When it comes to having a rough time in school, I know a thing or two. Not because I wasn’t a good student—I possess, somewhere in the back of the closet, actual medals for citizenship and algebra—but because I spent so much time as the new kid, thanks to lots of moves. When the call went out from New England Public Radio for story slam submissions last summer, the theme was “schooled.” Auditions were held via first sentence of the story, delivered through voicemail.
NEPR is putting on a series of story slam events, the first of which happened last spring. The second happened Sept. 12, and a couple more will follow, leading up to a “Best of Valley Voices” performance next April, in which the top three from each of the earlier events will tell their stories to an even larger audience.
When I heard “schooled,” a story from the handful of childhood years I spent in the Mississippi Delta sprang to mind. I decided to audition.
July 31, 3 p.m. Williamsburg, Virginia. One of those summer rains that’s wet like a warm diaper. I’m outside a Barnes and Noble, huddled up against a window with my cell phone. It’s an antiseptic quarter called “New Town.” It is in fact very, very new. It’s full of overpriced boutiques and restaurants with cheeky names. I’m pressing the phone to my ear to hear over the rain, trying to deliver my first sentence via voicemail. It’s the last day to call in.
I’ve finally got decent reception. I take a deep breath and rehearse my line silently while the phone rings. The robovoice on the other end says the mail box is full.
Stymied.
Aug. 1, 10 a.m. The nice folks at the station tell me the box is empty again, and that I can leave my audition line. I call the voicemail, and give it my best shot: “If you want to know why I was surrounded by a bunch of bloodlust-crazed sixth graders, it all goes back to when I was seven and I arm-wrestled Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.”
That’ll make ’em weep in the cheap seats.
Aug. 12, 2 p.m. I have a message. I’m in.
They’ve called my bluff.
I get to tell my story to an audience, along with nine other storytellers. We all get to attend a workshop with Andrea Lovett, who’s part of a Boston organization called Mass Mouth that sponsors story slams.
Aug. 12, 8 p.m. Yeah, I had a first line. But a whole story? Not yet.
I tap the keys for a while, and I’ve got something down. This is the easy part.
Aug. 14, 5:46 p.m. The house is empty. I have to try this thing, see if it fits the five-minute time limit.
No problem. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on stage, mostly with a guitar in hand. What’s a little storytelling? I take a slow breath, shake out my hands. I hit the record button.
Aug. 14, 5:53 p.m. My voice sounds weird.
This is tough without a guitar.
Seven minutes? How will I ever get this down to five? I mean, I have to have the line about the golf cart and the chewing tobacco or there’s really no point.
Aug. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, etc., etc. My commute has become nothing but recitation of my story. Thank heavens for cruise control. I’m weaving all over I-91, screaming “Go Big Blue!”, the battle cry of the Houston Oilers, who figure prominently in my tale.
I soon met most of the group of 10 storytellers with whom I’d share the stage Sept. 12. They were a varied lot in most every way—young, old, from New Jersey, from Hong Kong, repeat performers and first-timers. It’s a weird thing to want to do, this business of telling a personal tale to a room full of strangers. I asked some of my fellow travelers why they’d signed on.
Kevin McVeigh is a retired former professor of world religions and an activist and organizer. He shared an affecting tale of classroom injustice dealt out by a nun, a tale he told with conviction and urgency.
McVeigh says, “Whenever I see someone I know, my first words are usually, ‘Have I got a story for you…’ In recent years, I’ve been collecting as many of my personal and family stories as possible, and have written many of them down. However, I much prefer the telling of stories orally to the writing of them, so it seemed like a natural move, when I found out about story slams, to give it a go.”
McVeigh participated in a 2013 story slam at Amherst’s Ko Fest, and says the experience was extremely positive.
Andrew Shelffo, the chief information officer at Williston-Northampton School and an English teacher, has done this before, too. He didn’t make the workshop, but seemed right at home with the experience. “I decided to participate because I think it’s a really interesting art form because of the limitations—no notes, first person, strict time limit,” he says.
At the workshop, one of the youngest participants, Amherst College senior Saúl Grullón, could be heard nearly yelling as he practiced his tale just around the corner. His story was, not surprisingly, one of high drama. He says he sees storytelling as the best way he’s got to bring to life his memories of distant family.
One workshop participant, Kit Sang Boos, seemed uncertain. All the same, she told the whole group her tale. Everyone pitched in with compliments and a suggestion or two. The atmosphere was positive. I wondered if that positivity would hold—this was, after all, a competition.
Aug. 30, 10:30 a.m. I’m almost sick of my story. But I’ve come to the Academy of Music in Northampton for the workshop. Andrea Lovett is animated and friendly, and she has a bead on this thing. She says she’s done 45-minute stories. Our formerly five-minute stories, however, have to get told in one minute—one minute!—for this workshop.
Aug. 30, 10:41 a.m. And now we have to tell it in 30 seconds. There’s not even time for the golf cart and the chewing tobacco.
Aug. 30, 10:53 a.m. Three words? We have to tell the story in three words? What’s next, interpretive dance? Does “chewing tobacco” count as one word?
Aug. 30, 11:49 a.m. The first time I tell my story to other people. I’m a little nervous. I pick a spot on the wall to stare at, and I go.
I finish in 4 minutes, 30 seconds. I guess it’s like how tempos magically increase when you play live music. But I’ve done it. I feel good. Things were loose, and they flowed right through without a hitch. I forgot to mention the golf cart.
The “slam” phenomenon is a strange one. Find a tale somewhere in the depths of personal, often emotional experience. The more of that emotion that spills out onstage, the more effective your story is likely to be. In the wake of that kind of catharsis, it seems jarring to get a bunch of strangers to vote on how you did.
In the poetry world, this kind of competition can lead to something that’s more rhythmic ranting than finely tuned, image-based poetry. The jury’s out on whether the net effect is good for the art form. Stories, though, seem quite different. The need to have a story arc seems like a grounding thing. Sure, all slams are a little different, but storytelling seems particularly conducive to a warmer, less overtly competitive vibe.
For McVeigh, the competition didn’t weigh heavily. “For me, the competition is a minor part of the experience. Maybe because I’m still so new to this form, just telling the story to a live audience is enough. That’s a success in itself,” he says.
On the other hand, “I do wonder what these events would be like if we weren’t voting for a winner at the end,” McVeigh adds. “Or is the competition part of the excitement—not just for the audience but for the participants?”
To Shelffo’s thinking, the competition definitely does add an interesting energy. “I think the competition part is great, because it’s kind of unusual,” he says. “No one in the audience can get away with simply giving platitudes—they have to choose which one they like best!”
Sept. 12, 6 p.m. Story slam evening. I’m bolting down enchiladas. Perhaps not the ideal choice before taking the stage. But one man’s heartburn is another’s comfort food.
Sept. 12, 6:50 p.m. Upstairs at Hinge in Northampton. The chairs are packed in so tight you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between them. Zero leg room. Maybe we’re telling our stories to a bunch of hobbits. This somehow makes me feel better.
Sept. 12, 7:15 p.m. I’ve drawn the last slot on the bill. I figure I’ll be totally relaxed or a basket case after hearing my nine competitors.
The story slam scene at Hinge was full of smiling people. Everybody seemed thrilled to be there, despite the remarkably close quarters. The event apparently sold out even before it was on anybody’s radar in a substantial way—there’s clearly a major appetite in the Valley for the sharing of personal experiences.
We all packed into the tight space upstairs, and the evening got underway fast. No nonsense, these story slams. Just a brief intro, then one after the other, we took to the small stage, giving only a name and maybe a hometown, then launching into our tales. A knife clinking on glass marked the 30-second warning for each of us.
Some people seemed unconcerned about style or about story as theater, delivering their narratives in a near-rambling, conversational way. Grullón, who ended up among the top three finishers, hit the other end of the spectrum. He told a tale that hinged on his mother’s acceptance of his sexual orientation, and he seemed to fully inhabit his story, at one point delivering a loud, rapid-fire “Hail Mary” in Spanish.
He says, “I was extremely nervous because I was reliving the experience. Fortunately enough, I cried and took enough deep breaths before I got on stage. But I thought less about myself and more about parents that wouldn’t tolerate their children’s sexual orientation—I wanted my story to change their mind.”
For Boos, the telling was its own accomplishment. “I felt strangely comfortable as I went up and adjusted the mic,” she says. “The space was cozy and I felt all the storytellers were with me and I knew my story was in me. I didn’t even really see the audience. My goal became just telling it the best I could, to prove to myself that I had it in me. And I did, and it was enough!”
McVeigh summed up the thing that had most of us concerned. “There’s that old saying that nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of imminent death, in this case ‘dying’ on stage.”
We needn’t have worried. When one storyteller got so surprised by the clinking glass that she forgot the rest of her tale, the audience seemed full of good will, clapping in encouragement when she declared her getting onstage a success in itself.
Sept. 12, 8:40 p.m. I hit the stage. I’m calm. The audience looks friendly from up here. The story flows out, and I feel like I’m on cruise control. I get in the bit about chewing tobacco for the win.
In a minute my fist is pumping, and my face is contorted like those sixth-grade jerks who went after me for the crime of liking the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’m having a great time. I get to the quiet section after the big moment. I’m home free. The denouement is a cakewalk relative to the rest.
Done with some seconds to spare.
Sept. 12, 8:50 p.m. Second place is a tie between Grullón and Daniel Greenberg. The winner is Lois Barber with her tale of unrequited love turned, decades later, to requited love. Her dude was in the audience. No amount of histrionics is gonna compete with that.
The sense of camaraderie between the tellers, the pleasant reactions of the audience, all of it makes the place feel warm and alive. It was a good night.•
To hear all of the Sept. 12 NEPR Story Slam, visit http://nepr.net/events/2014/07/01/valley-voices-story-slam-schooled/. To go directly to James Heflin’s story, click here.
NEPR’s next installment of the Valley Voices story slam series happens Nov. 14 at Hinge in Northampton. The theme is “lost in translation,” and prospective storytellers are invited to audition by leaving the first sentence of their story at (413) 545-0788 between Oct. 1 and 5 p.m. on Oct. 25.
