Responding to storytellers

I’ve been looking at the conversation between the storyteller and audience. During the show listeners don’t really have the opportunity to respond to the storytellers in complete sentences. They laugh, they applaud, they sometimes exclaim things like “oh!” They can’t really say anything in response unless they talk to the storyteller after the show. But, listeners who also get on stage can respond to storytellers. I also mentioned this in an earlier memo. This is sort of a privilege because, not only can most of the audience not do this, but also at this point the earlier storyteller is part of the audience and can’t really respond back. In my August memo I mentioned that later storytellers are sacrificing some of their own time when they do this and then have less time for their own stories. Cris, the host, though, is in a category by himself. It is kind of his job to respond to the stories he hears.

I think I just

kind of listen and

what jumps out at me.

Because since we are all being quiet and letting them tell their story,

it’s one of those things, like

one-on-one storytelling,

like you’re talking to a friend,

and they tell you a story

you could be like,

“wait a minute! Wait!

What did you just say?”

You can have those moments of

something surprises you,

where you can be like

“hold on! Wait!”

But we don’t do that, so it’s one of those when

if I hear something in a story that makes me want to go

“Wait! Hold on!”

I remember that,

and when I come up, I’m like,

“wait! Did you just say…?”

He also relates this to a conversation. In a conversation with a friend, you can interrupt with your own comments or questions. Cris doesn’t interrupt these stories, but he says what’s on his mind afterward - the same kinds of things he would say if the story had been part of a conversation.

Cris also responds to storytellers to let the know they’ve been heard.

But then it’s also one of those things too where

I feel like

because everybody basically just applauds,

I feel like it also lets the storyteller know that

we were listening.

If I can –

at first when I was doing it it was unconscious,

I was like

“oh this struck me!”

but now I try to listen to every story and

pick out one thing

to comment on if I can.

So the storyteller walks away like

“oh!”

if no one else,

the host was actually listening!

“I wasn’t just like

screaming into the void.”