First Iliad Meeting

In June, the Ottawa Storytellers will be hosting The Iliad, produced by 2Women Productions.  We're taking things a bit backward - we did The Odyssey in 2012. But, still, what a journey!

I have to admit that, at some point during the journey of preparing for The Odyssey, I felt I would never undertake something that big again. I've done big shows and cooperative ones - The Kymeras' Bouddica show comes foremost to mind, as well as our recent Evelyn: A Time Travel Love Story. But three or four performers are nothing compared to 18.  Or to twelve hours of telling.

One of the most important steps of preparing for any set is immersing in the story. It's figuring out its quirks and substituting part of our soul with the soul of the story. It's similar to what writers do, except more so, since storytellers have to physically conveny the tale as well as with words.  It's a fabulous but at times draining journey.

Immersing in The Odyssey was tough for me. At heart, it's a story about post-traumatic stress disorder, so it's not an easy topic to tackle. Plus, the language was a barrier.  The epic language isn't the same as the language of the fantastic and I had a steep hill to climb to master that part of the English language. I hadn't struggled with my adopted beloved language in a while, but there I struggled a lot.

We also had to condense the story down so it would work with 18 tellers.  The Odyssey is huge, after all.  We had to cut some stuff, and we had to make sure the same stuff was cut throughout the tale. So it was a lot of work, and with books and cons, it's a lot of work piled on top of a lot of work, all while marching to someone else's drum.

I was excited to tell The Odyssey, but I was also just looking forward to getting it done.

And then the day of the show came and enthusiastic listeners arrived as we were still warming up. And the room darkened and candles danced and we all stood, all 18 tellers, and said (unrehearsed), one after the other, something that the story is...

"I am the black sails."
"I am Ithaca."
"I am a father's heart."

... one after the other, flowing into one another, a perfect performance that could never be repeated. Not in the same way.

Teller after teller then took the stage, taking up the thread of the story.  I cried when Odysseus finally held his family.  I cheered when he killed the suitors.

And I realized that all of that work had made it all the more real. That, in a very small way like Odysseus' own long journey, the longer and more difficult the ride, the better it was in the end.

Then I knew, without a doubt, that I would do this again and again, for as long as I was asked, because I had learned and overcome so much that to say no would be to cheat myself.

So today, in just a few minutes, we're kicking off The Iliad. We've all read Rieu's translation and we're ready to start the work.  Look out, next seven months.  You're going to be a wild ride!

The Odyssey: Coming Home

The final post in a series on the Odyssey storytelling adventure.  I undertook this show hoping to challenge myself and grow as a teller. I was not disappointed, and I learned so much more along the way than I could have even imagined.

Saturday was the culmination of almost a year's worth of preparation, as 18 tellers brought Odysseus home to Ithaca in an epic 12-hour production at Ottawa's National Arts Centre.

All the tellers met more than an hour before the doors opened, to get "in the zone" and prepare ourselves for the journey. Epic listening has its challenges - including numb-butt syndrom - but when you're also telling, there's a whole other level of concentration and engagement that's required. So we needed to get ready.

When the house opened, we were amazed at the fullness of the room.  It wasn't a sold out show, but it was still a full house for a 12-hour show.  And these people were into it.  They stuck it out, from beginning to end, and they brought the energy.

The audience shared the tellers' love for words, imagery, irony and well-placed foreshadowing. We knew we were all in for a treat when they laughed at all the right spots.

At the beginning of the day, in the green room, a few tellers and I were wondering if we'd undertake something this epic again. I mean, it's a lot of work.  You have to study the full text, and then really work your portion down to the golden kernel.  You have to study the language, and then, as a group, decide how the characters will be portrayed, and how their names will be pronounced.  Then all the bits have to go together.  Twelve hours is a long time, of course, but the Odyssey is a much longer text to tell, so many cuts were made.  We had to make sure the text still jived.

And, remember, we were 18, with two artistic directors, Jan Andrews and Jennifer Cayley, guiding our words.  That's a lot of coordination, a lot of time, and a lot of work. Their commitment and enthusiasm was unflinching, which kept us all focused.

I admit that, at the beginning of the day, I wasn't sure I would ever undertake such an extravagant storytelling journey again.  But then, Odysseus kissed the sands of his homeland, the loyal dog Argus died after seeing his master's return, and Penelope embraced her long-longed for husband.  And I knew, right there and then, that I would do this again.

Without a doubt, and without hesitation.  And all of the other tellers agreed.

Because, in the end, we realized that our journey had been long and riddled with both beauty and difficulty and, although we faced no real-life cyclops (thankfully) nor did we ride the sea down to the Halls of Hades (again, a good thing), it had still been riddled with challenges and tested our will and faith.  So when the day was over and Odysseus spent a long, lingering night in Penelope's arms, we felt we had come home, too.

A sweet homecoming after a long journey steals our breath and dulls the difficult memories of the journey, amplifying only the amazement at having done it, survived it, not scaring us away from undertaking the next journey, knowing that, at the end, another homecoming awaits us.

And that the journey, in all of its discoveries and marvels, will have been entirely worth it.

Thanks to everyone who made this journey possible, especially 2 Women Productions and the Ottawa Storytellers.  Thanks to Jan and Jennifer for their vision, and for their belief in all of their tellers.  Thanks to all of the tellers who made the day ripe with possibility and wonder!  


And, most of all, thank you for reminding me that the safest paths are rarely the best paths.

Odyssey: Emotional Echoes

This is a guest post by storyteller Dean Verger. Find out more about Dean.


Dean Verger

One of the best known episodes in the Odyssey is the moment Argus, the aged dog of Odysseus recognises his master after a separation of almost 20 years. This episode somehow triggered the thought that we believe in generational differences: I am different from my mother, my father. This is an attitude that may be as old as the industrial age (look, Dad doesn't even know how to handle a loom!) And yet the underlying emotions have not changed in thousands of years. Think of a loss of a pet in our household these days. Now imagine the pet as a working partner, for that was the role Argus played. He was a hunter, and a respected hunter at that.

I see this powerful and cunning leader of men that is Odysseus. Here he sees the dog he trained himself before he left for war. On the one hand he remembers the strong, swift hunter. And now he must compare that memory to the present aged, uncared for partner. Is it any wonder that Odysseus is overcome with emotion, shedding a tear for his old companion?

Thousands of years apart, and I can experience the empathy and sorrow a warrior and a leader felt through the writings of an old storyteller, an author, that was Homer.

Help bring Odysseus home!

Odyssey: Navigating Choppy Waters

Jennifer Cayley

This is a guest post by Jennifer Cayley, co-artistic director of The Odyssey show. She and Jan Andrews, the other co-artistic director, head up 2 women productions, and they put on awesome shows.  Jennifer is also a well-known Canadian storyteller, and she will be performing in the show.

It seems to me that putting the very divergent notions of blog ( short and now) and Homer’s Odyssey, (long and then), together make a pretty good image for this wondrous and intractable project. It has so many disparate strands. Strands that by June 16 will all be woven together for an exceptionally rich and VERY LONG performance.

So what are some of the disparities? There’s the hero Odysseus himself, so wise and strong and so full of human weakness. There’s the text, ancient Greek told in English; a poem offered in prose. Just bringing this very old work into the modern world is in itself a little contradictory. Sometimes it all seems to be happening so long ago and far away and then suddenly you recognize yourself in one of the characters or see the workings of modern world clearly in how everything is unfolding.

Then there’s the process of bringing the story to life. Sometimes it feels like a slog but suddenly the life of the piece shines through and you feel it in your bones. Then you know why you are doing this. There’s all the time to be spent on work shopping and rehearsing but there’s never enough time to really do all that you want to do. And most exciting of all, there are the eighteen tellers, each one with a particular style and a singular passion, eighteen individuals dedicated to telling just one story.

Being co-artistic director brings more strands to me woven together as Jan and I work out our different perspective on text and performance and even publicity, looking for the best way to support the tellers and make sure there is an audience there to savour and explore this grand story with us.

Help us bring Odysseus home!

Odyssey: Onward to Ithaca

I've been quiet on my blog. But everywhere else, well, I haven't been quiet at all!  I'm doing a blog tour right now, so I'm playing everywhere else on the Internet but here.  My poor blog felt dejected, so I thought I'd invite others to come play on my blog!

I'm one of 18 tellers bringing Odysseus home on June 16th, at the National Arts Centre. It's a huge undertaking, to say the least.  I've already rambled on about some of my thoughts, but I thought I'd invite some of the other tellers to come and chat about their experience. 

Let's kick it off today!  The first post is blatantly stolen (bwa ha) from the National Arts Centre blog (Okay, it was stolen with permission), as drafted by the Ottawa Storytellers' Artistic Director, Caitlyn Paxson.  (And I was quoted on the NAC website!  Woo!)
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Help us bring Odysseus home! Let the NAC Fourth Stage be your ship, and let the Ottawa StoryTellersbe your guide through a world of gods, monsters, and warriors who just want tomake it home from Troy.

On June 16, 2012, Ottawa StoryTellers (OST), a non profitarts organization that presents over one hundred events a year, is undertakingan extraordinary project – a twelve hour performance of the greatest epic inWestern culture – Homer’s Odyssey. As eighteen storytellers at theNational Art Centre’s Fourth Stage weave the tale of the hero’s return from theTrojan War, the audience will be drawn together by the power of Greek myth andtimeless human struggles in love and war. For more information on the show,visit www.ottawastorytellers.ca/odyssey/.

Involving eighteenstorytellers, three directors, and a multitude of resources, a show of thisscope will easily cost more than a small arts organization can handle on itsown, so OST is also embarking on a fundraising campaign of a scale far andbeyond anything it has attempted in the past. Please check out the exciting items we’ve gathered with an eye towardsthe theme of the Odyssey and an epic journey.

Visit www.indiegogo.com/ottawastorytellers to watch our promo video and have a look at all the exciting perks that you can receive!

Why the Odyssey?
Because it is one of the greatest andmost enduring works of literature humanity has ever produced, carrying us backto an ancient time and yet filled with a very contemporary sensibility, helpingus to know still more of who we are. (Jan Andrews, Artistic Director)

In an age when much our entertainment relies on loudexplosions and visual overstimulation, an up-close-and personal narrationof the Odyssey, relying entirely on the spoken word and the inner eye, canwaken portions of the brain that have been numbed andneglected.  (Tom Lips, Storyteller)
3000 years ago, Homer nailed the forces that shape humanlife - family ties, honour, love, loyalty, cunning, fear, sex, wealth, revenge,consequences, religion, death, triumph. No one has ever done it better. (Gail Anglin, Storyteller)

It's got a man-eating one-eyed monster, sanity destroyingsongstresses, and a giant blood bath.  'Nuff said. (Marie Bilodeau,Storyteller)

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I'm posting the video here because it's awesome fun.  Roomy and I were almost sirens in it, but alas, the timing didn't work out.  Ah well.

The Odyssey: Heading off to War

Check out my last post on The Odyssey (Finding my Inner Klingon).

This weekend was a wild, wild ride.  Both Saturday and Sunday were slotted to find the shores of Ithaca in an Odyssey rehearsal.

But, through sheer ill-timing on the universe’s part, it was also the weekend of G-Anime.  I simply loved this con last year and had confirmed that I’d be attending in 2012 right after the 2011 con ended. The organizers, bless their flexible hearts, agreed to slot my panels only in the evenings.  All of my writing panels were to be once again with the awesome Jay Odjick, and the two of us were joined by one of my writing group members, Derek Künsken. The three of us had a ball, if I do say so myself.

The evenings were fun, but the days are what sucked up most of my focus. Jan Andrews and Jennifer Cayley, the artistic directors of this journey, worked with each of us in turn, but we all had to contribute and help with visualization. They worked with us to become more aware of our bodies as tellers, to be mindful of our voice and, I believe most importantly, to really connect with Odysseus. To live his story, with all of its horror, heartbreak and hope.  They pushed us to understand the depths of both the character, in his heroic qualities and dreadful flaws, and the setting, the long journey that took him home.

For this weekend, I worked on the end of book 14.  In this part, Odysseus is back on the shores of Ithaca, posing as a beggar in his swineherd’s hut. He has no cloak, and a cold night sets in. He begins to tell them all a story about being at Troy (as Odysseus’ third-in-command), and of a cold night falling in as they crouched and slept by the frowning walls of Troy. In his telling of this story, Odysseus tricked someone into giving him a cloak, essentially saving him from certain, bitter death. 

The story is not lost on the swineherd, who lends Odysseus a cloak for the cold night. 

There’s always a certain amount of role-playing in any storytelling piece. To tell a piece convincingly, the teller must really put themselves in the story and live, breath and see what their characters go through. I had done this, to a certain extent.  As I told this part, I imagined being Odysseus by the fire, in the hut, recalling his days of glory.  I took on the mantle on an old man thinking back, not of a warrior freezing on the battlefield.

I had missed a step. I was not to become the teller telling of past deeds. I had to skip that middleman, once my scene was set and, instead of staying with Odysseus in the hut, I had to leap further back and join him on the battlefield.

Once I did that, the story came to life. I had reached the battlefield of Troy, and suddenly the horror, the cold and the fear pounded my words into shape.

It drove home a couple of points.  One is that I’d now like to read The Iliad again, for background material.  I haven’t read it in about a decade, so the text is a bit fuzzy around its bloody edges.

The second and perhaps most important realization was that you can never know a text too well. Although The Odyssey is an old tale and a well-known one, with themes that resonate through the ages, it still has layers of depth that deserve discovery and contemplation.  Through each teller’s piece, we began to glimpse at those deeper layers, at motivations and emotions that are not necessarily outright stated by Homer, but that are hinted at, or can at least be interpreted to reach out to a modern audience.

And so to the battlefields of Troy I headed Sunday morning, and honestly, I didn’t like it.  It was bitter cold, frightening, and the rosy fingers of dawn promised to grip the morning with bloodshed.

I didn’t like it one bit. But I can’t imagine those who were there did, either. And so I found Odysseus, and will work at finding him there, again and again.

The Odyssey, an artistic collaboration between 2 Women Productions and the Ottawa Storytellers, will be told at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre on June 16.  Seventeen tellers will work together to weave the story of Odysseus, during a 14-hour show; the longest show ever given at the National Arts Centre.  Plan on joining us for this unique experience. 

The Odyssey: Finding my Inner Klingon

On June 16 2012, eighteen storytellers will gather at the National Arts Centre's Fourth Stage to bring listeners on a journey with Odysseus, from the fall of Troy to the shores of Ithaca.  The show is a collaboration between the Ottawa Storytellers and 2 women productions, and is artistically coordinated by Jan Andrews (one of Canada's most acclaimed storytellers) and Jennifer Cayley (ditto).

I looked at the show as a journey of learning and training. Just as Odysseus made his way home, so too would I make my way somewhere.  Probably not home (unless things go terribly wrong), but art informs art, so skills learned creating this show will be applied to future tellings.

All performers already met once and did some basic exploration of Odysseus' stories, themes, and of our own perceptions.  But the fun didn't really start until last night.

We met, five of us.  Jan and Jennifer, myself, and two other tellers, Ruthanne Edward (a fellow Kymera) and Mary Wiggin (I performed with Mary last year at the Shenkman Centre. We told sci-fi stories accompanied by a theremin.  I know - awesome!)

We were doing some explorative exercises of our own pieces. We started by sitting around a fire and just chatting about the story, what it meant to us, and where we felt Odysseus was emotionally in our pieces. We sipped tea and enjoyed the soothing fire, sitting on comfy chairs, chatting sometimes in whispers about the great journey we would undertake in bringing Odysseus home.

I was all comfortable and cozy when Jennifer suddenly exclaimed "Okay, let's go into the other room."

Now, I don't know if this stems from my upbringing or life experiences, but generally, when someone in authority brings you in the other room, I know it means that you're either in trouble, or things are about to change drastically.

And boy did things change!  It was time to ignite our pieces within us. Mary was up first, shouting her story, whispering her story, evoking the ethereal dawn.  Mary gets to launch Odysseus to certain doom (go, Mary!), so she had to be mad, determined, unwilling to bend to the winds or seas.  Next thing I know, she's pushing forward, Jennifer trying to hold her back, Jan trying to block her, me whooping at her to deck them, Mary grabbing Ruthanne's chair and refusing to be held back or stopped.

Let me make this clear - none of these women are below fifty, so it was even more awesome fun to watch. Spitfires all!

When the "brawl" was over and Mary stepped back in "centre stage," that strength and ferocity informed her telling. Who knew duking it out with the artistic directors could bring such strength to a telling?

I was up next, and I was pretty stoked at this point.  What fun would I have?  Jennifer started by using sublime words that basically meant I was very girly.  Point.  I really, really am.  But Odysseus is not. Also a good point.  Odysseus is like the Klingon of ancient Greece.  I'm totally not that. (Odysseus is totally Klingon-esque.  I researched it!  See?  It's the bathing in blood that gives it away.)

On the topic of Klingons, I'd like to point out that I do have expertise to draw upon. KAG Canada Thought Admiral Korath (right) is my morning bus buddy (he always looks like that, he really does). On the left is General Martok. I've never met him, but I hear he's simply lovely, in a Klingon blood bath kind of way.

So we started off by me going fully girly, telling the story completely from a highly feminine telling. It was great fun.  I was hitting on myself!  It's not everyday one gets to do that.

Next thing I know, I've got Jan and Jennifer pulling on each arm as I take on the male persona, or at least the masculine strength. It worked, too.  It was a shift - my voice came from deeper, my telling was more powerful. Mary sat forward in her chair, as entertained by my exercise as I had been by hers.

Hu.

It'll be interesting to see how I can learn to apply these different ways of visualizing and experiencing story. By the time Odysseus reaches the shores of Ithaca in June, I'm sure my telling will have grown thanks to the wonderful and albeit sometimes strange experiences I'll take away from this show.

Remember - eighteen tellers, twelve hours, one stage, one unforgettable journey.  Don't miss it!