Learning about the story on stage

The idea that I can get onstage

kind of have some relative

path to where I’m going to go,

and then discover during the telling,

something that I didn’t know. (B. Carr)

Part of the story develops on stage, that maybe couldn’t have developed anywhere else.

Cris said something similar. When he is preparing to tell a story, he likes to leave room for tangents that come to him while on stage:

So I think about it,

rehearsing it in my head

more so than

in front of a mirror,

because I do want to be

in the moment when I’m telling it

and not really

like I’m reciting a script.

I want to be able to,

if I do have the errant thought

in the event to be able to comment on it

or say it

or if I have a weird tangent to go down,

I want to be able to

explore those

in the moment.

David mentioned not planning out the whole story so the telling would be more natural:

if you only think of a few main details

and trust yourself to just tell the rest,

then you’re gonna be,

it’s going to feel a lot more natural.

And it’s going to not feel like it’s memorized.

It’s gonna feel like

you’re just in front of friends telling a story.

I think there is a relationship here. When we talk to friends, we sometimes discover new things.

This also seems to tie into the ephemeral and experiential nature of the event. A flexible story, a story that can grow and change and provide fresh revelations, can truly react to the time, place, and audience. I know, as a performer, that when I over rehearse, or get too attached to certain phrases, it is harder to respond to the moment. This can be a beautiful things for the storyteller, to find new pieces of the story in this way. It is likely also tied to the conversation between teller and audience. A scripted story is less of a conversation than a story that can respond to that night.

Benjamin described a specific time when the way he told the story was shaped by the evening:

in the story,

my middle school PE teacher,

we were all

being punished,

we had to be five minutes silent on the bleachers,

and I was grateful that we didn’t get to play

because I wasn’t good at basketball,

so I’m like

well at least I don’t have to play basketball

because I suck at it.

I’m never going to make a basket ever.

And so then my teacher gets up

in front of

do you remember this?

my teacher gets up in front of the entire class and says

okay everyone

you’re not just punished for five minutes,

you’re going to sit here

silently

until Benji Carr makes a basket!

And the entire class groaned,

but the entire room,

when I’m telling the story

groaned just as well, so I said,

that sound is the sound I heard that day in class!

And I never would have known

it never would have happened.

How perfect to have the audience actually hear the sound that he heard. It would have been an injustice to the story not to make that connection. He was able to more perfectly draw the audience into what it actually felt like to be him in that moment.