Thursday, March 15, 2007

SpeakEasy - Stories and An

Occasional Cupcake in Park Slope
by Wendy Zarganis

Having never had a job beyond raising four children, Sherry Weaver didn't think she had a story to tell. That is, until six years ago when she attended a NY storytelling event where the theme was sex and money. The producer asked her to get on stage and tell a story...

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September 20, 2006

Private lives, public tales

Jeffrey Borak, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Wednesday, September 20 PITTSFIELD Sherry Weaver had never performed in her life — let alone told a story — until one evening five years ago when she was asked to get up in front of a group of people at a storytelling evening at a New York club and, impromptu, tell a personal story on the theme of sex and money; this from a woman who spent her adult life cooking and raising four children — two sons (one of whom is in a rehab facility in upstate New York) and two daughters, one of whom, Weaver says, is a lesbian Muslim.

"I told the story of Ellis, the man I've lived with for 13 years who won't let me call him my boyfriend. He's a feminist. He's an events planner. He has a summer home in the Berkshires. He's a romantic," Weaver said by telephone from Livingston, N.Y., near her son's rehab center.

"The women in the audience were so taken by Ellis they began chanting 'ELL-IS ELL-IS ELL-IS.'

"I went on after two prostitutes, two dominatrixes and a lawyer. They (the audience) had never heard a story about a woman who simply lived her life, without ever working."

That was in 2001. Weaver has been telling stories ever since and she's been encouraging others to tell their stories as well. She created SpeakEasy, a company of storytellers who tell at Cornelia Street Cafe in the West Village every Tuesday evening, and at Night and Day Restaurant in Brooklyn's funky Park Slope neighborhood — where Weaver and Ellis live — on the third Thursday of every month.

» If you go What: SpeakEasy: Stories from the Back Room

Who: Michaela Murphy, Darlene White, Sherry Weaver. Presented by Friends of the Athenaeum

Where: Berkshire Athenaeum, One Wendell Ave., Pittsfield

When: Tomorrow 7 p.m.

Admission: Free

Additional information: (413) 499-9480; www.speakeasystories.com

Since its inception in March 2005, SpeakEasy has had over 28 shows and put more than 70 storytellers on stage.

Tomorrow evening at 7, SpeakEasy makes its Berkshires debut in a free event at Berkshire Athenaeum, sponsored by Friends of the Athenaeum. Weaver and Speakeasy regulars Michaela Murphy and Pittsfield native Darlene White will be telling tales Joining them will be Larry Schworer, who will be auditioning for a regular slot with SpeakEasy.

The tales are personal tales; often tales of angst and dysfunction, but told, says White, with humor and perspective.

White, who manages Boston Symphony Orchestra's Berkshire County education programs, became attracted to storytelling a few years ago when she saw Michaela Murphy at Mass MoCA.

"I come from a writing background," White said by telephone from her Pittsfield home. "Storytelling is an extension of that.

"(Storytelling) pushes you to a place where you have to have a keen grasp of detail. You have to be cohesive, focused.

"You have to hear it, own it. It's a way of claiming your voice."

White won a Moth Slam — after the famous storytelling group, The Moth, which has appeared twice at Mass MoCA — in New York. She has been heard on WAMC-FM and at the Bitter End and the Roxy in New York.

Weaver says she looks for honesty in the people who tell for SpeakEasy. She doesn't want shtick. She doesn't want stand-up comedy. She doesn't want a performance.

"I have people come into audition and they're beautiful and they're charming ... and they're actresses," Weaver said

White and Weaver agree that the attraction of storytelling for audiences is recognition.

"The more truth you tell," Weaver says, "the more people get it.

"These stories resonate, which is why they're so powerful. I talk about my children's breakdowns and people come up to me afterwards and say how much the stories meant to them, how much they helped.

"One man told me that one night at SpeakEasy was worth 30 visits to his therapist."

It has some of the same effect for the storytellers. White, for example, says she was never accepted by her former in-laws. That dynamic was the stuff of White's story last summer about her wedding. "Once I started telling the story," White said, "I found I could laugh at it all."

The challenge in telling deeply personal stories for a group of strangers is not the fear of exposure.

"You really don't feel like an open wound on stage," White said. "People don't know me. The stories are not written down but they are refined. It's a piece of work.

"The challenge is being able to look at things with a hard eye. You have to edit and you have to get up there (on stage). I'm not a professional, I'm not trained.

"Its about what you're bringing up there on stage. It's all up to you. You have to take charge of the material. And it's always new up there. There is always a certain amount of improv.

"It's just edgy and fun. That's why it captivates me."


(c) 2006 The Berkshire Eagle. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.

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