click to enlarge - Courtesy Of Liz Lauren
- David Cale performing We're Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago
Since the beatnik heyday of the 1950s and '60s, audience members at storytelling and poetry slam performances have shown their appreciation with finger snaps rather than handclaps. When a line resonates with a listener during a performance, the quieter gesture allows for spontaneous feedback that doesn't disrupt the speaker's flow. At these events, hearing every word matters.
That's because telling a personal narrative is "an act of bravery," said Jay Wahl, executive director of the Flynn theater in Burlington. Publicly sharing vulnerable parts of our lives can evoke feelings of shame or embarrassment, he said, but "we don't always know how powerful our stories can be."
Enter the Flynn's inaugural *snap* First Person Arts Festival, held this Friday to Sunday, January 19 to 21. The weekend will progress from professional to amateur storytelling — beginning with New York City playwright David Cale, continuing with sets by five artists selected by the Flynn through an application process and concluding with an open-mic story slam. Wahl said he hopes participants will walk away from the new fest with heightened recognition of the strength of their own voices.
Kicking off the festival on Friday night, Cale will perform We're Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time, a musical memoir about his traumatic adolescence in Luton, an impoverished town in Bedfordshire, England. The 90-minute show premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2018 and is usually performed with a six-piece orchestra. The Burlington production will have only one instrumental accompanist, musician Matthew Dean Marsh on piano.
Cale told Seven Days he was initially reluctant to write an autobiographical play for fear of being defined by his childhood or appearing self-indulgent. But a friend gave him advice that changed his mind, pointing out that Cale's experience could be useful to people with similar struggles.
Writing the work as a musical, he said, allowed him to process the events of his childhood with some detachment from the subject.
"It really is very, very close to the truth. But then again, nobody [in my childhood] started singing," Cale joked. "There is a kind of an artistry to the work that removes it from being too much like a confession."
Audiences benefit from seeing this kind of deeply personal show, Wahl said: "We're so lucky when people are willing to say, you know, 'I've had this experience, and this is how I've gotten through it.'"
Moving into the weekend, audiences will have the opportunity to hear a diverse array of stories. Saturday night's free event will feature five performances that the Flynn selected among submissions from about 35 artists across New England and New York. Wahl said he and the other two judges — Jennifer Skinder, the Flynn's director of education and community; and Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup, executive director of Vermont Humanities — were looking for authenticity, seeking individuals who would tell an honest story rather than act a role.
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- From left: Storytellers Arshan Gailus, Molly Kirschner, Phoebe Dunn, Alex Cobb and Ron Jenkins
Ron Jenkins, a professor of theater at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., who runs theater workshops in prisons around the world, will explore why he has spent so many years teaching Dante's Inferno to incarcerated people. His piece is titled The Bread of Angels: Reading Dante's Inferno Behind Bars.
Colchester resident Molly Kirschner, 29, will present a "tender comedy" called Double Dose of Molly, about living with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Kirschner said she incorporated humor to help her process her struggle.
"Other people take drugs to get high. I have to take drugs not to get high," Kirschner quipped. "There's so much catharsis in humor and being able to laugh at the vicissitudes of the mind."
This isn't Kirschner's first time channeling her mental health struggles into art: She has written and performed in a play in which all the characters have bipolar disorder. But this piece feels more emotionally raw, she said, since she'll be portraying herself onstage.
Other performances include What Are You Dad? by Vermont dancer Alex Cobb; Hair and Hummus and Things Like That by Arshan Gailus, a graduate student at Goddard College in Plainfield; and Out of the Woods by New York actor Phoebe Dunn.
On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, participants can receive guidance in crafting their own first-person narratives at a $60 workshop led by Susanne Schmidt, Vermont's regional producer for the Moth StorySLAM competition.
The workshop will prepare participants to take part in the free open-mic Story Slam on Sunday night, where they will have first dibs on the stage. Afterward, any audience member will be able to take the mic.
Wahl said he hopes the festival will become an annual event and that spectators inspired by other community members' stories will apply to be featured speakers next year.
Storytelling is a way to "connect with each other," Wahl said. "I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. So if I have the opportunity to share a story, what do I have to tell you right now?"