance, this anti-theatricality suggests that no contrivance is needed because the persons speaking are none other than themselves.
 

Yet the devices available to the actor are also available to the storyteller, and can be employed with great effect. For even with the authority of the storyteller, there is a narrative logic at play that requires a certain acceptance on the part of the listener. There are stories within stories, moments of affected characters and dialogues, leaps in historical time and place, conversational asides, and differing perspectives. The listener is asked to accept these transitions without becoming disoriented or disengaged.
 

Gwenda's performance made use of an abstract stage environment and mutable lighting areas. These worked in concert with her to support the narrative logic of her discourse. For example, as she recalls her father sitting at his desk while she plays with her dolls, she moves towards a desk situated in the down right corner of the stage. There, as she alludes to his green glass ashtray, a green light intensifies over the desk. That ashtray and that light come back at a moment of emotional climax later in the evening with powerful effect. On the other side of the stage a narrow carpet defines the space, serving variously as a bay shore, a sidewalk, and the wall of a living room. The subtle play of lights, fading or brightening imperceptibly, work in the background of the listeners’ consciousness to further maintain the heightened trance-like state the storyteller is creating.
 

Another quality of Gwenda’s performance is the particular way she arranges her stories. As she ranges from one event to another, from personal anecdote to folktale, we are tempted to wonder, "What has this got to do with that?" Each story, set side by side, informs on the other. Hans My Hedghog is set beside her father wanting a son; Saturn devouring his children is set beside her father's drunken tirade. Images within one story recall images in another. We hear of children in trees, bleary-eyed giants, cannibals, devouring gods, enchanted men and women, and so on. Each new story, each new image, is introduced into the show like ingredients in an expertly cooked stew. We are served a poetically composed storytelling olio.
 

The olio format, taken from vaudeville and the minstrel show, provided a means to showcase a number of storytellers in one session. Like the use of tents, the olio was born of logistical necessity but became a means of creating an ad-hoc ensemble of speakers. Eventually the discourse of the individual was fit into a group dialogue as each storyteller drew from his or her repertoire to suit the program. Occasionally a storytelling olio will flow in such a way that each story suits the story before, carrying over established motifs or themes creating a coherent program. The resulting composition will appear scripted inasmuch as it has integrity of composition.
 

A good olio results from the ad-hoc company of storytellers listening carefully to one another and selecting stories in such a way as to create a dialogue. One teller will speak, the next will address ideas presented by the first with elaboration and additional material, the next will likewise pick up the developing themes, and so on. This “olio effect” is rarely predictable and usually a happy accident. Yet in Gwenda’s case, the olio is composed and intentional. Gwenda’s program is meaningful not simply because of the stories she tells, but because of the combinatorial she makes from them.
 

The storytelling experience moves from the prosaic to the poetic, from the ordinary world to a rarefied realm of metaphor. During the combinatorial event, with the skillful action of parable, Gwenda sets narrative elements side by side to release meaning. She does this by pointedly referring to traditional stories, in part or in whole, by recalling images such as the green ashtray, and introducing a variety of characters with certain common qualities of whimsy, kindness, eccentricity, and wisdom. The evening climaxes with her realization, late in life, that in truth she loves her father. Yet she continues to explore questions. "Why is it so hard," she asks, "to tell those we care about that we love them?" The point of arrival for her discourse is not in the exclusive place of personal memoir, but in the inclusive ground of traditional story. She tells the tale of Meat Loves Salt. From that old story and, by implication, from all the old stories, a kind of answer is found. "There aren't enough words in the world" she tells us, "to hold all the heart can feel. It's like meat loving salt."
 

Gwenda LedBetter is identified as a professional storyteller, yet her profession is not readily apparent in her demeanor outside the storytelling moment. This may be one reason for some of the confusion and criticism leveled at persons attempting such a career. Gwenda's performance demonstrates that to be a storyteller is to be in the act of telling a story. Those who practice the art of storytelling as a profession are yet not storytellers in their daily persona. They are celebrants, using craft, skill, and inspiration to become storytellers in the communal moment. So it is that the audience enters an ordinary room, the lights are lowered, a dream-state is affected, a celebrant invites us to breathe and conducts a narrative journey: a quasi-religious action that derives from the origins of all collective catharsis. After the dream is ended, the lights slowly brighten, a loud clapping sound wakes us, and we emerge from the cave once again.

Walking with Angela

 

Last night I learned of the death of Angela Lloyd. 

For my first appearance at the Flying Leap Storytelling Festival in Solvang, CA, in 1992, I wrote the story, Sterling. Solvang is a small mountain town north of Santa Barabara. Noted for it's Danish heritage and Danish-style buildings, it is a sort of theme park without rides. There is a small, impressive museum dedicated to Hans Christian Andersen. Sterling concerns a salt shaker who falls in love with the sugar bowl - it is my homage to H.C. Andersen.

Featured at the festival that year was my friend and colleague, Angela Lloyd. A whimsical and eclectic storyteller, with her beribboned 'sunbrella' washboard and kazoo, Angela was charming in the true sense of the word: a magical singing storyteller. I delighted in her company onstage and off. We had worked together with Milbre Burch as the ensemble "Triple Crown Tellers" and often crossed paths at storytelling festival stages in those days. A story of hers tells of the magical pedlar who strings up a clothesline where people can hang up their worries and cares. The pedlar invites them to exchange their troubles for someone else's. As Angela tells the story, with the enchanted ringing of her rainbow bells, our own troubles drift away. She was a true docent of the story realm.

After the festival, the two of us stopped by Nojoqui Falls Park. It was a pleasant sunny day and the park was alive with visiting families. As we approached the falls we delighted at the scenery, the sun, the sounds and sight of children playing. It was a picture-perfect day. But since neither of us had a camera, we decided to capture the scene by improvising poems together.

"Bill-capped boys sparkle the splash water –"

"Rolling musically over stones and trilling sweetly in the rills..."

"Sun-speckled tree cover patchworks of green and oak..."

And so on.

The exact words of our impromptu poetry are lost (though some may yet be found in one of my journals from the era) but the feel and vision of that gentle stroll remains with me, clear and bright. It is not an ecstatic memory, not a moment of high drama or hilarity, but merely a time of simple beauty wrapped in poesy in the company of a fellow story traveler.

Angela was the magic pedlar. She brought us to a place of easy happiness and profound joy. I am grateful to have walked beside her.

What rice was for Sterling, the memory of Angela is for me, and all who knew her: a desiccant against despair.

https://storynet.org/civicrm/mailing/view/?reset=1&id=702&cid=96&cs=b27919dc0ace8ccbf9a473a9471e181a_1738371607_336

Cryptobiosis

Recently shared a story at Story Parlor in Asheville for Tom Chalmer's series, 'Listen To This.' His prompt was like rain in the desert. Here's what I said:

 

Here's what I had written:

Memory waits in the soil beneath out feet.

The year was 7 B.C. (Before Children) and we headed out on a road trip across the southwest. From St. Louis, across Kansas and the mind-numbingly flat plains of eastern Colorado, over the stunning peaks and nerve-wracking switch-backs of the rockies and down into the great American desert. We were heading for Mesa Verde, the ancient remains of a once thriving cliff-dwelling city of ancestral Puebloans. The name belies the history, for once the land was verdant, but little green remains.
As it happened, Mesa Verde was closed.
So we learned of another, lesser known, ruin in the desert, Hovenweep. The name is Paiute meaning “deserted place.” We set off on a dirt road into the desert of southwest Colorado, across the border of Utah, through an arid land pock-marked with stoney outcrops and clumps of pinyon pine and juniper. Dusty bunches of sagebrush scattered across the open flats, here and there the soil was blackened in charred, burn patches, and the sun burnished over all. As is often the case with arroyos and desert canyons, you do not see them until you are just approaching their edge. Chasms open suddenly before you, great cracks in the tortured landscape.  One such canyon was Hovenweep. A National Monument established in 1923 and currently celebrating its centennial, but at the time, little known and little visited.
Trafficked by humans for over 10,000 years, settled about 1,000 years ago with stone and brick buildings carefully crafted onto the landscape and tucked into cliff faces, home to several thousand people who farmed, traded, crafted, played, and studied the brilliant stars from a high stone and brick tower that commanded one end of the canyon. Now it was ghostly quiet with rippling heat rising from the expectant soil. We learned the charred patches were actually a fragile, Cryptobiotic soil, filled with cyanobacteria, lichen, fungi, mosses, and a vast microbiome forming a brittle crust over the deeper earth; quiescent and desiccated, but ready to swiftly reconstitute in the presence of water.
We walked along a narrow dirt path from the canyon rim down into the arroyo where a fresh stream once flowed and many voices once echoed off the canyon walls. Here and there were shallow divots carved into the bare rock offering secure footing as we descended. Steps carved for ancient travelers we now used. The only sound was the scuffling of our hiking boots on crumbling sand and stones and an occasional “watch your step.” “Give me your hand.” “Look at that.” “Some place, huh?”
We tried to stay on a path along the base of the cliff in what little shade we could find as the sun bore down from high noon. We squinted in the light bouncing off the sand and stone. Everything had a hot golden luster. We came across some brick walls enclosing a depression into the canyon wall, a nice cool room out of the heat. We snacked and watered ourselves and took in the close comfort of this little shelter. As we sat there, the light shifted and the bright sunlight dimmed. A wind picked up and we peered out to see the sky blackening. The wind whipped up dust devils beyond the the canyon and suddenly thunder broke, lightening flashed and a heavy rain poured down.
We fell back into our dry recess and watched as the rain curtained the doorway. Thunderous booms echoed all around us, water gushed and splashed across the canyon. We cowered together feeling the tremendous force of the storm. After about 30 minutes, the booming moved past, the rain let up, and the storm was gone. Water continued to stream down the canyon walls and along the riverbed. The air was filled with the sound of running water. And then other sounds joined in. There was buzzing as some kind of fly or gnats were suddenly swarming, and bird trills - from a wren that was hopping in and out of the sodden rocks. The air was fresh with that ozone crackle of the storm mixed with the pungent smell of sage. Here and there splotches of color appeared. Tiny yellow and red flowers in rock crevices, Juniper trees glistened, a chipmunk scuttled beneath one, collecting berries. There were little potholes - morteros - holes formed from grinding grain - now filled with water. I bent over one for a drink and saw tiny bugs swimming about - those fairy shrimp they used to sell as “sea monkeys.”  I stood in the center of the renewed stream and marveled at the suddenness of the storm and the suddenness of the life it revived. Cryptobiosis, hidden life, was emerging everywhere. The sun returned and brought a sparkle to the entire scene. I remember marveling at the braided ripple pattern in the water streaming past and wondering if that had inspired weavers and potters to replicate the patterns in their crafting.
The canyon echoed with life. I heard a child laughing and felt that the storm had revived the ghosts of the early Puebloans. It turned out to be a small family also visiting the site and hiking along the same trail. But for a moment, I could feel the rich, verdancy of the place, and appreciate the life that was at home in this now-deserted place.
The water flowed past, the sun warmed and then grew hot. Slowly the life receded to its hiding places. I stood there and felt the burning heat return. But I kept standing. Waiting. Expectant. Suffering the drought while hoping for the coming of another rain.
Still today, every rainfall wakens my cryptobiosis and every drought leaves me hoping.

The Storytelling Actor

Inspired by my recent conversation with Steven James (The Story Blender, 2/11/2022) 

I bring back this article from '91. Enjoy.

Storytelling is too vast and varied an art form to be the province of any one tradition or culture. The current profession of storytelling offers a kind of crossroads for many fields of endeavor, each leading into the other through the common ground of the told story. The shaman, the historian, the psychologist, the librarian, the writer, and the raconteur all may find in storytelling the origin of their profes- sions and, perhaps, the apotheosis as well. The stage actor, along with the rest, has a legitimate claim of kinship to the first storyteller; and may also find in storytelling the final fulfillment of his or her art form.

Many theatre artists turned to storytelling in Europe and the United States over the last twenty* years. What has brought them to this crossroads? What do they seek and what do they have to offer? A look at a few recent trends in performance art may offer a means of understanding the place of the actor/theatre artist1 in the vast arena of storytelling.

Theatre and Storytelling are so closely related it is difficult at times to distinguish the one from the other. The soliloquy, the aside, and the direct address of the audience are still prevalent in modern plays and are indistinguishable from traditional storytelling in the West. Other elements less traditional to Western storytelling, such as dance, mask, ensemble and enactment have ties to storytelling traditions elsewhere. The modern actor, therefore, is bound to cross into storytelling at some point in his/her development.

The developmental path of the stage actor often involves explorations in the root forms that make up the modern theatre. Many actors engaged in such a process, are now storytellers. As actors recapitulate the evolution of stage performance, they bring new life to the theatre and become dynamic artists in their own right.

In the field of Embryology, recapitulation theory suggests that “an organism passes through developmental stages resembling various stages in the phylogeny of its group; ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”2 The idea, simply, is that the development of the individual recapitulates the evolution of its species. For example, there is a period in the development of the human embryo in which it resembles the aquatic life forms of its ancestors in the primordial sea. The birth of the child may be said to recapitulate the evolution of the species from sea to land. Whether or not this theory still has validity in the life sciences3, it may be useful to describe the way modern actors are recapitulating the history of theatrical art. This recapitulation is leading them into storytelling. In a way, the modern actor is re-evolving into the modern storyteller.

If personal anecdote may serve to tell a collective story, I will offer my own theatrical ontogeny as an example. As a child I studied theatre for children. I received instruction in many theatre skills: voice, movement, improvisation, interpretation, make-up, playwrighting, etc. By the time I went to college I had two major interests: directing and mime. Directing interested me because it was concerned with all aspects of theatre art and was therefore the most general and all-inclusive area of study. Mime, on the other hand, interested me for the opposite reason: it was theatre at its most essential. In mime, everything was concentrated on the actors’ body and the small space it occupies. Here was the beginning of my recapitulation. During the 1970’s I divided my time between these two disciplines. Yet it was mime that lead me to my theatrical origins and set me on the path to storytelling.

The American revival of interest in mime was well under way by the 1970’s, reaching a climax at the 1974 International Mime Festival and Institute at Viterbo College in Lacrosse, WI. There, a new generation of mime artists acknowledged one another, celebrating this essential theatre and, at the same time, evolving away from it. For the rest of the decade, they would expand their mime repertoires to include mask, juggling, circus skills, experiments with voice, and clowning. This period saw the advancement of commedia d’ell arte troupes, juggling ensembles, the arrival of “new vaudevillians”, a proliferation of solo-actor dramatic performances and performance artists.

In the late ‘70’s, as a member of the Theatre Project Company in St. Louis, I was able to experience a synthesis of my many interests. Here, I began to tell stories. In 1980, storytelling came to St. Louis in a big way, with the first St. Louis Storytelling Festival. I brought my early efforts at storytelling along- side more accomplished artists such as Gamble Rogers, Heather Forest, the energetic Jay O’Callahan and the wonderfully eclectic Ken Feit. These storytellers, and many others like them, coming from folk music, education, the ministry and the theatre, were part of a dynamic exchange of energies and ideas in the form of the spoken story. The simplicity of the telling of stories was capable of unifying otherwise disparate disciplines. Entering into this arena, I discovered a kind of crossroads of many traditions.

Yet I continued to work in the theatre, retreating from the crossroads to ply my trade along the well-traveled paths of the modern actor. I went back to school for a graduate degree in a professional training program. Yet now I was convinced that the actor, more than the other artists that comprise the theatre arts family, was at the center of the art. However, the practice of telling stories (though never fully dormant) began to reassert itself in my life and work. I left acting and returned to the crossroads of storytelling.

Such was my ontogeny. Yet it was by no means unique. Many theatre artists were making the same discoveries and the same decisions. With some variation, I have heard my story from scores of other storytellers. All were on the same pilgrimage, though never certain where it would lead. This evolution may be summed up in this sequence:

1. A return to mime, reducing theatre to its essential element: the actor in action. No voice. No word. No character. No story.

2. A reintroduction of theatrical elements at different stages (mask, circus, improvised scenario) bringing back character, object, and narrative.

3. A return to storytelling with the word arising from the speaker, and the evolution is complete.4

This re-evolution was anticipated by one of its progenitors, Etienne Decroux. Decroux developed the foundations of modern mime in Paris beginning in the 1920’s. His students included Jean-Louis Barrault, Jacques LeCoq, and Marcel Marceau. Marceau, more than the others, brought this art form to prominence in America and the world. Yet Decroux was not interested in the kind of pantomime we saw commercialized in America in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He wanted a radical stripping down of theatre to its essence: the actor in action. In 1931, he articulated a formula for the rehabilitation of the modern theatre, the first three points of which were:

“1. For a period of thirty years, prohibit all arts other than the actor’s. Substitute for the set of the play the set of the theatre, the backdrop of all imaginable actions.

“2. During the first ten years, eliminate all elevation from the stage such as benches, stairs, terraces, balconies, etc. Actors shall suggest the ideas of “above” and “below,” although one partner may be beside the other. Then allow elevations only on the condition that they create greater challenges for the actor.

“3. During the first twenty years, prohibit all voiced sound. After twenty years, allow unarticulated cries for five years. Finally, during the last five years

allow words contrived by the actor. “ (Italics my own)5

From here he continues to prescribe the return of playwrighting and so on, all the while insisting that the actor be the primary artist. Given the modern evolution of mime-actors into storytellers, Decrouxs’ prescription appears to have come about, much as he had envisioned it.

The arrival of actors in storytelling can be viewed as a sincere effort to rehabilitate their art and their place within it. In an interesting discussion of the new storytellers in France, Veronika Görög-Karady observes that “a large number of them (ie. new storytellers) belong to the generation which began its adventure with oral literature after 1968. For many, the years between 1968 and 1978 are explicitly considered to be the critical years of their development. Clearly, significant breaks with other forms of classical artistic professions occurred during this period.”6 Why this break? What motivated it?

Many actors experience the modern professional theatre as restrictive and oppressive. The theatre is increasingly dominated by the director and the designer; most choices are dictated to actors, rendering them artistically impotent. We have seen many efforts to correct this, all closely related to storytelling: the one-actor play (usually a biographical work in which the actor has had some authorship); performance art (which seems to be moving into storytelling at break-neck speed); and monolog (exemplified by the work of Spaulding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Lily Tomlin, and the like.) What do these forms offer that traditional theatre (in its present state) does not? Again, Görög-Karady: “public narration, even in an institutional context, appears to approach the closest to the ideal of an immediate aesthetic relationship.”7

Storytelling offers actors a chance to establish a meaningful relationship with an audience. Rather than hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘high culture’, the myth of celebrity, and the cult of ego, the actor can come back to the real world as a real person. Yet this real person still has the ability to transform, to rhapsodize and to mesmerize, but in a new and intimate relationship with an audience.

Actor-storytellers sometimes come under criticism for their use of theatrical elements. The word acting is often used pejoratively in reference to the storyteller who has in some way distanced himself from his listeners. There is such a thing as good and bad acting however, just as there is clear and muddled speech; one can successfully tell a story while the other fails. Storytelling is performance. Ideally that performance has elements of intimacy, conversationality, and a degree of participation. The persona of the storyteller is largely determined by that teller’s tradition. (Even tellers who claim no traditional ties have a style influenced by their life-experiences and the culture(s) that shaped them.) To require that the actor-storyteller not be theatrical both a misconceives theatricality and disregards that teller’s tradition.

The crossroads of storytelling may well be the breeding ground for a new dramaturgy. Certainly the actor, recapitulated as the storyteller, has the potential to fuse dramatic energies into powerful storytelling which is immediate and original. What does the audience get out of this? Perhaps it is a chance to experience the theatre they were promised they would find at the playhouse, but which eluded them. Perhaps it is a chance to participate in a new indigenous theatre where the actor is celebrant and the audience is a fellow-traveler. In any event, it certainly is a chance to hear again a good story well told.

1 It is important to keep in mind that actors are artists of a kind: their medium is the theatre, their craft works with human behaviors and languages. I use the term “actor/theatre artist” to emphasize the point that acting is more than rote memorization of prescribed language and tasks.

2 McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 3rd Edition.

3It is pretty much an obsolete theory in the Life Sciences, and actually may have been exploited to support racist and sexist views in the 19th century. How- ever, the idea gives a useful analog for the purposes of this paper. For an interesting discussion of recapitulation theory and its socio-political implications, read The Mismeasure Of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, New York, Norton, 1981.

4 At various stages along this sequence a number of important artists have surfaced: the mime of Marceau, the mask work of Mummenschanz, the clowning of Bill Irwin, “new vaudevillians” and now “spoken-word” artists, and so on.

5 Vincent L. Angotti and Judie L. Herr, “Etienne Decroux and the Advent of Modern Mime,” Theatre Survey, vol. xv, no. 1, May 1974. Translated by Angotti and Herr from Paroles sur le mime (Paris, 1963) by Etienne Decroux.

6 Veronika Görög-Karady, “The New Professional Storyteller In France”, ISFNR Theory Commision Paper (1989). Reprinted in Storytelling in Contemporary Societies, Lutz Röhrich/ Sabine Wienker-Piepho, eds. , Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen, 1990.

7 Ibid.

David Novak is a storytelling actor who can be seen and heard on stages across the country and abroad. For more information contact https://www.atellingexperience.com/

4

The Cultural Pandemic

Culture

Cultures are dynamic living systems that feed on story. Cultures can change; they can be nurtured or inhibited, encouraged to grow or starved to death.  If we are to change our culture in any significant way, we must attend to it as we would any living entity and address the stories that feed it. That is not to suggest that we can manufacture through legislation the official stories of our culture. Organic processes are not mechanical in that way. But listen: the culture is responding to new stimulus, new growth. When an organism is in trouble, its natural healing response activates. [The burgeoning of personal storytelling is an example of culture growing and responding to needed change.] This time of  protests and the stories that accompany them, may also be a sign of cultural growth and immune response. 

Advantage

A year out of college, I took a job for which I was grossly unqualified. I had a degree but lacked the education I needed. Why was I hired? Was it that the other, qualified, candidates were female? Or that a friend in the company had recommended me? I had great confidence in myself. 'I can learn this,' I thought. I did learn. Ultimately the company went through a regime change and in the interim I was promoted to boss in true Peter Principle fashion. What I learned was that I should never have been there in the first place.
Somehow, though, I always managed to land on my feet. I acquired a deep and abiding faith that things will always work out. I often felt my mercurial career was some kind of magical journey, a Homeric Odyssey, wherein I am always in the hands of a mysterious, benevolent, force.
Now I know it isn't all magic, and not so mysterious. Whatever good fortune I have enjoyed must now be suspect, as the "invisible hand" that moves through it all, is white. A corollary to the silver spoon, the white hand opens doors, calms rough seas, rescues, uplifts, empowers, and emboldens.

Country Club

It hasn't all been easy-going. I've experienced abuse and exploitation in my career; (1) I've had an officer of the law draw his gun on me during a traffic stop; I've spent time in jail for unpaid parking tickets! But whatever the trouble, it was ameliorated by my membership in an exclusive club: the Great White American Country Club (GWACC) into which I was born. A club, as it happens, that was invented to divide the lower and servile masses into factions of "race."

"According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first appearance in print of the adjective white in reference to “a white man, a person of a race distinguished by a light complexion” was in 1671. Colonial charters and other official documents written in the 1600s and early 1700s rarely refer to European colonists as white." [https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-2/inventing-black-and-white ]

Race is a social construct after all, hence "whiteness" is as contrived as "blackness." The GWACC co-opted a large segment of the population while conveniently disenfranchising a newly identified group of "color."  Being designated as "white," compounded for men their ages-old prerogatives of gender. "White" women, though still second-class citizens, became club members too, albeit at the bronze rather than silver levels.
The American racial narrative became so atomized as to be atmospheric.(2)  As a result, I am inheritor of ill-gotten gains; a ledger of dividends centuries long and written in blood. I inhabit an invisible  kingdom made of amnesia and reconstructed stories maintained by a power structure that lacks legitimacy. Whiteness is what Kurt Vonnegut would call a granfalloon, a meaningless group identity as vapid and spurious as Star-bellied Sneetches.

Trauma

In a recent interview with Krista Tippett (On Being, June 4, 2020) therapist, Resmaa Menakem, discusses the millennia of trauma carried in Western Civilization and the invention of "white" as a legal term. 

Menakem: … right after the Bacon Rebellion is the first time you start to see in-law “white” persons; not landowners, not merchants, “white” persons *…
Tippett: That language.
Menakem: … at that moment, the white body became the standard of humanity — not merchants, not landowners — the white body, because at that moment, the white body had dominion over, and everything else was a deviant from that.
And then a couple years later is when you start to see white persons show up in Virginia law. By the time they offered that to poor white people, they said, “Ey, you want to be white?” After all of that brutality, white people said, “You mean, all I gotta do is be white, and my babies may not have to go through that? Yeah, I’ll take that. Let’s take that.” And that’s what sewed it in. So now they saw their allegiance more with white landowners than the enslaved Africans that they were rebelling with.
Tippett: You’re also saying that it was actually a way of co-opting poor white people into their further traumatization.
Menakem: That’s exactly right. That’s why what you see now is like the flower of the seed of that. That’s what you’re seeing right now.

History

As far as I know, my ancestors were indigenous to the Rhine valley and the mountains of eastern Bohemia. In the Middle Ages they survived the bloody Northern Crusades by converting to Christianity. I do not know for certain, but it seems entirely likely that they played part in a violent, generations-long game of 'pass on, no pass back' by transferring that trauma to the indigenous peoples they displaced when, in the 19th century, they emigrated to the western United States.
My father and his peers returned from the World War with their eyes brutally opened to horrors they had thought impossible in Western Civilization. They were determined that their children would not know such horrors and that the specter of fascism would never rise again. So they raised precocious children in a protective bubble of ignorance and distraction. They showered us with opportunities they never had: toys and food in abundance, higher and higher education, and the confidence to succeed. I sincerely believe they wanted us to be citizens of a renewed yet innocent society.  
Some of us, that is.

Walt Disney opened "the happiest place on earth" a month before I was born in 1955. Disneyland embodied a vision of childhood and optimism. Yet for all the racial inequities of the era, at it's core was a deep utopian dream of human happiness. A dream that has slumbered in Western Civilization for thousands of years. For the mythic memory of a Golden Age is ubiquitous, and the loss of that Golden Age was the trauma that birthed "civilization." Western Civilization is predicated on trauma, operating on cycles of abuse and alienation, addicted to consumption and dependent on the oppressive vilification of The Other.

Healing

But passing on trauma never gets rid of the problem. Those who respond to the idea that Black Lives Matter by countering that All Lives Matter are missing the point. For members of the GWACC, the message that Black Lives Matter should be heard as a call to stop passing on our trauma to others, to own our actions, our history, and our culpability. That Black Lives Matter does not mean that black lives are more important, but that white lives are no better. It is increasingly apparent that the humans designated as "white" must confront and attend to their own deep-seated history of abuse and abusing. BLM is showing us that if we are ever to heal, White America must first do no more harm.
Can we move away from the false narrative of race and color and shift our discourse in meaningful ways? Resmaa Menakem again:

Menakem: Well, I don’t say bodies of “color” anymore, because what I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to reclaim the idea that I’m actually a human.
Tippett: So you’re saying that you’re formed by the culture —
Menakem: Bodies of culture. That’s right.

If we are not to abandon our received identities as "white" persons, might we re-frame that identity? What if we are to respond as the "white blood cells" of our culture, and gather around the pathogens to eliminate them from our system? This is a pandemic after all.






1. The Price of Admission

2. Color Town