World Theatre Day Blog

This article is reprinted in full, with permission from the authour, from 2am Theatre.

Odds are the first four words ever spo­ken were “tell me a story.” And the next four? “Once upon a time…” It’s why we have cave paint­ings, sculp­ture, the­atre, film, tele­vi­sion both scripted and “real.” Every­thing in our world is crafted to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing, whether mem­ory or infor­ma­tion, asso­ci­a­tion or emo­tion. Everything–and everyone–has a story.

As the­atre artists, no mat­ter our dis­ci­pline or tech­nique, we find, cre­ate and tell sto­ries to our audi­ences. What if we let them have a turn? Would that lead to a stronger bond, a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of what we all do? Could it let them get a glimpse behind the cur­tain, a look at the “process” to see how it’s done?

That’s the idea–and the meta-idea–behind 360.

What is 360?

A gath­er­ing, much like this, but with­out com­put­ers, iPhones, what-have-you. And you all tell sto­ries. It’s just that sim­ple, really.
Why 360?

Your story can start any­where, go any­where. It may be a mem­ory, some­thing you’ve done, some­place you’ve gone. You have six min­utes–or 360 sec­onds–to bring your story full cir­cle. The time limit helps to keep you focused, and also helps to keep the event moving.
All you need is a space and a timer.

Let the peo­ple know, see who shows up. We’ll even pro­vide the logo and other images you might need for sig­nage, mail­ing lists, posters, etc. The license is free–all we ask is that you credit it back to us here at 2amtheatre.com.

Unlike the Moth and other sto­ry­telling con­cepts, this can be as for­mal or infor­mal as you like. It can be made up of invited sto­ry­tellers or open to any­one in the crowd. If you want to guar­an­tee a theme, you might invite a few peo­ple and give them a prompt before­hand, but then open it up and see what their sto­ries inspire from the crowd. You want to stand, sit, doesn’t mat­ter, what­ever feels right.
What kind of space?

Any space will do. Any the­atre at any size can set up a 360. If you’re Actors The­atre of Louisville, do it in the mez­za­nine. If you’re River­run The­atre, you do it in a book­store that’s one of your sponsors.

You could move from spon­sor to spon­sor, bring­ing peo­ple into a cof­fee shop one month, a win­ery the next, a book­store or library the next. Now, you’re doing some­thing even more con­crete than adver­tis­ing their busi­ness, you’re bring­ing actual peo­ple into that business.
Was it dif­fi­cult to set up?

Not at all. The idea’s been per­co­lat­ing for some time, but once we decided to do it, I just walked in to our book­store spon­sor, asked if we could do it. Then, a Face­book event page. A word on Twit­ter, a note here and there. I did not send a mail­ing, I did not go to the radio or the news­pa­per, I didn’t even put it up on our web­site. This was as under-the-radar as it gets. And then, one week later, I walked in the store with fif­teen min­utes to spare and we did this thing.

You can do it that quickly and eas­ily, too. I know you can.
The idea is not the pol­ished, prac­ticed story.

That’s for the Moth and oth­ers. This is not a com­pe­ti­tion, this is not a show. If the sto­ries are pol­ished and prac­ticed, that’s icing on the cake. This is mainly to engage your audi­ence, your com­mu­nity. It’s a way to share with them the joy of craft­ing and telling a clear and enter­tain­ing story. And it really works.
The pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless.

Maybe you archive sto­ries, record them, share them on your web­site. You become a de facto Story Corps for your neigh­bor­hood, city, etc. Maybe you craft a larger work–I’m sorry, maybe you “devise” a work–based on some sto­ries for a wider audi­ence. Maybe you host poetry edi­tions in April for National Poetry Month.

Eric Ziegen­hagen posted a link over on Twit­ter the other day, which was an idea every inde­pen­dent book­store should steal. (He’s right, by the way, in case any inde­pen­dent book­stores are read­ing this.) 360 is very much the same idea, only with your own sto­ries instead of books.

I hosted the very first 360 this past week­end as a River­run The­atre event at the Vil­lage Lights Book­store in Madi­son, Indi­ana. We kept it low-key, wanted to see who would show up. I com­pared it to a restau­rant hav­ing a soft open­ing. (Eric Z. ought to like that anal­ogy.) What amazed me was not that it worked–though it did–or that peo­ple came–though they did–but how the evening played out…
Light­ning in a bottle.

We had a small group, quiet at first, wait­ing and won­der­ing how the con­cept worked. (This was all right, the book­store is small, very inti­mate.) I started the evening off with a story to show how it was done, fin­ished with sec­onds to spare.

Once the ice was bro­ken, the sto­ries flowed.

As the time­keeper and host, I would wave at the speaker at the three minute mark and then again at the one minute mark.

For a timer, I used my iPhone. When it counted down to zero, it would play Take Five by Dave Brubeck. The book­store owner loved that; Brubeck’s on their speak­ers most of the time. You could use a stop­watch and a bell. Any­thing will work.

No one ran over­time, although we do plan for that–if you’re in the mid­dle of a thought, fin­ish the thought. If you’re nowhere near fin­ish­ing your story, if there’s time, we’d have an “over­time” list for peo­ple to come back up and fin­ish in three min­utes. But that wasn’t an issue this time around.

What did sur­prise me, and what’s per­fectly log­i­cal in ret­ro­spect, is that one story trig­gered another and on through the event. The con­nec­tions weren’t so obvi­ous as if it were a planned, themed set of sto­ries, but there were clear themes and through-lines from one story to the next. None of us really knew one another, we’ve all led very dif­fer­ent lives, but all of the sto­ries con­nected and res­onated. And that res­o­nance was excit­ing, because it wasn’t scripted, it wasn’t pro­scribed or planned. It just happened.

It was the joy of cre­at­ing a larger patch­work of sto­ries, shared with every­one in the room.

By the end of the event, every­one was wired, buzzing, talk­ing, chat­ting, shar­ing more and more. They had seen what we do, if only on a small scale. It wasn’t like watch­ing a lec­ture or an open rehearsal, it was participation.

They didn’t get a look at the process. They were the process.

They had seen how excit­ing it is to be in the room with the story being told. They had seen how dif­fer­ent it was from the fourth wall of tele­vi­sion or film. And those who had never come to a River­run show–those who only came because they’re book­store patrons or hap­pened upon the list­ing and were curious–they’re com­ing to our next show. Some didn’t even know we were doing live the­atre in town–now they’re on our mail­ing list.

Some had never been to live the­atre. Now, they want to come.
So what have we learned?

This is a fun, easy way to con­nect with and develop your audience.

It’s a great way to sup­port and engage your spon­sors and bring some of your magic–and patrons–through their doors.

You can set it up and pro­duce it at the drop of hat. The only real cost to you is the hat.

All you need is a space, a sign, a timer and some­one to act as a host.

Want to do it? Go right ahead.

Very soon, we’ll be set­ting up a sep­a­rate sec­tion of the site to host 360 infor­ma­tion, news, sto­ries, etc. If you want to record any sto­ries either as audio or video and upload them to YouTube, Vimeo or another video site, we’ll hap­pily embed them here as part of the 360 website.

This will also be where you can go for pro­mo­tional lan­guage, logos, images and more for mail­ings and PR purposes.

As I said, the license is free–see the Cre­ative Com­mons license below for details.

And you know, this would be an excel­lent instant event to pro­duce for World The­atre Day on March 27th…