Speakin' Easy

So I've been devoting some thought cycles lately to the nature of time limits in storytelling. Those limits are a thing that performers of every stripe chafe against, naturally, and I firmly believe them to be both necessary and a Good Thing: we all stumble every now and again, of course, but learning to work within those limits is a necessary part of the discipline of being a writer/performer and ultimately makes us much better at both.

I do think that they pose a unique challenge to storytellers (as opposed to, say, poets or comics) because we depend so heavily on *narrative*. Which is not to say that poets and comics don't, obviously, but arguably to a lesser degree (their chief rewards for the audience lie, I think, in other areas).

Twenty minutes feels to me about the right length for a fully embodied, self-contained story with a complete narrative. Venues that play to this are rare. Certainly I've grown more comfortable with flash fiction, with the number of open-mics that play to three, five, and seven-minute slots, but what I write for those feel to me less like short stories and more like gimmick delivery systems: that's about long enough to set up and punch a clever idea or two, not to deal with things like plot or character to any worthwhile degree. (Particularly for a writer as interested in structural games as I am. Even in the latest Rockstar shows, which typically offer 10-12 minutes, I've found myself excerpting sections of longer pieces that showcase bits of writing I'm pleased with -- giving small moments room to breathe, at the expense of contextualizing them.)

(Which is to say nothing of the discrepancy between lengths on the page and the stage. Lay out all the words spoken in an hour-long Fringe show and that's still only a few manuscript pages, well within short-story length by any publication's definition.)

I was talking with a group of storytellers last week, and this dearth was mentioned -- the fact that there's a plethora of mics where you can flash your best bits at an audience for a few minutes at a time, and there's the hour-long Festival slots, but there's not much room to work out your material in between. Oh, there's a few -- Patrick's Cabaret, for one, or Loren Niemi's Two Chairs Telling for another -- or Speak Easy Twin Cities, which I'll be performing at this Saturday.

Returning after a hiaitus (and it's been missed), the show books 2-4 storytellers in alternative spaces (garages, living rooms, etc.) I was a fan of the series in its original incarnation, and I'm delighted at its return, more delighted still to be a part of it. In true speakeasy fashion, tickets must be reserved in advance to discover its location. Looking forward to the opportunity to give the potboiler room to boil, yo.