We all have stories, but few of us could tell ours as effectively as a group of talented and experienced performers will tell theirs Saturday, Feb. 2, upstairs at Town Hall at 7 p.m., with doors open at 6:30. Sponsored by the Harvard Cultural Collaborative, this event (postponed from an earlier date) is open to all ages; admission is $10.
This is the second Harvard storytelling directed and produced by Bob Eiland, who knows some of the tellers from living in town and having directed them in one or more of his radio theater productions. Others, from out of town, are Eiland’s colleagues in the Merrimack Valley Playwrights organization or fellow actors and writers associated with Image Theater in Lowell. Those who attended last year’s performance at the old library may remember two tellers from this latter group: Richard Ballon, whose story, “His Name Was Doug,” was both poignant and lyrical, and Lynda Vernalia, who imitated, physically and verbally, two girls spreading a nasty rumor about her behind her 12-year-old back.
Ballon, Vernalia, Jennifer Ehlert, and Eiland himself are returning, joined by new tellers Didi Chadran, Carolyn Palo, Amy Talbott, and Helen Batchelder. This year the theme is family—what it means to us and how it shaped and continues to shape the person we are. There will be true stories of love, loss, learning, and discovery.
Connecting with the audience
What does it take to be a good storyteller? Many of us may remember the dreaded “public speaking” where, stomach dropping and knees shaking, we had to “present” to the class. How can these people share their personal stories with a roomful of strangers? And how can they do it with such emotion and ease? The emotion must come from knowing that their story captures universal human experience and creates a strong bond between teller and audience and among audience members.
As Batchelder expressed it, “The audience is right in front of you and it’s going to be reacting to your every phrase. You’ll know immediately if what you intended is what got across. You’ll know immediately if your audience can connect with what you’re saying. Because that’s what you do in storytelling: You pull a thread through everyone present and bring them along together, to wind up with you and the character and story you’ve created.”
Eiland’s vision of good storytelling is that it emphasize performance values. This idea that the telling is a skill makes the enactment as important as the content. The “ease” of presentation is more possible because of the process through which Eiland helps the tellers prepare. “I do ask that everyone put something on paper pertaining to our theme,” said Eiland. It can be anything from an outline to a few notes to a complete script. Eiland holds three or four rehearsals and makes himself available by Skype or FaceTime for people who can’t make a given session. In group rehearsal, tellers present their stories and then others comment on both the story content and the story performance. He said the early coaching sessions focus more on content—what could be omitted, clarified, expanded—and later the focus is more on performance aspects, including use of body and voice.
“I think it’s fair to say that all the tellers evolve their stories through the course of the rehearsal process, and what we end up with is often pretty different from what we started with,” said Eiland, adding that some even switch to a different story altogether.
Chadran found this to be his experience. He said he first wrote about a time when he met two friends, one of whom was bracing to meet his biological father for the first time. “I found it was hard to convey why this [experience] was so moving to me,” Chadran said. So he switched to a story about his late dad and finches—“a much better story to tell because it’s so personal and my memories are so vivid.” Chadran is a writer by profession, but he said he listens to the storytelling on The Moth Radio Hour on NPR and “jumped at the chance to try my hand.” He said it was his knowledge of Eiland’s coaching and workshopping process that made him not think twice about performing in this new medium.
Making a map
Batchelder, who said she welcomes the immediacy of storytelling compared to writing, struggled with focusing on a single story, “since there are probably hundreds of stories we can each tell about our family, but this may be the one time we tell this story to an audience, live.” Do we want to entertain? How do we want to make our audience feel? What is the message we want to leave it with? And, since she admits her style is “kind of rambling,” can we do it in the allotted time? So, “you make a map,” said Batchelder, following the different paths a single topic might lead you down. She won’t write a script, she said.
Batchelder said there are two aspects to “storytelling via Bob” that she bets are different from other storyteller experiences. “And that is: This is my hometown, and I am speaking to fellow townspeople. It’s not unlike sitting down with your family to tell them stories about your family. Daunting? To say the least!”
