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Tips and Programs Laura, the organizer of the festival, and I had communicated
entirely through e-mail and mail. I had agreed that in addition to telling
I would emcee the evening showcase, so I had gotten info from all the
other tellers and crafted short, well-written introductions for each
of them. I don't know if any of you do Medicine Cards, but they
really speak to me. Before I left home I had asked the Medicine Cards
how to handle the festival and drew the Frog card upside-down. How I
interpreted it was that I should not try to solve other people's problems
and that I should take plenty of breaks. I even wrote this advice down. My Friday night ghost story concert with Garth Gilchrist
went beautifully. Saturday morning, 20 minutes before the first show, Laura
told me she thought I'd agreed to be emcee of the WHOLE festival. I
was floored. You know how bookers will sometimes come up with requirements
that they swear you'd agreed to, and you're frantically trying to remember
every phone conversation and written communication to see if you could
have possibly said yes and forgotten about it? It's faint comfort to
go home afterwards, as I did, and find that according to the emails
I'd only agreed to emcee the showcase. I'm sure Laura meant to ask me
about doing the whole festival and thought she had. I told her I remembered no such agreement and wasn't comfortable
taking it on at a moment's notice. But the only other option was for
the very busy Laura to do it, and I hate the sloppy emceeing that as
a teller I've had to endure at many venues...so I ignored my Medicine
Cards and said okay. I kicked into high gear and found water bottles for all
the tellers and talked to them about what else I could say to introduce
them (I wanted to save those beautiful intros for the showcase.) Now
the concerts that I was going to skip or only attend part of so that
I could take a break were suddenly all required attendance for me because
I had to start and finish them as well as introducing every teller. Well, the Medicine Cards were right. By the middle of
the afternoon I had helped find a table for one teller, eaten a hurried
lunch served by a rude waitress, listened far too long to a fan (how
could I not--he said my voice sounded like a female Donald Davis, a
great compliment,) and failed to find the other mike that the one teller
had taken away. Now my leg was aching badly from having stood on it
too long, and I was tired and cranky. As I fixed the mike stand for
one of the tellers, the top segment crashed down, tearing open my hand. That was it--the final straw. My frog was well and truly
upside down now and drowning. I told the two tellers that I would introduce
them, but that they were then on their own, as I had to take care of
my bleeding hand and aching leg. They were gracious and sympathetic. I limped back to my hotel and took a much needed nap,
missing Diane Ferlatte's magnificent workshop which I'd very much wanted
to attend. When I returned to emcee the showcase I was refreshed, but
because of the emcee duties I had felt obliged to spend more time rehearsing
my intros to everyone else than my own stories for that night. 10 minutes before the concert was to start Laura asked
me to tell everyone that we needed to finish on time since the late
night adult concert by Ron Jones needed to begin on time. Talk about
being the bearer of bad news! One teller had already decided on a story
that was 2 minutes longer than the 20 minutes allotted. Another asked
me if she was to stop in the middle of her story when her time was up
and just tell everyone to come back next year to hear the end? Luckily I had planned to tell 2 stories, so I just quietly
deleted one from my mind and told only one 10-minute tale. (This time
I didn't tell the audience I was doing so, as I had at my afternoon
concert, because then they had demanded a second story, and I'd had
to quickly decide on a 7 minute tale rather than my rehearsed 15 minute
one, just to try to stay within the time constraints of a show that
started late.) It worked out beautifully since everyone else had chosen
a single tale to tell, too. I am very glad that I emceed the festival.
I feel that I made the audience welcome, introduced the tellers well,
and made the organizer happy (hey, she writes the check.) It's a wonderful
festival that I would encourage anyone to tell at or attend. Lessons Learned: —posted April 2001 |
Special Features Why I Hate Lady Ragnell Alan Irvine's article and the rebuttal it engendered. Variations on Storycrafting: Thomas the Rymer
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