Interaction between teller and audience

Randy had an attendee express that she liked being able to hear the stories without interacting with the tellers:

I remember one woman

I think it was the fourth or fifth show

came up to me

and she was probably in her 40s

she said

you know I love about this is

you can come in

and you can hear what's going on in all these different people's lives

and then you can just leave.

This connects back to what he was saying about Manuel’s being a “safe space.” It also seems similar to the reading experience. You can feel very engaged with a story in a book, the characters, maybe even feel you come to know a favorite author, but you don’t have to give any of yourself to them. You don’t have to interact.

Randy’s account about telling a story and seeing the looks on people’s faces is fascinating. He looks around the audience and actively looks for “friendly faces that I can at least touch base with” and he avoids “the ones who are scowling or like this [crossed arms] too much.” If the performance is a conversation, the feedback the audience gives to the teller is as important as what the teller has to say. The many members of the audience have their attention focused on the one storyteller, but the teller pans across the audience spending more time looking at some people than others. And the teller can choose which feedback to receive.

Further complicating the communication between audience and teller is the fact that an audience member’s facial expression does not always mean what the teller thinks it means. Randy’s gaze fell on one woman:

The first couple of times

my eyes would land on her

and I gotta take my glasses off to do this

and this was the expression [mouth open, confused looking]

Like she was seeing a trainwreck.

Like the worst disaster she ever witnessed.

And the first time I saw it I kinda froze like

what?

It seemed to be going well.

He thought she was giving him negative feedback with this look. However, he said he “started watching her and that’s just how she listens to every teller.”

Randy told another story about performing in True Story and having a comedian in the audience look like he wasn’t enjoying it. His body language was “arms crossed, his head sideways, really solemn.” Afterwards he told Randy it was funny. He said it was funny, but didn’t show it with body language, so Randy didn’t get that feedback during the show.

He likens the misleading listening face to resting bitch face. The listener isn’t giving off the impression that they mean to.

Randy brings up knowing, mentally, that a person’s facial expression may not represent their true feelings or true feedback they mean to give to the teller. But he also acknowledges it is

Very difficult

viscerally

to do it [take this into account]

when you look out onto a face

and it doesn't look happy

and you're on stage

already feeling judged.

Although visual feedback is not always reliable, Randy prefers to get it, to be able to see the audience. And he believes that most of the time the audience is giving good feedback:

Most of the time you look out

and people have

pleasant faces

head tilted sideways.

And they'll be chuckling and looking at the person next to them

to see if they're chuckling.

And looking back at the stage.