The Radical Act of Community Storytelling: Empowering Voices in Uncensored Events

By Penelope Starr

The Radical Act of Community Storytelling is everything it claims in the title. It is the story of a radical step of faith taken by Penelope Starr to open her life by bringing community storytelling to her community. It is the story of voices that often go unheard having the opportunity to speak and be heard. And it is about community building from start to finish ... including everything any radical would need to start a community storytelling organization in any community.
—Adam Hostetter, Adult literacy educator, writer, and community storytelling producer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parkhurst Brothers Publishers Inc
• Release date: Aug 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781624911026

Book preview

THE RADICAL ACT OF COMMUNITY STORYTELLING

Empowering Voices in Uncensored Events

Our communities become better when we listen to each other's stories. It builds empathy. It helps us feel connected. We are so hungry for this. We all know it. The trouble is, where and how does it happen in an organized way? Penelope Starr has successfully created and nurtured a community of storytellers and story listeners in Tucson, AZ. In this honest, detailed and humorous book, she gives us the real behind-the-scenes story of what it's like to organize these events as well as shares the important logistics of how she did it- the stuff that we rarely think about when we attend these events. Penelope Starr believes live storytelling can and ought to be done in more communities. And she is doing her part to help make it happen. This is more than a story. It's a go-to guide for how we can all create more spaces for storytelling in our world.

—Jen Nowicki Clark, Director, Creative Narrations

When I moved from New York City to Tucson, I missed performing for The Moth . . . until I found the Odyssey Storytelling show founded by author Penelope Starr. In this fun and easy read, Starr breezes through Odyssey’s origin story, detailing the work of putting it all together and highlighting the pay-off: the startling beauty and communal empowerment that emerge when an ordinary person picks up the mic to share a story. Starr provides an inspiration to would-be story show organizers, so hopefully other towns and cities will soon have what Tucson has had for 13 years, a time each month to put aside our day-to-day lives and collectively puzzle our way through the essential human story.

—Molly McCloy, three-time NYC Moth StorySLAM winner.

The Radical Act of Community Storytelling reveals the gutsy nature of Penelope Starr who creates a space for others to find and reveal their own gutsiness in front of a live audience. She is an evangelist to her faith in storytelling, which changes the lives of the storyteller as well as those captured by the stories being told. More than a how to, Penelope takes the reader on an odyssey of how it was. . .do as you please!

—Diana Leonard, PhD; Author, Introduction to the Speech Making Process, Director of Public Speaking, The University of Arizona

Penelope has penned a terrific primer for those inspired to raise their own voices and create their own community storytelling and, of course, a wonderful collection of unforgettable stories. Penelope is an evangelist for storytelling who preaches that truth is not simply stranger than fiction, it is more joyful, it is more compelling and it is more radically profound.

—David Fitzsimmons, nationally syndicated political cartoonist, columnist for the Arizona Daily Star

Penelope Starr writes in the intimate voice of a friend with such humor and vitality that you want to hang out with her beyond the length of this excellent read. Even if your own passion has little to do with producing a story-telling event, you’ll want to finish Starr’s exhilarating story about creating connection, acceptance of the other, and growing compassionate community through the brave and sometimes radical act of telling your story.

—Amy Weintraub, author of Yoga for Depression (Broadway Books), Yoga Skills for Therapists (W.W. Norton) and founder of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute

The Radical Act of Community Storytelling is everything it claims in the title. It is the story of a radical step faith taken by Penelope Starr to open her life by bringing community storytelling to her community. It is the story of voices that often go unheard having the opportunity to speak and be heard. And it is about community building from start to finish--including everything any radical would need to start a community storytelling organization in any community.

—Adam Hostetter, Adult literacy educator, writer, and community storytelling producer

About the names in this book. I changed the names of the storytellers because I wanted to be able to interpret the meaning of their stories through my own lens and from my own memory. Everyone else’s names are really theirs.

—P.S.

THE RADICAL ACT OF COMMUNITY STORYTELLING

Empowering Voices in Uncensored Events

PENELOPE STARR

Parkhurst Brothers Publishers

MARION, MICHIGAN

© Text and graphics copyright 2017 by Penelope Starr. All rights reserved under the laws and treaties of the United States of America and all international copyright conventions and treaties. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief passages quoted within news or blog features about the book, reviews, et cetera, without the express prior written consent of Permissions Director, Parkhurst Brothers Publishers.

www.parkhurstbrothers.com

Parkhurst Brothers books are distributed to the trade through the Chicago Distribution Center (a division of the University of Chicago Press, and may be ordered through Ingram Book Company, Baker & Taylor, Follett Library Resources and other book industry wholesalers. To order from Chicago Distribution Center, phone [phone] or fax [phone]. Copies of this and other Parkhurst Brothers Publishers titles are available to organizations and corporations for purchase in quantity by contacting Special Sales Department at our home office location, listed on our website. Manuscript submission guidelines for this publishing company are available at our website.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition, 2017

2017 2018 2019 2010 2021 2022 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: [Pending]

ISBN: Trade Paperback    978-1-62491-101-9

ISBN: e-book                     978-1-62491-102-6

Parkhurst Brothers Publishers believes that the free and open exchange of ideas is essential for the maintenance of our freedoms. We support the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and encourage all citizens to study all sides of public policy questions, making up their minds. Closed minds cost society dearly.

Cover and interior design by: Linda D. Parkhurst, Ph.D.

Proofread by: Bill and Barbara Paddack

Acquired for Parkhurst Brothers Inc., Publishers by: Ted Parkhurst

082017

Dedication

To my artist parents, Gus and Ruth Pawelka, who encouraged me to make stuff.

Contents

PART ONE

How to Create and Produce a Community Storytelling Series

Voices Uncensored

What It's About

In the Beginning

A Bit of Storytelling History

Getting Started

Finding a Venue

Finding a Name

Finding Storytellers

Finding Themes

Finding an Audience

The Rehearsal

Opening Night

Guest Curators

Finding Volunteers

When Things Go Wrong

Creating a Business Plan

Becoming a 501(c)(3)

Teaching Workshops

Storytelling Projects

Moving and Growing

PART TWO

Why Everyone Can Benefit from Community Storytelling

Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking

Storytelling vs. Therapy

Diversity

Dispelling Prejudice

Building Bridges

Healing

Making Connections

Community Awareness and Fundraising

Ripple Effect

Teaching Lessons

Creativity

PART THREE

Keeping It Organized

Forms, Timelines, Contracts

Curator and Producer Agreement and Timeline

Storyteller and Curator Agreement and Timeline

Show Timeline Checklist

Rehearsal notes

Photo/Video/Audio Release Agreement

11 Things to Do If You Are Nervous About Going Onstage

Tips for Tellers

Story Outline

List of Things to Take

Script for Curator

Guest List

Program

Email list

Sign, 2 yellow

Sign, 5 green

Sign, WRAP IT UP red

Resources

Acknowledgements

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

—Maya Angelou

PART ONE

How to Create and Produce a Community Storytelling Series

Voices Uncensored

If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.

—Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

COOPERATING INSTEAD OF COMPETING. Telling instead of lecturing. Listening instead of eavesdropping. Compassion not judgment. Acceptance not censorship. Celebrating identities not shaming. Risking exposure, not hiding. Paying attention instead of zoning out.

That is what makes community storytelling unique and transformational. But what makes it radical?

For one thing, the pure democracy of it all. The essential structure provides all storytellers an equal opportunity to take to the stage and tell about real things that happened to them, things they saw and did, things that they want to share with a roomful of strangers. It’s a place where everyday folks, with different life experiences, joys and sorrows, have a voice. Providing a venue and audience for this sort of activity could be seen as downright subversive. Nothing is canned, predictable or especially polite. It can be raw, mean or sugary sweet depending on who is brave enough to commit to a rehearsal, have their name and bio go out over social media, and show up for the event.

The structure inspires honesty and confessional tales. Intimacy emerges from the bare bones of a stage, a mic, a teller and listeners. One night at an Odyssey Storytelling show a woman, whose mother sat in the audience, confessed to sneaking out of her second story bedroom window, undetected, when she was a teenager. Twenty years later, Mom laughed at the story along with everyone else.

Stories about shame, triumph, and prejudice; love, revenge, and greed; all presented on a neutral stage, inviting deep respect and listening. I’ve never seen nor heard anyone being confrontational, although sometimes people are shocked or confused. If you weren’t expecting to hear about the sex life of a transman, it might take a moment or two to adjust your expectations and relax into serious appreciation.

Exposure = understanding = acceptance = true connection

Radically changing minds and hearts is just one of the many advantages of community storytelling. Shaking people out of their insular lives and dropping them into another reality is radical. Community Storytelling is a place where diversity is celebrated and lessons are learned in the best possible way—from people who are different from us. By listening fiercely and intensely, we allow ourselves to be amused or scared or made joyful; we open up to new possibilities. As the Tucson Meet Yourself 40th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine so aptly put it, The messiness of cultures bumping into each other is the messiness of democracy—the elusive aspiration of equality, justice, and respect.

Infusing storytellers with self-confidence and the knowledge that their stories matter is radical. Exposing tellers to nonjudgmental witnesses who validate their experience by offering kindness in exchange for honesty/trust subverts the paradigm of separateness and competition. For two hours, the length of a show, a community is created. And there is spillover—friendships are forged, connections happen, overlapping social networks will amaze and make us say, But, of course.

I have to admit, I am a radical storylistener. I’m the one who hangs on every word of disclosure and drama, the one who holds the hand of the terrified and encourages the merely shy to share their sloppy or slick, enthusiastic or hesitant, but always sincere voices with a room full of strangers.

My first taste of a storytelling event occurred in San Francisco. You know how they talk about love at first sight? That’s kind of how I felt. I was enthralled by the concept of people sharing private, personal parts of their lives in a public venue. I’m not shy about telling the truth of my life as I see it but I’m also not one to broadcast my autobiography. I thought the people onstage were brave beyond words and I felt privileged to be part of the audience. I wanted to hear more stories.

My parents were artists. One lesson I learned from them was: If it doesn’t exist, create it. To construct something from nothing is a radical creative act. The theme of the first Odyssey Storytelling show was aptly titled In the Beginning. It felt like I was creating heaven and earth. I was running on chutzpah and innocence, never thinking about where it could go or how I was going to get there. I trusted myself to turn a great idea into a reality.

Odyssey is truly a grassroots organization. Founded in the community, for the community, it has succeeded by the volunteer cooperative efforts of hundreds of people donating their time and energy. Each month six people come forward to be coached in the craft of storytelling. The following week they step on stage to reveal some of the most important parts of their lives to friends and strangers who give them their undivided attention.

It works because there is a core group of people that believe in it enough to sustain it and keep it running smoothly. The group has evolved over time, and the energy remains to propel Odyssey to the next show. No one is in it for the money, a very radical concept.

I did not have a clear roadmap to follow, but I’m offering you one—replete with lists, references and a guided step-by-step process to start and maintain a