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.
