Mic Open, Mind Ajar

Another of my goals since shutting down production has been to re-commit to the open-mic scene. I initially threw myself into it pretty aggressively when I first moved out here -- Jesus, around a decade ago -- and I remain a great believer in it; just about every show that I've produced in that time has gone through a couple of weeks of previewing there.

I maintain my fondness for them for the very same reasons that I suspect many other storytellers dislike them: because it's an audience that isn't there to see me. Most of them don't give a shit who I am or what my last successful show was. What matters is, can you grab a microphone and engage? Which is always a humbling, and therefore important, exercise.

But what's striking to me this time around is that, comparatively, there aren't as many opportunities for *storytellers*, persay. There's Word Ninjas, of course. There's also the Story Slam (which is competitive) and Folktales Rising (which is really more of a writing circle than an open-mic). Ball's is one of the few mics I've been to that seems legitimately multidisciplinary to me -- not skewing towards one form over another.

Beyond that, there's shows you can lobby for a booking at, like the Monday Night Comedy Show or Sample Night Live or Firsty Thursday or Patrick's Cabaret, but the nature of such a process favors polish over experimentation. Otherwise, I'd say the remainder (that I've seen, and God knows my knowledge isn't exhaustive) tend to slant to either slam or comedy -- e.g. the Artist's Quarter will let you perform whatever you want, but boy howdy that's a slam audience.

But the more I think about it, the more I suspect that there's an underlying *structural* discrepancy. Slam and comedy both have clear (well, clearer) ladders -- a comic can gradually (over many years) work his way up to hosting to featuring to headlining. A poet can work her way through competitions to Nationals. And a storyteller can...? What's the next rung on the ladder, after open-mics?

I built a reputation as a storyteller on the Fringe circuit, but that was pretty chaotic and haphazard and I don't know that I'd recommend it. More (i.e. actually) successful storytellers seem to slide in through a variety of side doors -- Kevin Kling through radio, David Sedaris through print, et cetera.

So I suspect that the dearth of storytelling-oriented open mics is a symptom, not a cause. But a diagnosis isn't the same thing as a treatment. And I still have a fuck of a lot to learn.