Story time
By Burl Burlingame
Star-BulletinEverybody's got a story to tell, guaranteed. Whether it's Jeff Gere telling spooky stuffs, Bill Paty discussing his life, Joe Miller performing "Cacaroach Theatre," Neff Maiawa spinning the "Grouchy Moocher Boogie Man" or imported storyteller Sandra MacLees stitching together "Pieces of My Life," it's all part of the oral tapestry of this year's Bankoh Talk Story Festival.
This close to Halloween, spooky stories are a treat -- when they aren't tricks.
"They're a guide to behavior of yourself and others," said Gere, festival trail boss. "They crack open your assumptions about the world. Your belief systems are thrown up in the air. What's past and gone is here and now."
Then he went, "Heh! Heh! Heh!" Spooky, all right.
Story-telling is probably the original performance art, developed around camp fires, say, a gazillion years ago. As the sparks rose glittering into the black bowl of night, anything seemed possible. The human imagination was exercised the way a muscle can be.
If a storyteller is on the mark, you can tell if the audience is being carried away, said Gere. It's almost like hypnosis. Breathing patterns change, eyes dilate, shoulders slump, the physiology of the entire body is affected.
Gere calls it a "guided visualization. It's the nucleus of all drama, and it can't get any purer, because you're right down to the nugget, the simplest essence, getting right into the human experience without all the other junk distracting you."
Telling stories this way is "a skill you acquire, like swimming. Anyone can do it, but not everybody does it equally. It's very natural for some people. Not natural for others. Heh Heh Heh!"
Talk Story Festival
Dates: 7-9:30 p.m. Friday and noon to 9 p.m. Saturday
