TUCSON WEEKLY , 12/2/04
Performing Arts Section

True Tales
by James Reel

The Odyssey Storytelling Series gets regular folks to share a bit of themselves with a live audience.
Greek bards did it while swigging watered-down wine. Boy Scouts do it around a campfire. Penelope Simmons does it with six partners at a time, in public.

Storytelling, that is.

Simmons organizes the Odyssey Storytelling Series, held the first Thursday of each month at Wilde Playhouse. She recruits ordinary people--not actors, not stand-up comedians--to tell 10-minute tales drawn from their own experiences, revolving around a different theme for every show. And up to 95 people--Wilde's seating capacity--pay to see this.

"It's spoken-word performance rather than theater," she says. "Spontaneity is a really big part of it. I consider storytelling an oral art, as opposed to a written art or acting. I'm trying to promote that feeling of sitting in your living room and talking to your friends." To that end, Simmons prohibits her volunteer storytellers from reading scripts or even outlines, or memorizing their tales.

Simmons started the series in March by cajoling friends to participate. Nine months later, "I'm running out of friends, I'll tell you," she says. That's OK, because plenty of strangers are starting to come forward.

There aren't many rules. You have to aim for a 10-minute spiel, but Simmons is a little lenient with the stopwatch. You have to tell a story relating to the month's theme, but the theme leaves lots of room for maneuverability--"Indecision," "Things I Meant to Do," "Creepy," "My Brilliant Career." You speak from personal experience. ("Part of personal storytelling is telling the truth about your life," says Simmons, "but I'm not a censor, and I'm not a fact checker.") You improvise, but you don't rant. That's about it.

Contrast this with the Monolog Cabin series at Club Congress, whose participants are mostly writers more comfortable reading from scripts, who often workshop their stories together before going public and are more fond of fiction, or at least high embellishment.

Last month, the Odyssey theme was "stuck," and Wilde was packed. Some participants, like writer Arthur Naiman and artist Janet K. Miller, sat placidly on a high stool while they talked. Others, like pacifist Bill Luce, took the microphone in hand and paced the stage. PR guy Isaac Ruiz literally jumped around and occasionally had to put down the mike so he could gesticulate more freely.

"Sometimes people are messy or uneven," Simmons admits, "but that's what life is like, and I love that whole uncertainty of not knowing what they're going to do."

Cold feet are part of life, too, but when participants back out, it's usually because they've been overwhelmed by other commitments, not because they're scared. "I've seen a lot get cold feet, but they do it anyway," says Simmons. "My friend Alice Nealon was so nervous that she couldn't eat; she was pacing; she wanted to go first to get it over with, and then she got on stage and told a brilliant story. She gave me a hug as she was leaving and said, 'Don't you ever ask me to do that again.' But I went to a party a couple of months later and there she was, talking about how she'd love to do it again."

Artist Janet Miller says she'd gladly do it again, too. She says she likes "knowing that my story is alive in people that I don't know, and that it's going to affect them in ways I'll never know, and it will live on outside of me." Last month, Miller's "stuck" story was about literally getting stuck on back-road trips deep into the desert; rather than fear, she recounted, she got a "euphoric feeling of being free of the plan."

Says Miller, "I like stories that are particular but reveal something larger and more universal than their particularity. As an audience member, I've always enjoyed the nonprofessional storytellers the best because they're so unpredictable and alive."

Miller says that despite the artificiality of the public venue, an Odyssey performance shouldn't be drastically different from chatting with friends.

"On the stage when I told my story, they had a kitchen sink that was part of the play they were doing in the theater," she says. "I would love to have been able to give people a pile of dishes to wash as they told stories. On stage, you think more about the story you're going to tell than you do at the kitchen sink, but I love language and stories so much that even my kitchen-sink stories can be thought out or considered, in a way."

According to psychologist George Goldman, one of the other "stuck" storytellers, "The tradition of listening to stories is as old as humans. The notion of stories and snaking your point through themes permeates everything. That's what movies and plays are, and TV programs--they're all themed stories presented in what the tellers hope to be an attractive way. We can do that in a low-tech way with just one person standing up there and saying something. I think we're almost built to appreciate and accept something like that."

Says Simmons, "Storytelling is entertainment, but it's very empowering for the people who do it, and the audience really relates to the storytellers. I'm trying to get a diverse mix of people from the community, so sometimes you'll learn something completely new and unusual about other people's lives."

As a spectator rather than a storyteller, Miller would like the Odyssey series to thrive. "I want to encourage other people to do it and not be scared," she says, "because the audience is so receptive and kind, and it's a great forum. People are patient and willing to let you stumble along, because it's real and it's live."

Once a month she invites anyone who is willing to share a story with an audience for 10 minutes on a specific theme, such as love and marriage, on the road, or creepy. These aren’t’ tall tales or folk tales, but journeys of the heart.

"It’s like truth-telling," says Simmons. "It’s like you’re known. People see you and acknowledge you and know you a little bit better. It’s an amazing feeling."

How does she select the storytellers? At first there was a lot of arm-twisting and a flood of e-mails sent to people she did and didn’t know. The people who were to speak on the theme of indecision had a hard time committing. However, within several months of Odyssey’s March 2004 opening, people started seeking her out.

"It’s a beautiful way to do networking." explains Simmons. "It’s all about diversity and getting people of different ages and ethnicities and educational backgrounds and interests together and listening to each other."

Besides, says David Gilmore, host and executive producer of Outright Radio, a storytelling show of interest to the gay and lesbian community, syndicated by Public Radio International, "Humans love stories. We’ve always told stories, and we tell them in very high-tech ways with huge productions in the movie industry. But I think that there is simultaneously interest in a really organic base-level story.

"I find it really heartening, because my experience with people in America in general is that they’re not really good listeners," adds Gilmore. "People are very sort of nervous and chatty and interested in ‘quick-quick-quick- give me the information’ and used to changing channels. We like to switch when something bores us. The cool thing about going to Odyssey is you don’t get to change channels."

But you do get to change your mind. Although stories are unscripted, storytellers rehearse briefly to get a sense of timing and comfort. Gilmore rehearsed one tale. Then, in the spirit of April Fools’ Day, he told another at the last moment.

Instead of a despairing love sage, he told of being pulled over in his car by the cops at …an inopportune time. Suffice to say, the story "was a little bit risqué for Tucson," says Gilmore. "Penny was surprised, but I think she was delighted anyway."

Fortunately, the audience is "very generous and ready to support and laugh and help you through whatever you’re going to say, simply because they’re wanting to have a good time and they’re wanting you to have a good time," says Amy Weintraub, a yoga teacher and author of Yoga For Depression, who spoke on indecision. "Most of them are there because they’re friends of a storyteller, or they’re interesting in storytelling themselves. By the time you’re finished, you have a new community of friends and well-wishers."

Apparently this is an especially safe space for those panic-stricken about public speaking. "One of the most valuable aspects is that people who get up on stage are really nervous, and usually by the end they’re calmed down." says Gilmore. "It’s very confidence-boosting that they’re able to step up on a stage without a script and just improvise and just work through it. Maybe Penny isn’t just staging these storytelling events. Maybe she’s staging these little transformational events."

Indeed, for Shanna Leonard, a network administrator at UMC hospital, the community of well-wishers provided responsive ears and support for something she’d rarely talked about – her ex-husband’s sudden health crisis. "He was walking around one day and three days later he was in a coma," she says.

Leonard spoke about spending countless hours at his bedside, battling for better health care in addition to raising their 4 year-old son and maintaining an aura of normalcy at work. The doctors were 95 percent certain he wouldn’t survive.

"It’s a very isolating experience," says Leonard. "People want to hear about it for the first few weeks. But then they don’t want to hear that you’re still miserable. So you just stop talking about it to most people. Telling the story was very inclusive. I could see that people related to it. It was a combination of exhilarating and terrifying and rewarding and disappointing." Disappointing only because she thought of a better ending later.

Ironically, her theme was "in the beginning." She says her ex-husband "had a new beginning that was totally unexpected. My story starts with an ending and ends with a beginning."

A former drama therapist, Leonard notes: "Making art out of something that is difficult or ugly or sad actually gives you some personal transformation. You’re basically making something of beauty."

As author Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, "Stories are medicine." And they seem to be contagious. Simmons gleaned the idea for Odyssey from her daughter-in-law, who hosts a storytelling series in San Francisco called Porchlight. Her daughter-in-law got the idea for Porchlight from Moth, the popular storytelling series in New York City.

"I want it to keep growing, but I don’t want to outgrow the space," says Simmons, referring to the Wilde’s 90-seat setting. "I’m not making any future plans. I’m enjoying what’s happening, enjoying developing it. I’m really interested that people are really having a positive experience. That’s thrilling to me."