Act Break

Act Break
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As I began working with these stories as part of my graduate thesis, I realized that I had unintentionally divided the stories into three clear groupings that - to my mind - reminded me of a Three Act Play format -

Act 1: The Accident
Act 2: Time in Hospital
Act 3: Home Recovery

I have found this organization useful in how I think about the work.

For that reason, when I perform Who Am I, Again, I have a scripted moment at the end of Act 1 where I take a drink of water.  This action serves two purposes - First - I’m thirsty and want a drink of water

- but -

Second - to give the audience a moment to reflect upon what just happened.  With that in mind, I’m going to take a moment in this entry to share my thoughts on Act 1 as a whole.

The intent of this act is to demonstrate the immediate effect of a brain injury upon lives in a community.  We have recognized this theme several times throughout these reflections, so here, I won’t do more than mention that when a traumatic brain injury occurs, everyone is affected.  With that established, I suggest that, while community members may feel the impact of such a tragedy in different ways, common emotional experiences unite these stories in a shared storyline.  I use the situations presented in “Who Am I, Again?” as a specific example of how this occurs, but I would love to expand my knowledge on the topic by learning your stories - please share in comments.

This sort of shared journey highlights the benefits of storytelling after such a tragedy - by sharing stories with people who have gone through similar journeys, storytellers and listeners are able to recognize common experiences through the journey of recovery - common experiences and emotions can be recognized and appreciated.


There are many books focused on personal stories after brain injury - and I don’t mean to imply that any of these stories are anything less than wonderful - but I believe that the physical performance-action of storytelling does something more than either reading or penning an experience.  Below are three examples of what storytelling adds.


First, storytelling is a dynamic, live experience - each presentation of a story will be altered by the situation.  In an unscripted (yet still prepared) presentation, the storyteller may be moved by unexpected memories that emerged as the events of the story are shared, or words that leak from the tellers mouth may enlighten an unexpected moment.  If the story is scripted (as is “Who Am I, Again?”), the performer may provide a different emphasis to the words, or stumble across a forgotten memory about the experience that emerges through repeated retellings.  These variations can help the storyteller to gain more insights into his or her personal story as well as allow listeners receive new insights from the piece, even if they have heard a story multiple times.

Second, the intention of storytelling is to create a dialogue between the storyteller and the listeners.  This allows for feedback from the audience to inform a storyteller about his or her own story as the experience is shared.  This feedback may come from observing the reactions of the audience during the story or through discussion after the performance - either way, hearing how other people react can help to create a clearer understanding of the events for the audience and the storyteller.  In tandem with the storyteller listening to the audience, a live event provides the audience with an opportunity to share their reactions and perhaps encourage elaboration on a moment that caused confusion.  This form of feedback requires interaction between the audience and the performer - perhaps in a discussion planned after a performance or through informal interaction - but this sort of interaction (formal or informal) is not hard to arrange.

Finally (for this article), because storytelling is a live performance, it inspires a different sort of concentration and attention from listeners - we tend to pay more attention when the performer is directly in front of us.  To draw a parallel, you will almost certainly pay more attention to a live concert than an album you downloaded - you may love the album, but even if you insist on stopping everything else in your life to just sit and listen to the album, there’s a clearly a different sort of attention - one that triggers multiple senses - given to musicians onstage.  Watching a live performance of a story encourages audience members to pay more attention to the details of the work.

These are three things that a storytelling performance will allow that is different than what relating a personal story using other mediums allows.  I do not suggest that storytelling is “better” than books or recordings, just that storytelling provides a set of conditions that allows for different types of introspective exploration by the performer as well as listeners.

When studying for my graduate degree in the Art of Storytelling, it was often said: “We all live the same story, its just the details that are different.”  By sharing stories, we can develop better sense of common themes and the emotional experiences that accompany a recovery, and thereby come to better understand our own details.

Those are my thoughts.  I look forward to reading your thoughts below.