Christmas of Ghosts Past

I was not raised by wolves-- or even lycanthropes.  I did not grow up in a clammy English castle.  But I do appreciate a good horror story.

Granted, I wrote my share in 5^th and 6^th grade, contemplating copyright infringement suits against “The Night Stalker” TV series.  But I grew up amid my father’s extensive science fiction library, an afternoon horror movie series on our local TV affiliate, and a fascination with real-life ghost stories as book report fodder…Thus, my adult predilection for the supernatural scare.

I have my share of fun kids ‘ghost’ stories I perform at schools.  But the itch to give (and get) legitimate scares at the adult intensity-level is too strong to ignore.

Why do audiences (and I) crave a good scary yarn?  It’s primal.  Curiosity is a powerful instinct that makes you journey into the shadows to see what’s there AND your curiosity wants to know if you’re strong enough to survive whatever the dark side launches at you.

I’ve survived 100% of my experiences as a reader & performer.  So far.  My audiences, on the other hand, haven’t complained.  I haven’t scared any individual to death, though it would prove quite the PR conundrum.

Imagination is that other innate motivator to seek the horror story.    “I see a dead woman with two puncture wounds in her neck.    I see an open empty coffin.  I see ______.” 

You filled in that blank, didn’t you?  Audiences love that sense of creating the journey, daring themselves and the story in the process.

Stay in a rural English cottage with a solitary lit candle, a mourning mother, and a monkey’s paw, and you WANT to know what’s possible.

The period literature bridging the 19^th & 20th centuries appeals most to me.  Mostly short fiction created by numerous masters of the horror genre (including WW Jacobs): Poe, R.L. Stevenson,
H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, to name a few.

Not all of them were novelists, and not all wrote exclusively for the horror genre.  But they all oozed curiosity and imagination.

In a genre that finally had popular availability, they asked those questions that science, nature, or religion couldn’t answer…and created their own answers.  With each story’s firmly established mythos, here comes the reader thinking, “How scary could it be?” 

The fact that this genre and many of its individual authors (now long dead…I think) have 21^st century fan websites speaks to the staying power of the material.  Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King wouldn’t be who they are without their horrible forefathers.         I’m just trying to frighten the unenlightened.

As a performer, I LOVE the public domain system that includes this vibrant period of literature.  No gatekeeper blocks access to the story, no agent asks for their pound of flesh, and dead authors don’t kibbitz over how you tell their tale. That’s WHY I tell them.

HOW  I tell those horror stories is a trade secret.  You could find out at one of my upcoming shows.  They’re popular as a cemetery: folks are just dying to get in.

(Insert evil laugh here)

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This time it's personal!

TO TELL THE “TRUTH”

Greetings, story fans!  Rest assured before we begin, there are two topics you’ll never read about at this blog—Romantic relationships & Bodily functions.  As for the former, six people just breathed easier; for the latter, the world is now a safer place. 

Today I would like to share my perceptions of the Personal Story.  I speak not of the long-winded “joke” you may share at a local night-club or the uninvited confession to your fellow passenger on the bus. 
No, the following is for those of you enamored of stepping into experiences like The Moth, story slams, or just an oral history for your family.

When I first began telling stories, I was part of an ensemble—a tag-team, as it were—sharing mostly traditional or children’s tales.  Then, a client asked for a baseball theme and rather than subject 20^th century kids to a 19^th century sports glossary in “Casey at the Bat,” I delved into my life experiences for an original story.  Since then, I’ve learned some lessons you may value…

Be Yourself.  I am a practitioner of “mutant literature.”  I don’t create Jane Austen zombies, though I do stray from the conventional in letter writing, play writing, and story writing.  I write one letter (emails notwithstanding) a year and it’s “news” for friends, not a journal.  As to plays, the two-act format seems too lengthy for me, so I prefer creating one-acts or a series of character-monologues around a theme or incident.  Stories from another source are sacred but my original anecdotal PERSONAL experiences are the product of a perpetually short attention-span and the actor’s mentality to work ‘moments’. 

As I watched other professional tellers early in my story-career, I saw one relate an incident as a continuous journey over 20 minutes; another found a parallel to their experience in mythology.  I admire those tellers and their methods but my fragmented memories and insular comfort zone mesh best with a ‘connect the dots’ narrative style.

Stories can go on a pedestal, if you’re not already up there. Back to the baseball story…I created an inning by inning lowlight reel—a stand-up routine if you must know.  After a few performances, I got cocky and expected laughs.  When the laughs didn’t come, I tried harder and quickly lost my audience as they became frightened of the desperate dude onstage.  I’m much more reasonable now…

Emotions don’t rehearse (and it shows).  My first story about dealing with death, my grandfather’s, was an effort to challenge myself, become the ‘more-than-stand-up’ guy.  During rehearsals, there was no hint that I’d relive receiving the news: crying the first four times I shared it onstage.  Actor tricks like pausing, thinking of sunshine and lollipops, or open mouth breathing until I regained control didn’t work.

So I fought through it to the less traumatic ‘homage’ section.  Fighting through it a couple times told me what I could and couldn’t do, made me more inured to the predictable surge of adrenalin.  I used to fear the story.  Now I love it again because I keep the homage in my mind throughout the tale.

The story tells you when it’s ready to be told.  The last personal story I wrote blind-sided me.  I signed on for a national workshop to create an original tale that tied to a traditional folktale.  At the time, I had a few folktales in the ‘maybe someday’ folder.  I took one folktale from the folder and forced a societal issue onto it—too cold; another folktale sounded like a sibling’s relationship—too hot; then a third folktale turned my head—just right.  It sounded like my journey through alcoholic misbehavior.  There were natural parallels about warning signs, ignorance, facing the demons, and redemption. 

My story-coaches accepted this darker side of me, and gave objective feedback that made me all the more grateful I tabled the story until its time was my time.  The workshop kicked ass, by the way!

The bottom line with personal stories is--Lessons.  If a story doesn’t have some universal appeal, then it’s time to stop looking in the mirror.  It’s not about you.  It’s about what an individual audience member hears, feels, and lets resonate during and after your sharing of the tale.    Your hindsight becomes their foresight, maybe even lets them finally cope with something similar from their past.

Here’s hoping I get to hear your adventures soon.