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Story Slam semi-finals
Mar. 15th, 2012 10:18 amLast night I told "the cornbread story" at the MassMouth Story Slam semi finals.
For the finals they asked everyone to perform their stories in 4.5 mins instead of 5 like they had in the previous round. Asking for shorter versions of the winning stories seemed odd to me, but in retrospect I think it was a great idea. I sat down with the video of my last telling, trimmed it, tightened it, and practiced it, and I think I ended up with the best telling of that story yet (and I've told this thing I don't know how many times over the last 15ish years). It was one of those performances where everything just came together: I hit all of the beats I'd planned out, didn't stutter on anything, finished with 20 seconds to spare, and best of all the audience was into it, laughing with me the whole way through.
There's a panel of judges, and after every story they announce what the teller's highest score was. The highest and lowest scores are then discarded in calculating the final score, so it's basically a nice affirmative gesture to the speaker that doesn't spoil the final results. I got the only 10/10 of the night, which surprised and pleased me greatly! I hadn't gone into the semi-finals expecting to win, but the reception of my story had me thinking otherwise. There would be four winners out of ten tellers so I had good odds, after all. I was one of the last ones to go up, so it wasn't long before they announced the winners... and I didn't even place.
I'm ok with not winning, really I am, it's just that... it drives me nuts when I give a good performance that seems well-received, so I don't know *why* it doesn't succeed on other levels. M, who does an admirable job of the unenviable task of checking my ego, asked me "is it that hard to believe that they just liked four of the others better than yours?", and I see what she means, but then there's the rub: if you are a performer and your performance isn't the audience's cup of tea, does that count as a flaw in your performance? Sure, the artiste' says "hey, I do this for myself", but while obviously I get something personal out of performing, I call bullshit when people act like they just happen to be doing this thing for themselves on a stage in front of an audience. So, especially in the context of a competition... I get that the fact that I didn't get picked doesn't mean I did badly, and in fact I think I did really well, but for some reason it didn't connect with people, or at least enough* people, and I wish I had a clearer idea of why so I could either tweak things or decide that the things that would need to be changed aren't things I'm willing/able to change, so this must just not be my audience.
Then again, I feel bad for getting this far into this post without saying outright that the people who did win were all great tellers with great stories. One of them is a friend-of-friends who performed at one of the Somervaudeville shows years ago; it was one of the first times in my adult life that I'd seen true-life storytelling done as performance (with the exception of the Henry Rollins stories with which I was obsessed as a teenager), and it planted one of the first seeds of the idea to try it myself. So I really can't feel too bad given the competition, I'm just the kind of person who can't help over-thinking this sort of thing.
On the way out, M and I bought tickets to the finals so we'll be able to see the winners from our semi-finals along with the winners of the other one that will be happening tonight at Club Passim. The finals will be April 11th at the Coolidge Corner theater. It looks like they haven't posted ticket links online yet, so I'll make another post when that happens! ETA Ah, here they are.
In short: C'est la vie. Looking forward to next year. :)
For the finals they asked everyone to perform their stories in 4.5 mins instead of 5 like they had in the previous round. Asking for shorter versions of the winning stories seemed odd to me, but in retrospect I think it was a great idea. I sat down with the video of my last telling, trimmed it, tightened it, and practiced it, and I think I ended up with the best telling of that story yet (and I've told this thing I don't know how many times over the last 15ish years). It was one of those performances where everything just came together: I hit all of the beats I'd planned out, didn't stutter on anything, finished with 20 seconds to spare, and best of all the audience was into it, laughing with me the whole way through.
There's a panel of judges, and after every story they announce what the teller's highest score was. The highest and lowest scores are then discarded in calculating the final score, so it's basically a nice affirmative gesture to the speaker that doesn't spoil the final results. I got the only 10/10 of the night, which surprised and pleased me greatly! I hadn't gone into the semi-finals expecting to win, but the reception of my story had me thinking otherwise. There would be four winners out of ten tellers so I had good odds, after all. I was one of the last ones to go up, so it wasn't long before they announced the winners... and I didn't even place.
I'm ok with not winning, really I am, it's just that... it drives me nuts when I give a good performance that seems well-received, so I don't know *why* it doesn't succeed on other levels. M, who does an admirable job of the unenviable task of checking my ego, asked me "is it that hard to believe that they just liked four of the others better than yours?", and I see what she means, but then there's the rub: if you are a performer and your performance isn't the audience's cup of tea, does that count as a flaw in your performance? Sure, the artiste' says "hey, I do this for myself", but while obviously I get something personal out of performing, I call bullshit when people act like they just happen to be doing this thing for themselves on a stage in front of an audience. So, especially in the context of a competition... I get that the fact that I didn't get picked doesn't mean I did badly, and in fact I think I did really well, but for some reason it didn't connect with people, or at least enough* people, and I wish I had a clearer idea of why so I could either tweak things or decide that the things that would need to be changed aren't things I'm willing/able to change, so this must just not be my audience.
Then again, I feel bad for getting this far into this post without saying outright that the people who did win were all great tellers with great stories. One of them is a friend-of-friends who performed at one of the Somervaudeville shows years ago; it was one of the first times in my adult life that I'd seen true-life storytelling done as performance (with the exception of the Henry Rollins stories with which I was obsessed as a teenager), and it planted one of the first seeds of the idea to try it myself. So I really can't feel too bad given the competition, I'm just the kind of person who can't help over-thinking this sort of thing.
On the way out, M and I bought tickets to the finals so we'll be able to see the winners from our semi-finals along with the winners of the other one that will be happening tonight at Club Passim. The finals will be April 11th at the Coolidge Corner theater. It looks like they haven't posted ticket links online yet, so I'll make another post when that happens! ETA Ah, here they are.
In short: C'est la vie. Looking forward to next year. :)
* = On a side note, someone on Twitter responded to the tweeted version of this news with "You're the rice crispy treats!". I'm ashamed to admit that I completely failed to get that this was a reference to a song from one of my favorite musicals of all time, Title of Show, specifically this song (lyrics): "I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than one hundred people's ninth favorite thing". Sounds a bit sour-grapes in this context, I guess, but I've always loved that sentiment and was glad to be reminded of it. More than one audience member I didn't know came up to me afterward and told me that mine was their favorite story, and obviously I was at least one judge's favorite, so I made a lot of people laugh last night and was nine(ish) people's favorite thing, and that's a fine, fine thing to be.
...still, being one hundred people's favorite thing is a good target to shoot for eventually, right? ;)
...still, being one hundred people's favorite thing is a good target to shoot for eventually, right? ;)
