Sheela Clary

By way of introduction on the first day of my storytelling class last winter, Joan informed us that she had been dragged to the class by her friends Jane and Tes, and was not to be considered for any public events. In fact, she may not be participating much in class, even. She was simply at a stage in her life where, as she put it, she'd just moved to South Berkshire county and was "trying to fill my dance card." Tagging along for an affordable class in the middle of the day with her good friends was "a no brainer." After raising five kids she was in a new phase of life, and was open trying new things. But public speaking was a bridge too far, and she was content to mostly listen.

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"Sure thing," I said, arms up in a surrender stance. No pressure from me. I had no reason not to believe her. She sounded convinced and convincing.

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Our class was a bit of an experiment. I'd been running live storytelling events on and off for eight years, and I'd just reinvigorated them after a long, sad Covid hiatus. Stories were exactly what was called for. Simply the act of coming together in one room felt remarkable; the act of in-person listening? Downright magical.

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I was eager to share what I was learning anew about the ingredients of a good story, and about how a story told well, with guts and vulnerability, bonds people to one another. But the class was not a lecture, and everyone was on their feet straight away. The first exercise was to take turns painting a story portrait -- in two minutes-- of someone in our lives. It could be a central figure, such as a parent or grandparent, or someone we'd met only fleetingly but who made an impression for one reason or another.

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Joan looked skeptical, but when it came to her turn, she stood up, and told us about her Aunt Ann. When she was done, she paused, and looked around the room, surprised. "Don't know where that came from!" she said, laughing. The best kind of story, in other words. One that's nowhere in your conscious mind, but is sparked by just a word or suggestion. I love stories that don't know where they came from.

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Those two minutes opened something up for Joan, and she went on to share lots of stories with us over the course of our six-week class. She told stories of her Syrian childhood, of her big family, of the mystical birth of her second daughter, of studying macrobiotic cooking. But all that was in the private confines of our classroom. She was still quite adamant that a public event was a bridge too far. As she put it to me afterward, "I had respect for the concept of storytelling. The performance of storytelling was out of my comfort zone."

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Our class ended on March 15, and the next event on my schedule was to be held on the following Saturday.

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"Who wants to join the line-up?" I'd asked the week before. A few students had been easy yesses all along, but Joan, of course, was not among them. Now, though, I could she was wavering. I could see fear, but also possibility, in her eyes. In the end, cajoling was involved, successful cajoling, because Joan is a good person, and I told her I needed her. (When one is setting up a live show that depends on eight people showing up, and some of those people get sick, or get cold feet, you are left scrambling to fill their shoes.)

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And this is the story of how the never-performer Joan joined the line-up on March 18th, and before an audience of the fifty people who'd cozily gathered at the Center for Peace through Culture told a rich, evocative about the foods and traditions of her Syrian childhood in New Jersey.

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"How did you go from a no to a yes, Joan?" I asked her, much later.

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In the class setting, she said, "You immediately become vulnerable, and nobody there was really comfortable." This is it. Nobody was comfortable, which makes everybody vulnerable, and so ipso facto sympathetic to everyone else's discomfort and vulnerability. It is a beautiful thing.

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