Watching the Audience

I remember the same thing unfolding in classrooms, the attic of an old firehouse, libraries, and one summer, a museum 3 afternoons a week: my dad telling stories. They were stories he'd learned to tell again and again, and I watched, along with many audiences of children. He stood and bent his knees and stretched out his fingers and gazed upward as he used his voice to conjure giant black snakes and clever monkeys, dogs braver than any I'd ever known and demonic monsters that towered over dark forests. Sometimes he took out his guitar and sang, too. One day I stood and sang along with him---against my every desire to sit down and have no one look at me, as I'd been doing in practice---but only the one time. He'd forgotten to introduce me and my singing startled everyone. I'm not sure if he really wanted to share the spotlight.

The stories he told were old legends from oral traditions as varied as the Native American one, African countries, Poland and Russia, but they were all living magic when he started speaking.

My life has been marked by a- fascination isn't the right word - a hunger for understanding stories, not for their content so much as their effect on people. Stories in the media, authoritarian stories, stories of success, or country, or religion, can engulf, empower or ensnare people seemingly with just a few deft details. I've worked for twenty years on understanding, shaping, refining and deepening the culture created by company leaders, the cultures that inspire integrity, or fury, or prestige, loyalty or its opposite. These cultures are created by stories, of what this group is doing, and why.

As a parent volunteer in my children's public school, I coordinate the visits of 32 artists and scientists a year into these precious classrooms, placing them before open minds, and I've finally realized that I'm not watching the stories so much as I'm watching the audience. What they react to, sometimes with so much delight, what leaves an indelible mark, and how they act - how they are sometimes admonished and don't mind, how they are sometimes fidgety and sometimes spellbound, no matter the age or the gender. Who captures them, for they can be captured, I've learned. They can forget where they are and who they are. They can get lost in the story.

The best presenters teach the children how to absorb stories. The absorption takes different routes. Some presenters teach children to make their own stories. "Anyone ever been bitten by a dog?" one storyteller asked 75 second graders. A third of the class raised their hands. "That's a story. Ask your uncle how he got that scar on his arm. That's a story."

It might be in decoding a life that seems too far out of reach. The artist who created the graphic novel showed mistake after mistake after mistake. "This was my first cover," he said, showing a good drawing. "It took a long time, but...I wasn't satisfied with it. So I did it again." He showed a great drawing. "Isn't this one better?"

One presenter talked about her rejections. She didn't brag about her persistence, but she explained it, and how she kept going. She had kids act out her writing. She looked them in the eyes. "You are an author," she said to each one.

What is the story that leaves a mark on the audience? Is it the illustration? Is it the artist who made the illustration? Is it the bug lady who seemed annoyed at having kids in the room? Is it the insect she passes around that compels every kid to stare with dropped jaws?

The story, for me, is what leaves a child changed, walking away with a memory that they'll still have twenty years later. It means something, the person who makes this story, whether they meant to or not. I've learned that a presenter can captivate a child with a quiet voice or a loud one, a practiced voice or an unpracticed one, whether they look like the child or not. They can have a short time, and a crowded, dilapidated room, as ours do, and the best ones don't care, because they are looking at the beauty of the children.

What I've found important is that they love their idea, the idea that they want to convey, and that they honestly believe in each child, and in the beauty of getting lost in a story.