by Kelly Johnson
We’re all storytellers. There’s no real way around it. From telling someone about your day to performing on stage and everything in between, every human being is telling stories constantly. We can’t help it. We’re compelled to do so.
We’re all storytellers. There’s no real way around it. From telling someone about your day to performing on stage and everything in between, every human being is telling stories constantly. We can’t help it. We’re compelled to do so.
Perhaps what I’m most excited about this summer at the Opera
House is the conversation that all our mainstage shows have about this very
compulsion.
The story that we all start with is our own – and it’s
constantly changing, which is so beautifully illustrated in Orlando. How do we age? And does that
process alter us? How do we choose to present ourselves to other and what part
of ourselves do we try to ignore?
Time can be viewed as a fairly consistent construct. 60
minutes to an hour. 24 hours to a day. But I’d be hard pressed to say that the
flow of time always feels the same to me. Looking back on moments of great joy
or great trauma, it can sometimes feel simultaneously like they happened to
someone else lifetimes ago and that they’re still happening to me right this
second. All of these things impact who we are, but when we choose what to share
with others, we craft our own stories. We do what we can to influence how we’ll
be remembered. But we’re not the only ones who have sway over that memory.
In An Iliad, the
Poet tells the story of the Trojan War and many of those who were involved. And
while she undoubtedly feels deeply for those she’s discussing, she also
undoubtedly tells the stories of these individuals differently than they would
tell their own. Which is the more truthful retelling? Or can they be both
equally truthful and significantly different?
And why do we tell other people’s stories at all? Do we do
it for them or for ourselves? Is it possible to tell someone else’s tale simply
for the sake of telling it, without any of yourself coloring it? Or by telling
the story of someone else’s life in our own voice, does that person’s life
become part of our own? The Poet certainly has purpose. She states it early on,
"Every time I sing this song, I hope it's the last
time." She wants to
effect change, and that desire and the manner in which she tells this story,
makes the retelling as much about her as about anyone else she mentions.
We go
through life challenging ourselves to reconcile the linear chronology of our
lives with the chaotic spontaneity of the moments within them. We’re born, we
live, we die. Therefore we expect a beginning, a middle, and an end to our
stories and the stories of those around us. The danger in this is when we begin
to guess at what the middle and end will be for others. This can be done as
innocently as a parent’s wishful planning for their child or as complicated as
the Senate’s fear of the threat Caesar could possibly pose in a hypothetical
worst-case scenario. Without question our guesses as to how someone else’s
story will progress says more about our own that it does about theirs.
In Caesar,
Brutus states:
And since the quarrel
Will bear no color for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities;
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would as his kind grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell
Will bear no color for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities;
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would as his kind grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell
Sure, Caesar
hasn’t done anything wrong yet, but the possibility exists that he could.
Better nip that in the bud.
How many
times do we do this? Look at someone else’s actions (or inactions) and project
our own fears on to them until the person in question becomes the villain of
our story? While true villains can and do exist, do we just as frequently
create our own antagonists out of those who had no intention of doing us harm? How
do we use storytelling as a weapon to prevent other people from reaching their
goals? A tool to get what we want?
In Mr.
Burns, the human compulsion to tell stories is both center stage and shown as
a vital tool of survival. After a cataclysmic event, those who remain use
storytelling – in this case, retelling episodes of The Simpsons – first
to survive, then to rebuild. Can we tell stories for the sole purpose of
escaping reality or do all stories serve a greater purpose? Must that purpose
be deemed by the storyteller, or can different purposes be given by each
listener? At what points in your life have you used stories as a coping
mechanism? How effective was it? What story did you choose – your own or
someone else’s?
It is this
steep waterfall of questions that has me so fascinated with and so excited
about this summer’s season. Nothing impacts our daily lives, and the
relationships in them, like the manner in which we tell stories and the stories
we choose to tell. I hope you’ll join me in enjoying this summer’s shows, and
in thinking about what stories each of us feels compelled to tell and why.
