By Sally Perkins
Storyteller
Sally.perkins@gmail.com
Frank and Katrina Basile have done a tremendous service in offering the Frank Basile Emerging Stories Fellowship. I was fortunate enough to be one of this year’s fellowship recipients, along with Josefa Crowe. I’ve been telling stories for the past four years at Riley Children’s Hospital and have done some telling at schools and churches. I’ve told a few short personal stories to adults, but preparing a 45-minute personal story for adults was like nothing I’d ever done before.
I found both the creative process and the performance to be exhilarating. Because the story I proposed was based on personal experience — my dogs — I didn’t need to travel or research outside of my home. But I did need concentrated time to craft the story, so I used the fellowship to spend a long weekend at a monastery where I had hours of silence for creative invention.
After crafting the story, I began working on its “telling.” It took nearly two months of rehearsal and refinement to get the story performance-ready. Knowing that I intended my story to be humorous yet poignant, I was wracked with anxiety by the fear that the audience might not find my dogs as funny as I did. Thanks to the good wisdom of some fellow storytellers, I found some willing rehearsal audiences who gave me the assurance that the story was, indeed, funny, but they also gave some valuable feedback about the narrative.
The night of the premiere, November 14, was a highlight in my life. To our surprise, at least 250 people were in attendance. Josefa opened the evening with her fascinating and powerful stories of her experience growing up in Germany under the Nazi regime. So impressed by her telling and her experiences, the audience rose to their feet at her conclusion. Then, I told my story of three poodles and their ignorant owners (my husband and me). I was delighted to hear the audience’s laughter and to learn that even a few tears were shed at the end.
The evening was rich in story for all involved, and we are indebted to Frank and Katrina Basile for making it all happen. I’m confident that my work as a storyteller will forever have changed because of the Emerging Stories Fellowship.
Tags: Frank Basile Emerging Stories, Storytelling, Storytelling Arts of Indiana