About Laura Simms Schedule of Events How to Book Laura for Perf. Stories and Essays Laura's Books & Audios Home Page

 
Thursday morning , Oct. 24, 2001
A visit to PS 19 for storytelling.
11th Street and 1st Avenue, the Lower East Side

TOPIC: A safe space to be scared, knowing "safety factor"

"They wanted to be frightened, to feel the fear that filled them from within, and to be safe;  to let what they were holding deep inside be felt and seen and tasted.  I decided to do it."

I learned something about the covert nature of storytelling at this time. Days before my school visits, a therapist reading the HUNTER'S GAZELLE (a Saudi Arabian tale from the booklet sent by and adapted by Chris Smith, UK) told me it was a terrible story to tell young people because in it they would imagine a child dying. I disagreed. But I recognized in the words of an unexperienced storyteller or teacher, the story could be misunderstood.  That my telling of that story would have a different intention and "saftey factor" than hers, because I saw it differently and took charge of a different quality of the performance that has not so much to do with the text and the content, but how the story is received and taken in through listening.  However, thinking of what story to tell, I decided not to tell that tale in a school so that no one would misunderstand.

I went to tell stories to an auditorium filled with 4th and 5th graders on the lower east side.  Totally  multi colored mulit ethnic audience. The teachers were tired looking. As the kids walked in, they yelled at them, "Be quiet! Be peaceful! Don't we have enough war in the world!"  The kids grew unnaturally quiet. I could feel a rubber band of tension as they took in the words and the sound of her voice, each in their own way. Then suddenly a fight between two girls broke out. I and everyone else actually felt a surge of relief.  the kids stood up to watch. The room became alive. The tension broke like a much wanted sun shower on a hot afternooon.

Two teachers went to pull the girls apart. They were now engaged and alive. It appeared to be chaos, but not really out of control. Everyone was focused on what was going on. Of course, it couldn't be allowed to go further. Any violence or provocation might  escalate into a feast of fighting to relief more kids of the energy that was stifled inside them.

What was evident was that there was so much feeling, so much tension, so much passion and confusion  about how to behave.  I knew their needed to be a creative, positive, transformative expression of that feeling so the kids could contain it without needing to act out or restrain themselves into passivity. All of this came to mind afterward. In the moment, I was at the microphone and said, "Please sit down." Everyone turned and actually listened. I was a stranger, but a stranger who had been introduced moments before. My voice was not strident. The teacher called out to me, "I am going to get these kids out of here." (referring to the fighters who were standing poised like jaguars ready to pounce).  I said, "Please let them stay. It will be all right." Not knowing what else to do really, they all sat down. the two girls seated on opposite sides of a teacher in the last row.

I had been intimidated by the therapist and was going to tell a very conceptual and nonthreatening to teachers story to start. But instead I thought on my feet and told the Morroccan story of The Wild Girl. I knew it had a strong good ending. I knew what the tale was about to the best  I could. So, I told it boldly fully and they all listened to it. In it was power, love, death, fear, healing, journey, anger, facing skeletons, hearing another tale about a drought and a war, listening, a resolution through tears for the main character, and everyone listening further and love and reunion at the end where a king and queen rule equally for the benefit of everyone.

At the end of the story, the kids began to cheer for the King and the Queen. Knowing the power of a story heard is that the story occurs within the listener, I knew they were cheering for the union of masculine and feminine within themselves, now committed to taking care of others and ruling with gentleness because they both understood the truth of death and suffering.

I asked what they wanted next. They all called out "a ghost story!"  "Tell us something scary." I froze. What to tell?  "Do you need to be scared?"  I asked. They called out, "Yes." They wanted to be frightened, to feel the fear that filled them from within, and to be safe; to let what they were holding deep inside be felt and seen and tasted. I decided to do it. If I could choose the right story to help them feel the fear without having to spin out into panic; and, to strengthen their own inner capacity for feeling without reaction or expression, I would have done something useful.

I told The Woodcutter and The Snake, (a retelling of a Korean spirit story I have been telling for over 25 years, which I've recorded on Stories Old as the World, Fresh as the Rain) which I usually tell to younger children. But I told it more boldly, with spooky sounds so they could enjoy the scariness, albeit playful. I also knew the ending and let it happen. They were scared. they loved and laughed at the appearance of the demon snake woman. They responded with far more  apprehension and raw emotion than the story engendered. It gave them permission to feel what  they felt without it being related to the incidents and the aftermath of the WTC tragedy.  It gave them the chance to feel and experience that they could feel the intensity of fear and groundlessness without being destroyed. They learned experientially that they had the ability to contian feelings without  hurting anyhone or getting out of control.

This teaching through story experience, making an inner journey, is indirect. Hence, far more enduring and potent, than having to deal with the loaded information and complexity of the feelings illicited from talk about the actual event. It provides "practice".  Beneath the usual desire to talk about what happened lies the need to develop the muscles to contain contradictory and overwhelming emotions and stay calm. The calm that was engendered was not a stillness of inactivity, but a natural resting of the mind while feeling and expressing a wide variety of feelings at the same time.  It can best be described as what happens when the listener's body and mind are synchronized in the listening, so the imaginative and emotional  esponse and recreation of the story event in each one's mind, can arise from within intuitively. The intellectual mind, the head thinker, or witness, is kept busy with the narrative, and the listening imagining takes place in the most natural and abundant outpouring like a dreamscape. It is grounded and guided,  individual and noninvasive.

At the end of the story, all 400 kids applauded joyfully. I think they again they applauded for the liberation of the two birds, the safety of the main character, the disappearance of the snake demoness. But, they also applauded for their own release and feelings; for being given the chance to open up the hidden closed box of a thousand possible feelingsand get some relief. They were not really cheering for me, although they truly appreciated the storytelling. I walked out with them. They thanked me elegantly.  Somehow the fight had been forgotten and not as relevent as the experience they had just known.

What came to my mind writing about this is that safety lies more  in being able to contain the fullest feelings without having to suppress or act them out. That if we have no muscles of knowing how to feel, then we are unsafe because we have to rely endlessly on ideas of what to do; opinions that set us apart from others, or a fear in the moment of how to be in any situation. To practice to be in relationship to what is actually happening,  rather than what we want to happen, is a kind of self maintaining behaviour.

There are signs all over the city that say "We will rebuild!" It gives me the chills.  Somehow we will never know safety if we rebuild walls and fortresses, missiles and malls, without first feeling the feelings and gaining the fresh insight and emotional knowledge that this tragedy has allowed us to gain. Turning such a terrible disaster into an opportunity makes us  victorious as human beings. We can then mourn whole heartedly, as well as  make new decisions with a settled mind and intelligence, rather than constant reaction and anger which can only be sustained by further reaction and anger. This benefit of storytelling, one activity among many, that can aid in this time, is an inner peace offering.  It is a skillful inner restructuring based on what is inherently within each of us: the capacity to feel compassion, to know the possibility of all extremes and solutions within our own minds. Thus, we are planting seeds within our children for a future where sustainable peace making is at the root of education.
 

The Laura Simms Studio 814 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 Fax 212-982-4469

Top of Page  |  Laura Simms Home Page  |  Laura's Books and Recordings

Copyright 2008  Laura Simms. All rights reserved.