Last Friday, October 26, marked the end of my Spooky Brews – a series of events that I did through the month of October in which I collaborated with 4 local coffee shops to do evenings of coffee and stories. As a local coffee roaster, I brought in my freshly roasted coffee just for these special events: espresso, cold brew, and at least two single-origin coffees for making one-cup-at-a-time pour-over drip coffees. As a storyteller and in honor of October and Halloween, I had prepared an hour’s worth of stories, primarily gritty Irish folktales replete with ghosts, corpses, and mischievous fairies. To tie back into the coffee and stories theme of the evening, I book-ended the event with a couple personal stories about some of my own coffee-making adventures.
All in all, the events went really well! They were definitely a learning experience. There are two aspects of storytelling that I especially understand more deeply now than I did before: the relationship between the teller and the audience and the relationship between the teller and the story.
What kind of audience you have can make a big difference on your own impression of the evening even if, from an outsider /observer’s perspective, the differences were small. Looking back over the whole month, in my mind, I had two really awesome nights, one that was fairly average-to-good, and one that left me feeling more than a little dissatisfied, at least initially. It had been a crazy week, and, as if the to-be-expected-but-deal-with-able butterflies in the stomach weren’t enough, that very day, even that very night, multiple events occurred that left me feeling unsettled and jarred. It was my third show of the month. I had learned from my first performance earlier in the month that if I could get through the first story, it would get me more relaxed and more into the groove of storytelling – I’d be able to ease my way through the rest of the night no problem. It didn’t work. My audience was non-responsive. That give and take and reciprocity between audience, teller and story that helps define the difference between storytelling and acting just wasn’t there. Or at least, I wasn’t feeling it. As I recounted later to a friend, I “survived” the first half and didn’t want even to go back up after the intermission. The show must go on. So, on I went. I was exhausted by the end of it.
In the hours and days that followed, friends and colleagues familiar with my storytelling and who were there that night reassured me that while I perhaps did not have the same energy as at one of my “really awesome” nights, that it was still a good night and a good show. One of my friends even said that it was better than what I considered my “fairly average to good” night. So, if from the perspective of the audience, it was a good show, what made my experience of it as the teller such a different picture? On the one hand, it was a crazy week, but I think I probably would have been able to pull through that more effectively if the audience were not so subdued. Turns out they were having a good time. I just couldn’t see it, which rebounded back in my head as a negative. As a beginner to storytelling, I’ve often heard about the connection between teller and audience, and that night I experienced the dramatic difference that an audience can have on a teller.
The other piece that teachers and mentors in storytelling talk about is the trust between teller and story. To allay our fears and our nerves, they offer the reassurance that if you care for the story, the story will carry you. That night, which in my head felt just terrible – to my audience, it was still an enjoyable evening of stories because that night the stories carried me. Normally when things are not fun or not going well, it seems that time slows to a snail’s pace. They say time flies when you’re having fun, right? It was a weird dichotomy, then, that, as torturous as it seemed, my performance that night was over before I really knew it. It was as if I was in some odd time warp. I wasn’t present in the stories or for my audience, but I knew the stories and I loved them. They carried me that night. On other nights, we soared together discovering new highs of relational happiness, but that night they took the love and time I’d invested in them not only to carry me but also to show my audience a good time and to show me how seemingly simple stories can go a long way.
As I said above, overall, the events were a success, I had a blast, and they were definitely a learning experience.
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