Storytelling as performance sees a renaissance in New York City

April 7, 2012 10:04 AM

While telling stories is about as old as life itself, storytelling, as a subgenre of comedy and increasingly theater, is relatively new, growing rapidly over the past decade. "To tell the story of such a lecture is like trying to narrate a laugh. Those who heard it enjoyed it, and those who did not cannot conceive of it." Dating back to Mark Twain's speaking engagements in Brooklyn about his travels, the borough has been seen many experiments with oratory as performance. The reviews of Twain's solo appearances on stages across the country described an unpolished, straightforward, highly-personal delivery that aimed to elicit big laughs, and drew capacity crowds wherever he traveled in the US and abroad. Cut to 120 years later, and Twain's unique brand of performance storytelling is still alive and well in Brooklyn, a dozen blocks south of where he first brought the house down. A diverse community of young storytellers has begun to coalesce around various performance spaces in the borough, exploring the boundaries between traditional theather, oratory, stand-up, sketch comedy and improv.
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