Started the week (didn’t we all?) watching Avatar in a 3D IMAX theater. Ended the week watching Aurélia’s Oratorio (we all should!) in a small rep theater. Probably the closest I could get to two extremes of storytelling. Made for a lot of thought on how we do this as producers of stories and how much we bring as consumers of stories.
I’d heard the hype on James Cameron’s new movie and was struck by the harsh critique of the storyline. I was more interested in the technology and effects, but found myself paying more attention to the storytelling than I might have had I not heard the criticism. Bottom line: The story is a simple one, and one that we’ve been telling each other for a long, long time. I believe that anything more complicated would have weighed down the story, pulling us away from some of the most telling truths of the film. Using just one visual metaphor — that of light and illumination — the film-maker has captured so much, and tells us so much, about life and truth.
I had not heard one word about the live theater piece I saw nearly one week later. Reading the program as the venue filled to capacity it became clear that I was about to see the latest in a long line of performance pieces spawned from cirque and ancestral to so much modern-day big-top entertainment. And while there were words uttered during the 70-minute show I found those sounds so unnecessary. The colors of the spare set, the simple props told so much of the story. The movements of the performers — just two for the vast majority of the piece — did more to communicate than any dialogue could. The producer of this story certainly had a point-of-view and a story to tell, but the space that was allowed for each of us in the audience to bring our own experience and expectations was such a counterpoint to the tightly scripted and structured tale I’d taken in just days before.
As storytellers we could all take a minute to consider the silent spaces between lines and the import of the audience in filling those spaces for themselves. If what we’re truly trying to accomplish is an experience — a positive and memorable one at that — shouldn’t we be inviting the collaboration of our consumers (the listeners, viewers, users, guests) and creating authentic and available space for them?