Portland Story Theater

Tonight I attended the opening night of the Portland Story Theater's 2009 Solo Performance Festival. I was blown away by the two performances I saw, and as it just ended a little over an hour ago, I'm still trying to process what I saw tonight. The performers were Lawrence Howard and Antonio Sacre, each giving the audience an hour of storytelling. Each of these gentlemen related personal stories from their own lives, and though their approaches and styles were completely different, they both were able to convey to the audience those things in their lives that made them who they are today. I'm still thinking about what I saw tonight, and I'm sure to have much more to say in my Storyteller's Critique, but here are a few of my rambling thoughts (I won't give it all away, because then Jenine wouldn't have any surprises when reading my Assignment 2 paper!):

Howard's story, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Howard," was his coming-of-age story, told in a trilogy format. It began with his 7th-grade year, the bullying he endured by his brother and classmates, and culminated with his moving west at age 22. Through his folksy and comical telling he guided the audience through his adolescence, reminding us (or me, at least) of the often painful trials of that age as well as the ability to later in life look back on those experiences (sometimes) with humor. Howard began his storytelling by coming onto the stage and playing the harmonica to a sort of southern tune. I felt this was a great way to say to the audience, "Okay! I'm here, let me get your attention!" This was also a great segue into the beginning of his piece, as he likened his childhood story to that of Huckleberry Finn...and then went off into a comical tangent about the semantics and usages of the word "huckleberry" (who knew so much could be said there?!). I felt like this was a great way to put the audience at ease, to get us to laugh and relax before he got into the meat of his story. He also used the harmonica as the segue between his 1st and 2nd part of the trilogy...but then used a series of "dirty" limericks put to tune between the 2nd and 3rd parts (which he said were favorites of his family growing up). He got the audience into the game for that last one, as he had us sing the chorus that his family always sang between limericks, "That was a cute little ditty, sing us another one, do." And you know it made the audience laugh to sing along between his naughty ditties (even my conservative 72 year old mother sang along, and that's saying something). I spoke with Howard during the intermission and I asked him how long he had taken to put that story together. He told me that he spent about 6 months on the 3 parts individually and about 1 month putting them all together. Interestingly, he said that he just added the harmonica-segue part two days ago!

Sacre's performance, while also a story from his personal life, was profoundly different from Howard's. I can't emphasize enough how completely blown away I was by what I saw from him (and as I learned from the program, he is the 2-time Best in Festival winner at the NY International Fringe Festival, which apparently is quite an honor). Sacre's story, "Burning Feathers" is basically his recounting of his great love, and the aftermath of the demise of that relationship. His story was intertwined with myth and poetry in a most powerful way, and while the audience laughed through much of his story, there was a heavy bittersweet tone to the whole thing. Sacre has an ear for the language and speech patterns of a wide variety of peoples, and I really thought this made his story stronger, as we could "hear" the people he was talking about, in their own voices. This guy "gets" people, and he understands their desires and fears. Pretty powerful stuff. Oh man, if only I could tell a story like that...