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| Judith Black |
Editor's note: Hey all! I'm pleased to introduce our latest blog series: Featured Storyteller. Check in with us every 1st and 3rd Monday for interviews with awesome new tellers and fan favorites alike!
We're always open to recommendations, so please feel free to send us an e-mail or post a comment below with suggestions of who to profile!
Interview with Judith Black -- Storyteller and Winner of the 2010 Big Mouth Off
by Cheryl Hamilton
The Four-Minute Gift
Most people associate stopwatches
with sports events, but they can also be important in the arts, especially if
you are a competitor in a massmouth story slam, where literally every word
counts against the clock.
This year at the 2012 “Big Mouth
Off” at the Coolidge Corner Theater, audience members anxiously watched time
disappear on a giant screen behind contestants’ heads like a scoreboard at a
basketball game. Fortunately, no one fouled and nearly everyone delivered a
slam-dunk.
Judith Black, the 2010
winner, reflected recently on how the potential for a time penalty impacted her
presentations when she first discovered massmouth.
“I was used to telling ninety-minute stories that take people along long, winding journeys,” the seasoned
storyteller shares from her home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, “but suddenly with the five-minute limit, I had to learn how to do something new – be succinct.”
In other words, when Judith signed
up for her first story slam in 2010 after previously being a judge, she joined
the ranks of her massmouth friends, who have all wrestled with their
watches to squeeze a rich, compelling story into a tight, entertaining piece.
“When you have five minutes,”
Judith explains, “you really have to figure out quickly what is essential to
your story and what isn’t. It’s really hard work. You have to search through
your own ego and learn to let go of some parts.”
Nonetheless, Judith’s first race
against time proved a success when she placed second at her first massmouth
slam. The theme of the night was “In Like a Lion and Out Like a Lamb.” She
debuted a story that had been in her back pocket about a poignant conversation
with another woman -- also affected by the war -- at an airport in Maine. (LISTEN
HERE).
She admits that after she placed,
she cursed when she found out she would have to shorten her piece again. At the
finals, tellers only have four minutes to inspire the judges. With 20% less
time, a four-minute sprint can make five minutes seem like a marathon.
“All I could think was 'Oh my
god. How am I going to make it shorter?' I had to work my tail off,” Judith
recalls with a laugh -- a good reminder to novice storytellers that even the
professionals panic.
For weeks, she polished and
practiced in front of her friends as the evening of the Big Mouth Off
approached. Every word and gesture and moment of silence was measured in
seconds.
Despite performing for audiences
worldwide, Judith says she arrived at the finals as nervous as anyone.
“I really didn’t think I would
win,” she recalls. “There were so many incredible stories. Plus, mine was
especially serious. I just thought, 'Well, all I can do is my best.' It’s all
anyone can.”
Looking back, Judith is now
grateful for the time limit as she continues to compete in slams across the
country, in addition to delivering longer narratives at conferences and
storytelling events worldwide.
“massmouth introduced me to the a
new platform for storytelling, which I consider a gift. I remember thinking,
‘Wow, this is great stuff.’ The energy and diversity people bring is just
wonderful.”
Her only advice for other tellers
is to “remember to breathe.”
That is, if you have time.
To learn more about Judith, visit
her website: http://www.storiesalive.com
For more videos, visit ours: http://massmouth.ning.com/video
Cheryl Hamilton recently moved to Arlington from Maine and is a guest blogger for massmouth.com. When she is not performing her one woman show, Cheryl works for the Cambridge-based international non-profit RefugePoint, which provides lasting solutions for the most vulnerable refugees in Africa.
www.cherylhamilton.com
2 comments:
"For weeks, she polished and practiced in front of her friends as the evening of the Big Mouth Off approached. Every word and gesture and moment of silence was measured in seconds..."
At the performance Judith's story was so intense and condensed that as the timer of the event, I was SURE I had spaced out and forgotten to set the clock to a count down. Surely we had all been enthralled for more than 4 minutes ? But Judith's work paid off AND her story ended at 3 minutes and 59 seconds. She did not use a 1 second of her 'grace period'.
We often quote Blaise Pascal on the subject of brevity..."I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." Sometimes attributed to Ben Franklin, Mark Twain and even Henty David Thoreau. Here is some background from
Quote Investigator: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
" The first known instance in the English language was a sentence translated from a text written by the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. The French statement appeared in a letter in a collection called “Lettres Provinciales” in the year 1657:
"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
Below is one possible modern day translation of Pascal’s statement. Note that the term “this” refers to the letter itself:
"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."
We have found that there is something very good about the process, whomever may have said it first. All the quotes mentioned at quoteinvestigator.com showed a clear recognition of the work involved and the value of learning to say more, with less.
Thanks to Judith and Cheryl for this fascinating description of the story slam process.
- NAD
Living in Colorado, I am new to the concept of Slams. I have only attended three. But this past spring I was inspired at Northlands to participate in the one-minute anecdotal telling that took place while the judges were conferring. Then just last weekend at Timpanogos, I polished that anecdote into a five minute tale. It worked! I'm hooked!
Colorado is having its first go-round with Slam this month only we're calling it a Slurp -like a Story Slam only Softer. Five minute story; topic of the teller's choice. I'm the emcee and looking forward to an hour filled with great Story!
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