Performance and meaning
In September Alexis told a story during which she interrupted herself to explain to the audience that she was going to do a New York accent. Part of me was thinking, “No! Have faith in your ability to do the accent!” But I realized she might have been worried about offending someone if the accent was a little off. (For what it’s worth, I thought it was good.) And the accent was necessary for understanding the story. She misunderstood what a toy store customer had asked for, and the mistake makes more sense when you hear the New York accent. So, the accent wasn’t just a performance choice, meant to add flavor. It was an essential part of the story. I think this is really interesting, but I’m not sure what else to say about it right now.
Those meta-moments when the teller drops out of the story to comment on the narrative, or when s/he realizes a common theme or word from a previous story and comments on *that*, are precious to me. Or when, as in this case, the teller senses his or her inability to get an accent right and says so ... these moves accentuate the situation of the event, how artificial it is, how we're here doing this and might be doing something else, like other people. Too much of that and the story spell is broken, but at the right moments it's delightful.
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