Detours
Tellin’ Tales Theatre, a troupe founded by Tekki Lomnicki, uses the art of storytelling to mentor and heal, working with schoolchildren and with disabled performers, both adults and children. But occasionally the group produces shows, among them this showcase for five storytellers. The result offers intermittent pleasures and illustrates the tension between storytelling and performance and between the archetypal and the specific.
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The evening’s theme, as the title suggests, is travel, both literal and metaphoric, and the difficulties and revelations it offers. Since storytellers are often inspired by other stories, the role of earlier legends also comes into play: many time-honored devices are present here–dreams, magic objects, growth through loss.
The most “performed” piece is Judith Harding’s Open Sesame, recounting her mid-80s stint as “the mailman” with the touring show Sesame Street Live!, which included a bizarre Thanksgiving performance at the Reagan White House. Harding’s lean dancer’s build and mobile face get a huge workout, but she hasn’t fulfilled the storyteller’s first function: deciding what her story is. Is it the gap between the upbeat kiddie-show culture and the hardships of a character actor? If so, David Sedaris covered the same territory much more successfully and succinctly in The Santaland Diaries. Harding has all the performance moves down, but she doesn’t know how to go from solipsistic musings to something more universal.
