A Story That Mattered

A Story That Mattered

Jennifer will be presenting her workshop Creating Stories that Matter at Sharing the Fire 2020.

I’ve been thinking a great deal recently about the title of my workshop, “Creating Stories that Matter,” for this year’s conference. It now strikes me that it’s a bit presumptuous – well, OK, a lot presumptuous; however, I had an experience recently that clarified what I mean by this.

I did a performance two weeks ago on a Saturday night at Next Door restaurant in New Haven: a new series, which includes storytellers and musicians, organized by Saul Fussiner, a well-known local storyteller. The owner of the restaurant gives the main room where the bar is over to this event, and it’s always a sellout, as it was this particular evening. The storytellers were asked to tell a true story about 10 to 12 minutes in length on the theme of fitting or not fitting in.

What I loved about the audience was its diversity: some old, young, black, brown, white, and LGBTQ. Many of the audience seemed new to storytelling. (Storytelling is, I believe, a new thing at the restaurant; usually, the shows are made up of musicians.)

When it came time to tell my story, I took my place behind the microphone and looked into the bright lights shining into my eyes, which made it difficult to see the faces of the audience. Nonetheless, I began to tell my story and could sense the audience was with me. When I reached the climax, something happened, and I’m not sure exactly what it was. Either my eyes had become accustomed to the darkened room, or the lights shining at me dimmed, whatever is was, the audiences’ faces came into sudden focus. I could see quite clearly that they were seeing the story along with me. This realization completely side-stepped any intellectual reasoning on my part – it registered deep down at gut level. When I said the next line, there were cries of “Yes!” and “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”, and a spontaneous burst of joyful applause. This has never happened anywhere where I have told this story before. I finished the ending lines to cheers, laughter, and thunderous applause – well, it would have been thunderous if there had been more than fifty people there!

So, why does this short story matter? Because on a dark, rainy night in New Haven, it spoke a simple truth about the human condition to a small bunch of people.

About Jennifer: Jennifer Munro creates stories whose characters will have you cheering one moment and weeping the next. She has performed at major festivals across the nation, most notably, the National Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. She has two Storytelling World award-winning CDs; her first book Aunty Lily, is also a Storytelling World winner. www.jennifermunro.net

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