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Anyone who has ever endured a stilted reading by a favorite author could tell you the disappointment is almost heartbreaking. No connection with the writer. No getting carried away on the wings of a great yarn. Just ... hearing someone read.
Storytelling, on the other hand, is one of the most intimate ways a writer could possibly connect with readers. There are no interfaces between storyteller and listener -- no CD to pop in, no page to flip, no cue cards in hand.
"Storytelling is really about connecting with people in the moment of telling the story. It's something that happens in a dialogue between the storyteller and the audience," said Lea Thau, executive director of The Moth, a collective of New York City writers, actors and regular folk who gather to tell their stories three or four times a month. There are story slams and even an outreach program, teaching the homeless and former drug abusers the art of storytelling.
Named after founder/author George Dawes Green's desire to have listeners drawn to stories as moths to a flame, The Moth has inspired other storytelling collectives around the country, such as San Francisco's Porchlight (www.porchlightsf.com), Washington, D.C.'s Speakeasy (www.speakeasydc.org) and Seattle's A Guide to Visitors (www.agtv.org).
The Moth will bring five storytellers, including locals David Guterson and Dan Savage -- Sherman Alexie bailed -- to entertain the crowd with stories at Town Hall Sunday night.
So, how does storytelling differ from delivering a monologue? Mostly, it straddles the line between improvising and memorizing.
Although a storyteller may be prepared and think the story through before the performance, what's delivered is not a word-for-word recital. Fans of Public Radio International's "This American Life" can vouch for the effectiveness of storytelling versus listening to a scripted radio drama.
Of course, the art of storytelling is old as the hills, and yet it seems to be connecting with the MySpace/YouTube generation, who seem to have a different understanding of community than the generation that came before them.
"I think in general there is a need for storytelling because we live in this era of communication gadgets that don't necessarily make us better at understanding our humanity more," said Thau, adding that our favorite gizmos aren't necessarily evil.
"We just get lost in them."
In other words, if we start to rely on podcasts and YouTube for stories, all we're getting is a transmission of a story and no more.
Even though Moth storytellers have included professional performers such as Margaret Cho and Ethan Hawke, Thau says Moth works to make sure that, as storytellers, they are just as vulnerable as anyone else telling a story about their lives.
"We try to get them away from their shtick. ... If you rehearse it too much, you kill it."
Most of us civilians, like Sherman "OT" Powell (OT stands for Old Timer) have had some practice at telling our stories to friends, peers and the stranger on the next bar stool.
Powell, a former pickpocket, drug addict and alcoholic, is one of The Moth's greatest successes and one of Sunday's performers. Homeless for roughly six years, he connected with the group's outreach program two years ago and credits it with helping him pull his life together. He says he wasn't nervous about telling stories about his life as a pickpocket, one who hadn't seen his family for nearly 40 years and only lived to panhandle and drink.
"I had a lot of practice doing it in front of my peers at the shelters," Powell said. "And, like they say in the entertainment field, if you can please a crowd at the Apollo Theatre you can please any crowd anywhere."
Powell, 59, soon graduated from his version of the Apollo to telling his stories before a paying audience.
"I was surprised because it was different. ... Telling them that I was a retired pickpocket and stuff. In the end they were more interested than I thought they'd be."
He said he was prepared for rejection, which never came. Rather, he was asked to appear again and again.
"I got out of the shelter, got my own apartment, stayed in touch with them (the folks at The Moth) and, before you know it, I've got CDs I'm on. They also wrote about me in the October 2004 issue of New York magazine," he added with some disbelief. "On the same page as Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise, of all people."
Sounds like a pretty good story.
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