American storytelling has a problem and it needs your help to fix it

From its inception, theatre was not separate from the church or places of worship. Theatre was and has as always been one person telling a story. All the other bells and whistles are something we added later like adding extra toppings on a sundae. Does it taste good? Maybe, but more than likely it just ends up being an excuse to spend more money. A good story doesn’t need the bells and whistles. As a matter of fact, they often distract from the wonder, clarity and urgency of a story.

StoryTelling answers all the questions we’re too afraid to say out loud. The questions that elude us while also punishing our ignorance.

You don’t need a $60 million dollar loan for a building to get those answers, What you need is a generation of master storytellers. StoryTellers who tell difficult truths that lead to the kind of problem solving we so desperately need right now.

And quite frankly, in a country without affordable healthcare, housing and education, that kind of spending is in really poor taste. Imagine stepping over homeless families in your gown en route to see a play or movie opening in a huge, barely filled theatre. That is the current state of the theatre.

Yet, the American theatre has spent decades telling stories that have nothing to do with the people in the communities that they serve or their lived experiences. And even more egregiously, it chides, ignores, starves and condescends to the StoryTellers doing the heavy work of changing the world.

For example, the biggest kept secret is that theatre donors will shell out millions for a building and pay its artists, $400 per week. You heard me….that’s real.

It’s why Yale and Juilliard have gone tuition free because without that necessary focus on creating our next generation of playwrights, memoirists, screenwriters, we’ll be watching reality TV and then playing that out in public discourse as if that’s news. And no one will be reading, writing and critically thinking.

Oh, wait a minute, we’re already there…hence my urgency and concern.

When did storytelling become about buildings instead of well crafted stories and supporting the people who write them?

As a result, it’s become a tradition that most professional American theaters spend decades at a huge deficit because they continue to make work that cannot compete with sports arenas and musicians.

So, instead of turning course and changing the how and what of the stories they tell, what do they do?

These theatres hire bright, super talented, experienced artistic directors of color and then undercut all of their power.

Remember, these theatres are in millions of dollars of debt, right. Arena Stage alone has been carrying a $60 million dollar loan taken out in 2018 (to cover the previous decades of debt) and was re-negotiating how to pay that back by the end of 2023. At the same time they brought in a new AD of color.

Did no one inform the new AD that desperate financial measures were needed to be enacted?

Did they give a timeline for recoupment?

Or did the board simply expect the new AD to come up with a plan to pay off the debt in 3 years?

Because that’s how long the board gave Hana S. Sharif to try to make sense of Arena Stage’s historical debt.

Sorry, that’s crazy.

Between 2020-2026, major American Theatres have been virtue signaling their inclusivity while undermining the very leaders they hired in an effort to find scapegoats to hide decades of poor financial management.

Because as soon as those artistic directors successfully began bringing down the debt (that their tenure did not incur) by scoring record breaking ticket sales, producing new work that creates new audiences; they are forced out of their jobs for doing the very thing they were hired to do.

These Artistic Directors of color were hired and fired within 3 years while most AD’s hold those positions for decades:

Long Wharf Theatre AD, Jacob Padrón

Arena Stage AD, Hana S. Sharif

Baltimore Center Stage AD, Stephanie Ybarra

Oregon Shakespeare Festival AD, Nataki Garrett

3 years later, they are all gone.

Why?

Because they started telling stories people actually wanted to see and making money doing it. But the audience was not white or male enough for the theatre’s taste.

TV/Film storytelling has followed a similar trend. It’s gotten so expensive to tell a story on film, that producers are hiring AI to do it instead of master storytellers. Sit with that. Corporations are deciding what stories should be told and basing those decisions on their bottom line.

Meanwhile the Los Angeles wild fires are burning through suburbs like it’s normal while they water AI Data centers in desert cities that are slowly burning to the ground. They make movies about our self destruction ad nauseum while dispensing with hiring human beings, in favor of AI. Those corporations will become virtual and their CEOs will move to their luxurious compounds in New Zealand while the world burns.

Book publishing has taken an equally inane path. Everyone and I mean everyone, loves The Alchemist because it is the simple story of a boy on the hero’s journey to make something of his life. It’s compelling and could happen anywhere: in a house, a backyard, in a field. What drives the story is the weight of its imagination, the huge emotional stakes and the hero’s need for meaning and purpose. Did it make money when it was first published? Not a dime. It took decades for it to become the global phenom it is today. There were no rich people getting richer in The Alchemist. It was the story of every man, woman and child on the planet. It brought people together without any bells and whistles. We have been so inundated with rubbish, that we’ve forgotten the power and majesty of the simple craft of storytelling. Yet, at the same time, we so desperately need its wisdom.

This is where we are: desperately searching for stories of basic human decency and connection. All of these forces are working against us. Reality TV, fake news and now AI are destroying the careers and union wages of many of our greatest storytellers. In order to eat, playwrights have left the theatre for TV/Film where they are faced with AI as their competitors. We need a StoryTelling movement before the craft of the storytelling disappears.

This problem is endemic of a much larger trend.

The very moment we need weavers of pain into light, those weavers have left the building destroyed by all the forces at work who cannot make a buck from simple, masterful storytelling. Audiences have abandoned traditional storytelling in favor of storytelling that reflects the unprecedented times in which we are living. The most exciting soul nourishing work with huge audiences is happening in some of the most unlikely places because we’re hungry for the kind of stories that make us want to fix all that’s gone wrong.

So where are these unlikely places? And what happens to people in a climate hostile to truth and light, empathy and compassion, complexity and the fullness of the human condition?

Enter the StoryTelling Circle

A lo-fi, organic way to learn how to start, finish and structure your story.

• This is where we fill in the gap left by the world of storytelling that refused to move into the 21st Century.
• The StoryTelling Circle kicks Writers’ block’s ass
• It helps you find the time to write and monetize your stories
• The StoryTelling Circle is where you get your mojo back, where you get unstuck and begin rewriting the story of you
• This is where people who have never written anything leave with stories at the end of a 3 hour class.
• The StoryTelling Circle is where we celebrate instead of doom scrolling
• This is where we throw away concerns about what it should look like and focus on weaving pain into light.
• This is where we write the stories we want to read and see.
• And when you commit to the process with your whole soul, you’ll find a way to save time, tell your story and make a living doing it.

How does the StoryTelling Circle work?

The work we do in the StoryTelling Circle takes a unique form. It begins with deep connective writing followed by recurring themes from your Dream Jar. Stories are then transcribed with the breath and the way in which the words were spoken written down like poetry. It’s the key to generating story in a clear, succinct story structure.

It is an intuitive and organic StoryTelling technique that uses your lived experience and the emotional stakes that come from telling a story to an engaged, safe audience.

This story was taken directly from the recordings that Susan made in class. It wasn’t edited or changed in any way. The story poured out of her effortlessly. All of the work we do beforehand over a series of weeks in the StoryTelling Circle allows the story to percolate in exercises, journals until we’ve created a set of recurring emotional chords that trigger the story falling from your heart to the page effortlessly.

Why telling your story is necessary

Stories are where we learn to empathize and create more compassion in a world that has become violent and every interaction transactional.

We have a lot of problems that need to be solved. Telling stories is how we reimagine what is possible . When there are no new stories, we focus on fear instead of possibility.

Telling our stories forces us to face our fears and turn them into problems with solutions, if only we’d stop and listen to the story that wants to be told instead of the story that arises from fear and desperation.

Stories unite us in purpose. Every great leader has led by telling stories of hope and triumph over impossible odds. That is the power of storytelling.

In my decades of teaching, I have met writers in classrooms, retreats, private parties, private coaching in theatre workshop and if they finish, it’s because they write as if their lives depended on it.

I light a candle on my altar for a writer who was dying of cancer who wrote the most magical stories of wonder and hope. She wrote about crafting and quilting like it was the stuff of life. She is gone now, but her light has illuminated my darkness again and again.

I’ve taught women writers who had lost their parents and were reckoning with the intergenerational trauma that was never healed. Women who were adrift in their grief, guilt and viscerally cognizant of their own mortality using writing to find their way back.

I’ve taught immigrant writers who watched the country of their birth being destroyed by their new country tell their stories to make sense of it and continue the fight for humanity to win over war.

I taught an amazing writer who had written a book and didn’t know it. But the act of writing the book in a supportive storytelling circle helped her realize just how much she had accomplished and where she was settling.

The act of writing gave her the courage to leave her abusive employer, travel and start to make a living from her writing.

I’ve created spaces for women to tell stories in the privacy of warm homes with homemade chai tea, candles and savory soups on the stove.

Women bring photos of people who transformed their lives, a doll that kept childhood nightmares at bay, grandmothers still tending their peanut farms on their 100th birthday.

The stories I’ve borne witness to changed me, changed how I move through the world and gave me the kind of hope that heals. And the telling of the stories themselves changed these women.

I’ve hosted writers in my harlem loft with a third floor outdoor deck.

I’ve hosted writers in my Moroccan Riad with a second floor balcony of cascading flowering vines.

I’ve taught writing workshops in a beautiful castle in Lausanne. (yeah, epic)

I’ve hosted writers on the cliffs of the Oaxacan coast overlooking a magically turbulent sea.

Every single one of these clients came to me when they were stuck

Stuck in their lives

Feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated

Feeling lost in the choices made to please others

And they needed a way out.

Well, the way out is writing.

Each of these mid-life women had an idea

They always wanted to write but didn’t know where to start or how to organize it

They don’t have time

They don’t have money

They think they’re too old

They’ve never written a memoir before

Well, guess what: most people who write memoirs have never written a memoir before.

Well, guess what? A memoir is nothing more than a well written story.

Guess what else?

If you’re lost, writing down the story of how you got here becomes a roadmap for where you want to go next.

It’s one of the most clarifying, cleansing things you can do for yourself.

Because it’s active. It’s owning your story without apology or permission. And at the end you have a concrete symbol of who you are.

Why do you think Eat, Pray, Love was such a success?

Because who hasn’t dreamed of chucking in all the stress of being overworked and underpaid in a life that looks nothing like the one you imagined.

A life that was never your dream and one you feel powerless to change.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love showed us what’s possible when you run out of gas and f*cks.

Her story gave us visual proof that the life we’re living is not the only path open to us.

Without an example or role model, many of us would have given up on our dreams a long time ago.

But here’s the thing, you deserve all the things you dream. Because you wouldn’t imagine them, if they were impossible. You just need someone to show you the way.

That’s how Telling your Story Transforms your life. The act of writing the story is a form of meditation where you reflect on the paths taken and untaken. And when you write it down, you make it real for your self and everyone else.

Hell, I ran off to live in Morocco for 3 years, not to find myself, but rather to remember who I was and what I dreamed of as a little six year old girl. I wanted sumptuous, robes, handcrafted silver jewelry adorning my wrists, drinking tea in the Sahara served by a gorgeous baby brown Jesus in blue robes.

Because that’s what I saw in a coffee table book when I was six and was completely sold on the idea.

I knew I had to live that out loud.

So, I packed a suitcase a duffle, my dreams and got on a plane. Because I had been writing this story down in my journals for years, when I arrived, everything was easy. A beautiful home, wonderful friends, adventures in the mountains and sea came easily because I had written down the bones of the story. And that act made it something real and possible for me. Telling your story takes you from hectic daydream to concrete strategies that come from the pages of the story you write.

So, that is where I always begin in my writing classes. Writing down the things we dream about, but have yet to figure out a way to manifest. Ultimately you use all that you’ve already accomplished to write a new future.

Telling your story is the power of foresight in action. It’s powered by hindsight that dares you to write about the path not taken. Let’s take that ride together.

Telling your story forces you to reconcile your life with your dreams and course correct. What you cannot imagine, you cannot create. That’s how storytelling transforms your life: it shows you how much you’ve grown and accomplished, and makes you aware of all the places where you’re accepting fear instead of possibility.