“Personal Storytelling Bridges the Global Divide, Changing the World 1 Story at a Time” presented in July, 2005 at the 12th International Conference on Learning in Granada, Spain

About the Author(s)
Professor Eric Trules
Lecturer in Theatre
University of Southern California (USC)
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0791
USA
trules@usc.edu
Phone: +213-821-1543; Fax: +213-740-8888

Short Biography: Professor Eric Trules is an award-winning artist-educator who is a full-time Lecturer at USC’s School of Theatre. He was a 2002 American Fulbright Scholar and spent 8 months in Kota Kinabalu, NE Borneo, and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. He is an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award winner, and in over 30 years as a professional artist he has been a modern dancer, actor, clown, screenwriter, theatre & film director, arts festival producer, poet, documentary filmmaker, and solo performer. Professor Trules offers international residencies & workshops in self-expression & creativity.

Personal Storytelling Bridges the Global Divide: Changing the World One Story at a Time

Main Description
We divide our world into nations, cultures, religions, languages; each separating one group from another. We define ourselves by identifying with one group and not with another. Americans: Democrats-Republicans. Iraquis: Sunni-Shiite-Kurd. East Malaysians: Muslim-Chinese-Malay. And so on, throughout the world: Indian-Pakistani, Chinese-Japanese, Protestant-Catholic, Arab-Jew, Christian-Muslim, neighbour hating and fearing neighbour; one group demonising and separating itself from “the other”. Yet we all have one thing in common. We are all human beings - who all yearn for the same comforts, freedoms, gods, friends, security, self-expression, fulfilment, transcendence - as one another.

What is a way we can communicate with each other, break down the barriers between us, feel we have things in common? Stories are the answer. Personal stories - that can be taught in writing & drama classes - in school, in the community. No matter what the language, nationality, political persuasion, or culture, writing & performing personal stories can touch us all.

Professor Eric Trules, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is a 2002 Fulbright Scholar to Malaysia where he taught "Solo Performance" to Chinese, Muslim, & Malay college age students - in English and in their native language. Trules believes that uncovering the personal story within and finding one's own "personal voice" is an

empowering and freeing art form. And that this kind of self expression - connects human beings across cultures. Trules is on a personal “crusade” as an artist-educator to take this storytelling film and theatre monologue work around the world, changing it one story at a time

Short Description
Personal storytelling exposes that part of humanity which is universal. No matter what our language, nationality, or political persuasion, writing & sharing stories touch and connect us all.

Keywords

Arts
Drama
Theatre
Film
Creativity
Self Expression
Creative Writing
Monologue
Solo Performance
Storytelling
International
Bridges
Multi-Culturalism
Performance

Personal Storytelling Bridges the Global Divide: Changing the World One Story at a Time

This is an academic paper written in simple language. It is a paper on the practice of modern day storytelling – in the theatre, on film, and in the classroom. It is a paper on the practice of a particular kind of storytelling – the autobiographical, solo art of storytelling. Having been a practitioner of this art form for over twenty years – as a writer, director, producer, performer, dramaturg, and educator, I am in a unique position to share my knowledge with the 12th Annual International Conference on Learning. And although I have not been the only practitioner of this art form in the professional theatre world, on film, or in academia, I am, to my own knowledge, one of the few people working in the combined forums of theatre, film, and in the university in the field of autobiographical storytelling. As such, this paper will be primarily a report and discussion of my own investigations and experiences in the field, and I will only mention other practitioners in passing as points of reference for the work that I am doing. The “data” presented will not be in the form of clinical analysis, mathematical charts, comparative literature, or theoretical assumptions, but more of an historical and self-analytical report of my own work over the last twenty years. As such, I am hopeful that this paper and my presentation at the Conference in Granada will have some relevance to the field of learning, and in particular to the learning process of self-expression and creativity. I am also hopeful that this paper can and will be a starting and focal point for further discussion and investigation into this valuable work in the world of academia and beyond.

Storytelling, needless to say, goes back to the dawn of mankind. One of the things that distinguishes humans from the “lower” species is his ability to think, conceptualise, remember, write, collect and organize information, and consequently remember, create, and tell stories. Cave drawings, oral histories, ancient tales of the Far East, the first Egyptian cuneiform, the development and evolution of language, the development and evolution of the written word, the Greek and Roman theatre, the tales of King Arthur, Grimm’s Fairie Tales, the printed word, Cervantes and the modern novel, Hans Christian Anderson, books, radio, television, movies, DVDs, video games, modern technology – all these media, histories, & technologies have told stories. There are countless courses and theories on how and why stories are created and told, how they are crafted, and how they are passed on from one generation to the next. Plato’s and Aristophanes’ classic three act story structure is still taught

by Hollywood story and screenplay guru, Robert Mckee. Noted cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell has collected and analysed stories and myths throughout the history and evolution of civilization, finding the commonality of these stories across cultures and millennium.

Historically, there have also been many autobiographical storytellers. Marco Polo, although greatly disbelieved until centuries after his Far Eastern adventures, quickly comes to mind. In our current culture, story tellers and practitioners such as Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill, all American, and the last two working in the theatre medium, are also well known. Making art out of the fabric of their lives, and doing so in poignantly poetic and emotionally powerful ways, is what brought these men to the world’s attention. At the end of the 20th century, one New York contemporary theatre artist, Spalding Gray, more or less invented and popularised the “solo performance monologue”. In two hour long “monologues” such as “Swimming to Cambodia”, “Monster in a Box”, and Gray’s Anatomy”, Mr Gray told extended stories from the autobiographical fabric of his own life that connected to world-wide audiences on themes such as mortality, love, loyalty, and the complicated ambiguities of life in general. His evening-long monologues were challenging, funny, frightening, and entertaining.

In 1985, I also began directing, then writing and performing solo performance monologues. I brought two of them to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1988 and 1995, and I have taught “Solo Performance” at the University of Southern California (USC) since 1994. From 1991-1998, I wrote, produced, directed, and edited an autobiographical “personal voice” feature-length documentary film, “The Poet and the Con” about my complicated relationship with my uncle, a career criminal and a confessed murderer. (I hope to show the 5 minute opening section in Granada.) This kind of “personal voice” filmmaking is the filmic equivalent to “solo performance” in the theatre. In 2004, I created a pilot film program in an inner-city, South Central LA high school, Washington Prep High School, and the 18 out of 24 primarily African American and Latino students finished short “personal voice” films. In May of 2005, these films were screened at Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills for a standing room audience including California’s former governor.

None of this is to sing my own praises, but simply to establish that not only have I done this work as an artist, but I have also done this work as an educator. And it is as an educator that I will continue writing.

I believe that uncovering the personal story within and finding one's own "personal voice" is an empowering and freeing art form. That this kind of self-expression, creativity, and communication – can connect human beings across cultures. And that for these above reasons, personal voice storytelling is both an important tool that can be employed in the educational field, and an important subject worthy of study in the field of “learning” in general.

In our current strife-ridden and terror-driven world, we divide ourselves into different nations, cultures, religions, and languages, each definition and boundary separating one group from another. We define ourselves by identifying with one group and not with another. Americans: Democrats-Republicans. Iraquis: Sunni-Shiite-Kurd. East Malaysians: Muslim-Chinese-Malay. And so on, throughout the world: Indian-Pakistani, Chinese-Japanese, Protestant-Catholic, Arab-Jew, Christian-Muslim, neighbour hating and fearing neighbour; one group demonising and separating itself from “the other”. Yet we all have one thing in common. We are all human beings - who all yearn for the same comforts, families, freedoms,
gods, friends, educational opportunities for our children, security, self-expression, fulfilment, transcendence - as one another.

What is a way we can communicate with each other, break down the barriers between us, feel we have things in common? Stories are the answer. Personal stories - that can be taught in writing & drama classes - in school, and in the community. Stories that can be presented and shared in the theatre, on film, and in the school room. No matter what the language, nationality, political persuasion, or culture, writing, performing, filming, and sharing personal stories can touch and connect us all.

When I was an American Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia in January – August, 2002, I had further validation of my belief in this work. I travelled to primarily Islamic Malaysia shortly after 9/11. Most of my family and friends strongly discouraged me from going. They worried about my safety, having strongly bought into the American media’s inflammatory harping on world-wide, anti-American terror. Yet when, in fact, I did go to Kota Kinabalu in East Malaysia for four months, and then I later spent another four months in Kuala Lumpur, I found I had a very positive, expansive, and enlightening experience. Sure, I had to get used to, and understand, why images of Osama Bin Laden were on t-shirts in the malls and on my colleagues’ screen savers, but I also saw that I had many more things in common with people in this culture than I had differences. And I also saw that even in an Islamic, East Asian culture that did not teach or encourage individual self-expression, that once encouraged, students had powerful and unique stories to tell. And audiences responded powerfully to these stories when they were honest, well-crafted, and true.

Of course, at UMS (University of Malaysia Sabah on the island of Borneo), I had to find new techniques to teach storytelling because many of my students didn’t speak English as their primary language. But with the help of one talented and reliable Chinese-Malay student, we found a way to communicate – and to discover the stories that lay hidden within each student. It took time. And trust. And an intuitive, process of osmosis for the students to understand what I was looking for, what made a good story for an audience. After working with them for weeks orally, I finally had the students write their stories in Bahasa, their native language. I had them e-mail me the stories. Then I had them translated to English. I worked on them dramaturgically (the craft of developing and re-writing work in the theatre), and I had them re-translated to Bahasa. We went back and forth many times to get the stories as clear and effective as possible. Then we rehearsed for many more weeks. The same kind of language barriers and problems happened all over again. But again, the few who spoke English well helped me and the others who didn’t speak well. And at the end of the term, all the students performed their pieces in front of a full audience; all except one, in Bahasa. The audience cheered.

The same thing happened four months later in Kuala Lumpur, except all these students did speak adequate English. Again through the alchemy of trust, intuition, writing, and re-writing, personal autobiographical stories were discovered and brought to the page. Amazingly, they were the same kind of stories that I have discovered in over a decade of teaching at USC: stories unique to young people. Original stories that are honest, revealing, emotional, heart-warming, hilarious, and effective for a theatre audience. Stories about sex,
love, parents, childhood, ethnicity, death, fear, self- image, friendship, so many more intimate and personal subjects. Stories for a multi-cultural tapestry of performers: white, black, Latino, Asian, Indian, all the colours of the rainbow that find themselves at the challenging and confusing time of adolescence and young adulthood. College age stories - by real kids, real people, who are becoming, and are, real writers and artists. In the real, poetic, fractured, eloquent, and profane language that they speak.

One of the strongest and most transformational results of doing this personal, autobiographical storytelling work is on the student-writers themselves. I can’t say how many times that students have told me that this kind of self-discovery and intimate, personal writing work was the most powerful, memorable, and important work they had done during their entire college careers. We all have stories within us. Secrets. Stories that we are too ashamed or embarrassed to bring to light. Who would want to hear these stories? Your horrible relationship with your mother or father? Your tortured, convoluted, but triumphant coming out story? Your learning what trust and betrayal between friends means in life? Countless, unbelievable and unpredictable variations. What one comes to learn is that in the most neurotic, idiosyncratic, and detailed personal story, when well-told and well-crafted, lies the universal. The story of my relationship with my mother, my father, my uncle, my friend, my lover, my enemy – the story of my fear, my triumph, my failure -- is also your story. That’s why stories have endured. That’s why stories are cathartic. That why stories sell box office tickets – and are published in books – why stories are remembered.

What place does this personal storytelling work have in the field of education and in the field of learning? Well, it is my opinion that too much time is spent in the university on vocational training, on theoretical and academic issues, and/or on the mere acquisition and accumulation

of knowledge. I know that’s what my college education was about. It was not until I graduated university that I started to look at and discover myself. I think I started too late, and that discovering who one is and what one wants to do in life is an essential part of anyone’s education. Certainly the two can co-exist: academic and/or vocational training along with self-discovery. However, finding the latter of the two sorely neglected in both my own university education as well in my observation of decades of students in my role as an educator, I have chosen my path to be that of educator of the “self”. ie. how to look within oneself, discover one’s own voice, and how to follow one’s own unique path in life. It is what I teach in all my courses – self-expression and creativity. It’s a crucial and essential part of “learning”. Students are hungry for it.

Too many of us in various paths in life, in the university and beyond, have been educated to conform: to go to school, to get a good job, to earn lots of money, to get married, to raise a family, etc. etc. All by the numbers. At least in America, it’s primarily that way. Our parents teach us this, and too often our teachers do the same. We’re never taught to think “outside of the box”. We’re never taught to look within ourselves, to discover our “passion” (as Joseph Campbell would say), and to follow our own road less travelled (Robert Frost’s invention). This is what I teach. And it’s what personal voice storytelling is all about – celebrating the uniqueness of the individual life, the uniqueness of the individual soul and spirit, the uniqueness of the individual story.

Finally, the only things missing from this paper are examples of this work. What do the stories look and sound like? Well, as stated above, they look and sound like the many
Colours of the rainbow. There are as many stories as there are writers/creators/filmmakers/monologists. And so, should there be further interest in the work that I have been writing about here, I would be happy to make several support materials available.

• I have a published collection of theatre monologues written by my students over the last decade at USC. It is called STORIES ABOUT OURSELVES, Monologues About Coming of Age in America. There are 52 Monologues in this Volume 1, and they are organized in such categories as: Ethnic Monologues (monologues about or by young people of colour), Gay-themed Monologues, Dramatic Monologues, Comedic Monologues, Jewish-themed Monologues, Magic & Spiritual Monologues, etc.

• I also have a DVD collection of 10 Washington Prep High School student short films that are technically simple, but tell amazing stories about growing up in foster homes, with violence in the street, under the threat of the AIDS epidemic, and in the unique South-Central Los Angeles environment. Told with honesty, humour, and candour.

• I have VHS and DVD copies of my own “personal voice”, autobiographical feature-length documentary film, “The Poet and the Con”, mentioned above. For more information, go to: http://www.poetandcon.com/

I am certainly aware that my unique take on learning and education may be a minority one. There are too many other fields and too many other philosophies and techniques of education that have other purposes and intentions than mine which is limited to discovering the “self”. And to discovering one’s own “voice” by looking within and having the courage to create, tell, and share personal, autobiographical stories. I am curious about other pedagogical techniques, and I hope to broaden my horizons at the Learning Conference. But I am also curious about the response to my ideas in the educational field, when so much of the focus at the Conference and in this Journal will not be on the arts, drama, creativity, or self-expression. I am certainly hopeful that we collectively can make a place for all the above at the round table of learning and education.

I am quite interested in doing more international workshops and residencies on this work. Should a reader be interested, please contact me by e-mail: trules@usc.edu