How Story Jam Began...

It's the 20th century and there are a handful of would-be mavericks in Dwight Conquergood's "Performance of Nonfiction" class.

All of the other theatre majors have stuck to the classics, the comedy, the Sondheim...but we unwitting few arrive from either of two departure points: 1. We didn't get into the class we really wanted; or 2. Some savvy advisor has plopped us in here to rock our worlds.

As the title suggests, we in class are charged with bringing nonfiction pieces of literature to life through the art of theatrical performance.

There is a rumor that some cheeky Yale undergrads have produced a 24-hour play in which a free-flowing audience watches them live their lives. They eat lunch, nap, get naked, talk on the phone...and we Northwesterners find this astounding. Charging people money to watch amateur actors use the loo and eat cereal! It's the most ridiculous fucking brilliant stupidest thing we've ever heard.

But Dwight has seen all of that "theatrically brave" nonsense before, and he implores us to dig deeper. Our final exam is a 40-minute autobiographical performance of someone, anyone, who has been in the public eye, using only printed material spoken by our subjects and fashioned as a narrative. Sarah H. does Joni Mitchell, Mark B. does Malcolm X. Obsessed with Woody Allen films (this is before the whole marrying-the-wife's daughter thing), I choose Annie Hall's luminescent Diane Keaton. The show is in the black box theatre and every seat is full.

It's dear Dwight Conquergood's free-spirited creativity, paired with my documentary filmmaking Dad's influential interest in true storytelling, that sparks my love of nonfiction performance. After scouring the country to find my place in the world of theatre, film, and music, perpetually pretending to be someone I'm not—Marlene Dietrich, Ophelia, Hippy #5...—I now realize why there is a Story Jam. 

When the green room costumes are re-set, when the theatres of America go dark, I hightail it to stages much more homey: the seedy back rooms of Chicago's dive bars.

Nothing feels more natural than standing on a smoke-filled stage with some batch of convention-wouldn't-have-us troubledoers, screeching out the words that I, not Willy S nor Stephen King, wrote. In neighborhoods nice girls never dare go.

It takes time to become more Hynde than Hamlet, more Lauper than Liza. To realize that I pine for performance fully implanted in the reality of realness.

Like, decades. 

So it's 2014 and I'm earning myself a respectable artist wage, working weekends with my event band, which is booked up all summer for weddings and fundraisers.

I'm on a gig in a far suburb with a new sound team who wants to prove their prowess and fill the room with massive speakers.

"Hey! This isn't a Def Leppard concert, guys!" I keep shout-announcing.

I ask them to turn down, then they turn back up in a push-pull, my-speakers-are-bigger-than-yours battle that continues all night. I've long given up trying to use in-ears (those are the things you see inside Ariana Grande's ears whenever you accidentally catch her performances on awards shows), because it's hard to connect with the crowd and talk to the clients. The sound is an utter aural clusterfuck. Also, where did my custom ear plugs go?

My poor ears haven't stopped ringing. I eventually have to leave event music altogether, to protect my ears from further damage.

Yet...a life without playing music is a life unlivable.

There's nothing at all like the rawness, the immediacy, the energy, of rocking out with a band. Maybe there's a way to front the band yet protect my sensitive ears, I think.

Live lit is already booming in Chicago. Weekly shows of pub crawl truth-telling. The only thing missing is some kind of musical dovetailing. I sit and watch. Listen. Long for a music break, a melodic interweave to further absorb each story.

Thus, Story Jam is conceived.

I thank whoever sent chocolate (sorry Dwight, chocolate first!), Northwestern's Dwight Conquergood (RIP), pop rock bands, and live lit storytelling (which, seven years ago, came to me as an overwhelming surprise, yet its existence should be no surprise at all, since I knew Spaulding Gray, Elaine Stritch, Lily Tomlin, and a slew of loquacious others—including Chicago's Lifeline Theatre—were doing solo shows, personal "monologues," and nonfiction storytelling long before the modern movement erupted).

If it weren't for all that stuff, and for those fearless bar and black box pioneers who placed their cocktails on the floor, stood up, and bravely walked to the mic to bare their heart-wrenching, hilarious souls, then I fear my creative output would be limited to mind-numbing, Yale-style You Tube shows ("Look...here I am now, arguing my bill with AT&T; now eating kale..."), venomous lettres to Jeff Bezos, or lonely guitar strums (no jazz chords please!).

With a profound love for nonfiction performance, and some (not desperately defunct, but definitely diminished) ears, Story Jam is my new artistic residence.

Sometimes that residence is a cot in a dingy back room, stained in smoke and puke; sometimes it's a bedazzled chorus line of high flying precision kicks. It's full of belly laughs and tears and community and friendship and sweat and chaos and love and blood and incredible joy and endless soldiering on.