Variety Reviews John Lithgow, Storyteller

I've often enjoyed actor John Lithgow reading aloud on the radio program "Selected Shorts." Now it seems he's opened a one-man show at Lincoln Center, "John Lithgow: Stories by Heart."

Variety lists the show as a "play," and it does have a director. And it does take place in a theater.

But apparently the show is mostly Mr. Lithgow telling stories of his family, and of the role stories and storytelling played in his family. The show includes recitations of poetry by Oliver Wendell Holmes and prose by P.G. Wodehouse.

I found this quote illuminating:

...(the play) encourages auds to make their own connection to the material, without demanding that we celebrate Lithgow's life. He grounds the classics by explaining what they meant to his family, but his biography is supporting material, not the solipsistic main event.

It reminds me of the best of storytellers, who disappear behind their stories. And what you are left with is not the feeling that the storyteller had an interesting life, but a connection with the storyteller, who was able to capture some universal feeling (of pride, of embarassment, of loss, of fear, of love) and share it.

Chicago Youth Storytelling: WNEP and "Back to School"

Don R. Hall at Chicago's WNEP (What No One Else Produces) has been running a storytelling competition, called SKALD, for 8 years now.

(And my ears on the ground in Chicago in the storytelling community know nothing about it. Time for some new ears. The likely trouble is not only that Chicago storytellers aren't tapped into the theatre scene there, and also Don's use of the term "professional storyteller" does not correspond to the same definition that professional storytellers use.)

Be that as it may, Don's blogged about his efforts to get some youth storytellers involved, and he may have just gotten more than he bargained for.

But it seems his potential batch of students are wildly enthusiastic. Kudos for Don for developing the next generation of storytellers.