Hi, I'm Anita Gonzalez, welcome to Storytelling for Social Change.

I'm here today with Priscilla Lindsay who's the chair of the Department of
Theatre and Drama and the School of Music and Theatre and Dance at the University
of
Michigan, and I want to ask her what she thinks about storytelling.
Priscilla, what is storytelling?
>> What is storytelling?
I think storytelling is the relating of an event, true or not true,
to someone else and it's supposed to convey information,
talk about an event or something that's happened.
And it seems to me that it has to have an element of truth in it, so that the
hearer
or the listener has something to sort of glom onto, a reference point,
so that they know that what they're hearing has some relevance for them.
>> Hm.
Well, how do you think storytelling can promote social change?
>> Well, if storytelling is the relating of an event, and
does contain some kernel of truth, and helps to exhibit feelings,
emotions, or anything to do with human condition, then,
in a sense, it's offering up the possibility of change.
And it's saying either, this is how it was, this is how it is,
or this is how it could be.
And by presenting that to a group of people or
to a single person, I think it offers up the possibility for,
not just an interaction between a couple people or
a person in the audience, but a chance to evince or evoke change,
either in a person’s beliefs or in their convictions.
And I think that social change is probably more
communal than involving just one person.
But I also think that if you inspire one person, that person can inspire others.
So I'm not sure it has to happen in any more of a community than two, but
I think it has to be two.
And I think the possibility of social change is always present.
>> Do you think that any of this has anything to do with empathy?
>> I do, I think that's where this kernel of truth comes in.
I think you have to be able to identify
somewhat with the person telling the story.
There has to be an element of trust it seems to me, or
evidence of a shared experience of some kind.
And once you've established that base of some kind of agreement
between two people in the sharing of the story, then I think,
not only is the listening better, but the possibility of change is present.
>> I love that thought of change.
>> [LAUGH] >> How do you use storytelling in
your own work?
>> Well, theatre and drama is all about storytelling.
There isn't a day that goes by that storytelling doesn't happen
in our classes.
It takes different forms.
Of course, the grist of our material,
what we use in our classrooms are plays, theatrical experiences,
speech of all kinds and those are, in essence, stories.
Lots of them are based on action, objective, and
then some kind of resistance to that objective or
to that action, and that's wherein lies the drama, right?
>> Yeah. >> The conflict.
If there's a conflict, then you've got a story, and you've got a hero or
heroin protagonist who actually is trying to get something accomplished,
trying to win or trying to make his or her point, and
you have something or some person who is in opposition to that.
That's the basis.
In our classwork, stories often take the form of physical movement
through either physical improvs, or simply being in a room together in
a group and countering each other in various exercises that we do.
Sometimes on the floor, sometimes just in space, and sometimes without words.
Michael Chekhov, who's one of the most wonderful proponents of inner work and
outer work for the actor, talks a lot about centering yourself and
using the elements of the world, air,
fire, water and how those are manifested not only in ourselves but around us.
And those are the beginnings of creating stories.
>> I love that, the way that storytelling can also be inside the body itself.
>> Yeah. >> It's not just the words.
>> That's right.
>> A lot of times we think of stories as the words, but
it's also the gestures the thoughts the feelings.
So tell me a little bit about how you use social change, how you
use the stories that you create and the work that you do to promote social change.
>> Probably now more than ever, I feel the weight
of social change in the work that we do.
I think maybe things go through cycles or
maybe we don't listen to playwrights and artists in some
times as much as we listen to them now and as much as we need to hear them.
We are looking for works of art and
writers who talk about social issues,
not just social justice, anything to do with social change.
It can be in the land of diversity, equity and
inclusion, it can be in the political arena.
It can be an historic story, that needs to be retold in the of today.
So we are constantly looking for those stories and how they reverberate with us.
Because lots of the work that has been done, and since the beginning of time,
needs to be reinterpreted for every generation.
>> That's interesting.
So a story can't really be the same,
a story doesn't resonate the same in each historical time period?
>> That's correct.
Depending on who you are, your growing up,
your community, the political milieu that you espouse and
work in and raise your family in,
all of those things change throughout time.
So my experience growing up, not only is it not like yours, but
it's certainly not like my children's, and yours is not like your children's.
And so when they look with their eyes at even Oedipus at Colonus or
a piece early 20th century American theatre, Clifford Odets.
>> Right. >> Anything to do
with the immigrants coming over.
They're gonna see it a lot differently, than you and I would.
>> That's the beauty, I think, of having those stories that come back to us and
that we can revisit again and again.
>> That's right.
>> I have a couple more questions.
>> Okay.
>> One of them is, do you think that a story is a lie?
When I was a little girl my mom would be like,
hey you're telling a story, as if it was a lie.
How do you reconcile that in this time
that talks about false facts, truth, non-truth?
>> Very interesting.
I have a grandson who is questioning Santa right now and
the story of Santa, Santa Claus, and whether that's relevant to him.
He wants it to be.
He wants it not to be a lie.
And that's part of it, right?
What's the buy-in?
>> Right.
>> I think a lot of it has to do,
well ,part of it has to do with being a dreamer.
And how much you want to believe what you hear and how much you dare to believe,
at what you're afraid of and what you kinda of pin your hopes on.
And that will color what you consider to be the truth or
a lie, because I think for different people, truths,
truisms, lies, hold different meanings and hold different weight, right?
So what is true for you does not necessarily have to be true for me.
So I think it's [LAUGH].
I think to say something's a lie, I think you are in deep water.
You are treading because there are very few things that are true for everybody.
>> In an earlier section, I was talking about storytelling as originating
with people sitting around the fire telling stories to one another.
How is that relevant to the arts today?
>> I think it's very relevant.
I love the image of a campfire and people gathered around to share stories.
And one of the stories that is particularly
resonating for me, one of my former artistic directors, Tom Haas,
used to tell us that we, the artists, are around this campfire.
And that the playwright, the director, the actor,
is sent out ahead to look over the next ridge, the next mountain
to see what's ahead of us, what might happen the next day or what might happen
in the near future, and then come back and report to the people around the
campfire.
And then of course, there's a buzz and
everybody has to discuss what it is that they saw and what might happen.
And so artists have, often, that vision.
They can sense where we might be going, and it behooves us to listen to them.
>> We talk a little bit in this course about how much people want to hold onto
belief systems, and whether or not a story can be a way of intervening
in seeing someone else's belief system, even if just for a moment or
two, instead of having to hold onto the one that you're so tightly attached to.
>> Mm-hm. >> You being the royal you.
>> Absolutely, certainly in the Bible they have parables,
parables are stories that have been stripped of, for the most part,
stripped down to the basic minimum of a person's reaction to something else.
It's about kindness or sharing, I can't think
of some good words here to describe parables,
but they're examples of behavior.
And some of them are more universal than others.
I think universality has something to do with what you're talking about.
That if the story is simple enough and if the roots are human,
then you are gonna have more of a buy-in from the people listening.
I think it's a really interesting point, what do we react to on
television when we see a report about a country we know nothing about?
But we see a woman crying, holding a baby.
>> Right. >> And we know there's a disaster,
and there's been distress.
There's a story that we can relate to.
>> Right.
>> Without going too much deeper, we don't need too many other facts.
>> [LAUGH] No, we don't.
>> And it does tell a story.
I think you could start with something like that.
You could start with something basic.
I'm going off track here, but
everyday I drive on Plymouth past the mosque on Plymouth Road and
there's a sign that said, Wednesdays, every Wednesday at 7:00 Muslim 101.
>> [LAUGH] >> And I want to go.
>> Yes.
>> What keeps me?
Probably my schedule, but also a little bit of a fear that if I go I'm gonna be
different, and that I'm not gonna hear the story as cleanly,
because I'm gonna feel slightly other.
And I think that's part of what you're talking about in a classroom.
Who's the other, and who isn't, and how do you create a situation where everybody
feels equally invested in what the story's actually about.
>> And I think it starts with that moment of first encounter.
I wanna know a little bit about the story you're gonna share with us today.
I know that you're gonna do a little performance for us and what it is and
why you chose it.
>> I went right to it when you asked for a story that talked about beliefs.
Part of it is Grapes of Wrath, the play by Frank Galati,
based on the novel by John Steinbeck, was a really seminal,
important production that I was in years ago.
It's never left me.
It's the story of American, really,
immigrants who started out in Oklahoma and because of the dust bowl lost their
crops
and everything in the 30s and had to trek to California to find another life.
And they were rejected all the way along the way, including when they get
to California, and for a full generation of people was really lost.
And their story is not unlike the immigrant stories today,
so I think it resonates that way.
And they certainly faced disaster and
all kinds of perils in their journey and
were considered others in their own country.
So that appealed to me.
The two little sections I've chosen are at the end of the play.
Tom Joad has been in a fight and
his best buddy and hero, preacher Jim Casey,
has been killed by vigilantes and he's on the run.
And he manages late at night to meet his mom, once more, before he splits.
And she knows that she'll never see him again and so they have a little talk.
And then the play goes right on cuz it's relentless, so is the book.
She never does see Tom again, but she and Pa, this is Ma Joad,
go off and they end up living in a series of boxcars.
And this next scene almost takes place in an open boxcar, and
Pa has lost all hope for life, but Ma hasn't.
And that's basically it.
>> Thank you, I'm looking forward to hearing it.