The Story You Didn't Want to Tell
About twenty-five people gathered in the lobby of the Gerding Theater at the Armory in Portland during the lunch hour on Friday for the fourth and last Shop Talk, a special program sponsored by Oregon Humanities and Portland Center Stage. Bust playwright and actress Lauren Weedman and Back Fence PDX coproducer B. Frayn Masters talked about memoir, truth, and fame. Emcee Kelsey Tyler, PCS education and community programs director, asked questions that elicited laughter and careful consideration of what nonfiction means, and what makes a good story.
More than once, the speakers returned to the idea of how we all attempt to control our stories, and how there are often more interesting ones “in the corners of the room.” Masters said that, in the course of researching future programs, she often hears storytellers embark on one story only to allude to a different, more compelling one. An example: a man was describing a dream he had about spiders, during which he mentioned having emigrated from apartheid South Africa at the age of thirteen in the dead of night.
“Oh, that’s not very interesting,” he demurred when Masters pressed him, but he elaborated: His father had been a Jewish physician who surreptitiously saw non-white patients. So as not to not arouse the neighbors’ suspicion, patients had to mow his lawn or do other domestic work. When a friend confided that the police were investigating, the family quietly mailed their belongings to relatives in the United States over a few months. And, one night, they simply left.
“It was definitely more interesting than a dream about spiders,” said Masters.
09 May 2011 | Community New Ideas
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