Amy Saidman

Executive Artistic Director of Story District
Headshot of a woman.
Music Excerpts: “Renewal” composed and performed by Doug and Judy Smith. Amy Saidman: When you tell your own story, it’s a different social contract with your audience, because what they’re looking for, we find, is that connection. And so if I’m the storyteller, and it’s a first person story, then I’m the protagonist, and you, the listener, are rooting for me and we’re connecting about this.> Jo Reed: That’s Amy Saidman—she’s the executive artistic director of Story District…and this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced by the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.There is a story-telling boom happening throughout the country, and in the Washington D.C. area, Story District is one of its driving forces. Story District is the new name of SpeakEasy DC. SpeakEasy DC made its name as a monthly open-mic storytelling series. The name change happened last year—but never fear, the storytelling continues and the mission remains the same: to turn good, true, first-person stories into great performances. Story District is Speak Easy DC writ-large: it produces both a monthly series and annual events, all totaled, more than 25 performances a year. Each feature 8-10 storytellers performing honest, personal, true stories, often focused on a common theme. Additionally, Story District runs extensive educational programming. It partners with organizations like Human Rights Campaign and the Synagogue at 6th and I. and it has also begun to design custom trainings for businesses. Everyone has a story to tell and Story District’s job is to help tell it.Artistic director Amy Saidman has been a storyteller for two decades and she’s also a visionary about the way story can work in our lives. So, she was happy to entertain my question: why do people want to tell personal stories to perfect strangers and why will those strangers pay to listen? Amy Saidman: I get asked this all the time and I think people want to tell stories-- first of all I mean it’s fun; it’s rewarding. You have an audience listening, you get to process through the events of your life and rethink through them, and I’d say there’s a couple reasons. Some people want to do it because they already have the bug for performance, and maybe they don’t quite want to do poetry or stand-up comedy, but storytelling, like you mentioned, is a very natural human activity. We know how to tell stories; some are naturally better than others, but we still tell stories all the time. So, I think there is an appeal to get up on stage. Some people it’s not necessarily the appeal to get on stage, but they do have this burning story that they know is compelling and they just want to tell and so you get this captive audience, and it’s this rewarding experience. And then there-- I’m sure there’s a range of other reasons whether it’s stage or business reasons. People do it for professional development reasons. People just want to not be shy or they want to overcome their shyness or-- there’s a whole range of reasons that people do it at least on our stage and I think people come to listen. You hear all the time people get to connect with what they feel is authenticity and hearing from people telling the true stories of their lives and being vulnerable and being honest. And so I think one of the things that’s satisfying is that if it’s a story that is very familiar then you feel like your own life experience is sort of reinforced and you-- and it’s so familiar it’s satisfying and then you get the stuff that’s so unfamiliar that it’s satisfying, so you get to step into the life of somebody else; you get to experience something that you wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. So, I think there’s a range of things that satisfy people about the experience of storytelling. Jo Reed: Well, what led you to storytelling? Amy Saidman: Oh, that’s funny. When I was a child I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. My hero was Carol Burnett and-- who is not a stand-up comedian but she is a performer and then so I ended up getting into comedy improv and then I was looking for stuff to do. I found this odd little note in the city paper; it was a black cat ad if you’ve ever seen that. Historically, it’s this big, scrawled-out list of stuff and teeny, teeny, tiny it said, “Open mic storytelling” and for some reason I thought that that was something I had to go to. I did soon after. They were looking for a program coordinator, I applied, and here I am almost 20 years later. Jo Reed: Why the emphasis on both a true story and the first person? Amy Saidman: I think there’s a ton of value in fiction and there’s value in telling stories from other people’s perspectives but, I mean, to be honest, we started out really--The Moth. I think when you tell your own story you know your story, you can delve into it, you can re-create it in your mind, and it’s also a different social contract with your audience because what they’re looking for, what we find, is that connection and they’re looking for real—so- to-speak real stories about real people and it is because it is true and it is because the person on stage is talking about themselves that you’re making that connection. So, if I’m the storyteller, and it’s a first-person story, then I’m the protagonist, and you the listener are rooting for me and we’re connecting about this. Also if I’m the one telling a story then I have to be willing to be vulnerable and by vulnerable that means a lot of things but one of the things is being honest; that is an act of vulnerability. And so if I’m telling something in fiction that’s not the same relationship and if I’m telling something about someone else it’s also not the same relationship with the audience. So I do think this first-person true story is a very specific kind of relationship with you and your audience. Jo Reed: Okay. What makes for a good story? Amy Saidman: Well, every good story needs a handful of things that we always tell people. It needs to have that classic narrative arc, it needs a protagonist that you’re following along this journey that there’s something they desire, there’s something that pushes the story along, and along the way you have obstacles which create the tension and then you get to your climax where nothing else is the same again. One of the things I press the most is that it is visual, so a story well told is one that has painted a very vivid picture that I can see in my mind’s eye as the teller, but that the listener can see because a well-told story means that you, the listener, get to be in my story and you start to experience the story vicariously. And if I do not paint that vividly you-- it’s really hard for you to be in it, but the more in it you are the more you care about it, the more truly you want to know what happens next and you- you’re invested in where the story goes. A lot of times people mistake something else for story, a speech; they think they’ve told a story. It’s not really a story and a lot of times the defining thing is that visual piece. Jo Reed: Are all your shows themed? Amy Saidman: Yes, almost all. Jo Reed: Can you give me some examples of some of the themes you’ve explored? Amy Saidman: Yes. We have a few annual shows that have gone on for many years now. We’re in our-- I don’t know-- eighth or ninth year with My So-Called Jewish Life. We do that with Sixth and I every December during Hanukkah Yev Kirpichevsky: See, I am Jewish I’m just really bad at it and my excuse is that I grew up in the Soviet Ukraine and in the Soviet Ukraine being Jewish was not really about culture or religion, it was about ethnicity. Basically, we were the people with dark hair all over our bodies, and there wasn’t really any redeeming value in that hair either-- like we didn’t own any banks or media or anything like that, not that you wanted to own Ukrainian banks, I’m just saying. But then when I moved to America, I finally discovered that there was value in being Jewish, specifically the birthright trip which is of course, as was mentioned, a free trip to Israel for anyone who’s Jewish. But the catch was that you have to pass a phone interview to prove that you’re Jewish, which I could anticipate being a challenge for me, but as bad a Jew as I was, I was not going to pass up on the free trip, uh, <laughs> I’ll let that one sink in. Guys, listen, if we can’t laugh at ourselves, then they win, you know what I mean? Anyway so I- I, decided to call, so I dialed the number with my trembling fingers-- I’m old, I’m older than I look. We had to do that. And it was also, like, back then the process of the interview was not what some of you younger people have gone through, it was quite an ordeal, I don’t have that much time, but I’ll replicate it for you in it’s entirety: “Uh. Hi, I want to go on a birthright trip?” “Uh, are you Jewish?” “Yes.” “Welcome to the birthright trip.” > And we have our Sucker for Love, which is a Valentine’s show, which I mentioned. We have a Pride show, which is Out/Spoken, so all LGBTQ stories, which is actually the grant that was funded by the NEA is that we’ve been doing it in DC. We just had our sixth, but we’re also taking that show and developing two shows, one in Atlanta and one in Birmingham thanks to the NEA grant. Half of the storytellers will be from the DC casts and half will be from the local community, so we’re doing a combination. Jo Reed: Great, working together. Amy Saidman: Yeah, it’s really great, and our partner is Human Rights Campaign and they have been a great partner on the ground. So, other themes can be sillier than that. The second Tuesday of the month we always have a show. Our last one was Notorious, stories about fleeting moments of glory and infamy. Scandal, stories about double-crossing and double lives. Yeah, it can go from the serious-- we have a show about-- that we call Mind Over Matter, stories about mental illness, and we did that a couple times. So that is a more challenging subject versus the silly ones like Scandal or Notorious. Jo Reed: So you really try to run the gamut. Amy Saidman: We do and even-- I shouldn’t really say “silly things” because any theme on any given night you get a range — Jo Reed: Because anything can be both funny and anything can break your heart. Amy Saidman: Yes, and usually an experience of a Story District show is that range, even inside a single story. Jo Reed: So, let’s say I have a story, that I’m interested in sharing and want Story District to consider. What do I do? What’s the process? Amy Saidman: So we welcome everybody. We love having new storytellers. So you have a couple things you can do. The first thing is you can go on our website and it says, “Pitch your story” and it’ll give you a list of upcoming shows, and you write in a short synopsis of your story. It has to relate to the theme, it has to have a sense that we get that it is a story, it doesn’t have to be fully built out. You have to commit to at least one rehearsal, and then we’ll call you back, and then you’ll go to rehearsal and you’ll get up on stage if you’re selected. I will also say you need to do-- in addition to the written synopsis you send out an audio pitch just so we can hear your voice and your style. There are some things that require an actual audition, so some of these big shows I mentioned like at the Lincoln Theatre-- you have to pitch, and then you have to audition and then you have to maybe do a call-back. We do some serious vetting for some of these shows. So there are some hoops but we still try to make it as accessible as possible because we do want people pitching, and we want new people all the time and we always say that you’re never on your own; we’ll always be coaching you. In fact, you can’t get on stage without being coached, but we think that most of our participants really are grateful for it because they’re learning with the other people that are in the show; they end up committed to the group and how the show goes and everybody’s rooting for each other and they help each other with their stories and it’s become this really great community because of that. I will say if you really want to dig into it we have classes so there’s a one-day boot camp. There’s a six-week storytelling 101; it’s once a week for six weeks and it ends in a final performance and that’s when you really dig into it and get tons of feedback and tons of time to refine your story and work on it, that’s another way. Jo Reed: I have a seven-minute story. How much time am I going to spend developing that story before I get to stand up on the stage? Amy Saidman: Well, it depends. Okay. So if it is a monthly show you have one rehearsal. Now some people end up having follow-up over the phone. You know, certain stories lend themselves-- they sort of already have built-in arcs, or you’ve told it a hundred times and it just needs to be refined, or you’re just a really natural storyteller. And then some people come in and it’s a tougher story to tease out, or you’re not a natural storyteller, or some other reason or it’s too big of a story; you really need help bringing it down and keeping the focus. So, it really depends. So, some people can get it done in one rehearsal, some need a few, and for our big shows like the Pride show, the Out/Spoken, many hours, with a coach and on your own. Jo Reed: How do you help people who have a fear of public speaking, who have stage fright? And I’m sure some people do that in order to conquer that fear, but as one of the coaches part of your job is to help them let go. Amy Saidman: It is--one of the things I focus on is the content first, so once you nail that down and you really, really own it, that you know it and you love it and you own it and you practice it, that’s 80 percent of the battle. Now, I should say that we do practice these stories but we don’t want them to sound recited. It’s not a recitation; it’s meant to be conversational. And that’s part of why we demand that people practice even more because the more you practice the more and more natural your voice can be and the more you can really kind of relax into your story, but we also teach people to trust themselves to a degree because they lived with this so they know it. And I will say one more thing about that sort of memory piece which adds to the comfort of being on stage, which is, I don’t want people in their head imagining a piece of paper with writing on it, trying to remember what they wrote. I want them to remember where they were and so it’s a different kind of memory. And then the other part is that we have great, very warm audiences; they are really ready to support and love everybody who gets on stage. So that’s another good reason why some people choose this as their overcoming-stage-fright space. Jo Reed: I’m also curious if people resist the coaching because their friends think they are the best storyteller ever and “My God, my wife tells me all the time you should be on stage” and “You’re disrupting my authentic experience.” Amy Saidman: I love this question. Yes, yes, yes. I mean thankfully mostly people are extremely gracious about it and want the coaching and appreciate the coaching but yes, there is a type, and it’s a tough type because I’ve been doing this for like I said almost 16 years and I still want to be coached. I still see that there is value to that process and so when you get someone whose ego is so in the way of a process of having someone else hear it, give you feedback, tweaking it based on that feedback that’s really tough. And there’s a type that will-- you’ll start to say something and they’ll say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew that. I mean of course”-- and they’ll start to “Ah” and you have to say, “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do right now. I want you to listen and not do anything but listen. Try not to react” and sometimes they’ll come around and sometimes those who do come around can be the most devoted once they’ve kind of gotten over the hump, and they realize that it’s an opportunity versus an attack on their intelligence. Jo Reed: Or who they are. Amy Saidman: --or their skill? Jo Reed: Yeah. I think probably-- I’m just using that because you’re telling a true story-- somehow a critique of the delivery ends up being a critique of you in some profound way. Amy Saidman: Yeah, especially if you have an identity as a storyteller; those can be worst. Someone was like “Oh, I am a storyteller.” Sometimes that can be the toughest ‘cause, right, their self-concept is wrapped around well, “I already know what I’m doing and if you say I don’t then maybe I don’t”, and I think we mostly get through it, but I tell you some of the best people have been professional journalists whether radio journalists or TV or writers. What I love about working with them-- you’d think that they’d be the most cocky maybe. They’re like “I got this. This is my profession; I write,” but they’re not. They’ve been so open I think because they know how hard writing can be and they know that this is different, it’s a different dynamic with live and with a live audience; they’ve just been like “What else? Let’s keep working on this.” And so I’ve really enjoyed working with professional writers and journalists. Jo Reed: And I think also because of the editorial process, they’re used to a back-and-forth. Amy Saidman: Yeah. It’s not as precious and it’s-- they just want it to be great and honestly most people are very grateful; they express an appreciation for having the support. Jo Reed: Well, Story District has really undergone a metamorphosis, it began under the name Speakeasy DC. What’s the backstory about Speakeasy DC and the change in name? Amy Saidman: Sure. Well, first I’ll say SpeakeasyDC ,okay-- we started as a program of the Washington Storytellers Theatre so, The Washington Storytellers Theatre had a series of concerts ,they called them, and they’d bring these people from The National Storytelling Festival, their favorite professional storytellers, and that-- they started in 1991. In 1997, they started this thing they called the Speakeasy and it was on the second Tuesday of the month where anybody could get up on stage and tell a seven-minute story on the theme, and so that is what we turned into SpeakeasyDC. So when I took over in 2005 we just did the Speakeasy model, which was local people getting up on stage on a common theme, short stories. And then growing out of that we ended up-- we added coaching, we added classes, now we do corporate trainings with government agencies like the NEA. We actually did a workshop here. Jo Reed: I was in it. Amy Saidman: Oh, good! So it’s just been this organic growth towards really developing a cadre of new storytellers, of helping people learn how to tell their stories and find the stories that are interesting and meaningful to them and how to tell them in a way that’s compelling and interesting to audiences and so it’s become this thing. So 2005, 10 years later, Speakeasy was a great name for a little thing in a little bar, and it’s not that anymore; it’s so much bigger. We have 30 shows a year and our biggest show is at the Lincoln that we sell out; that’s 1200 people. We had two 1200-seat shows sold out this year, one in January is our Top Shelf, best of the year, and February is our annual Valentine’s Day show. We do the 9:30 Club, and then we have ongoing classes for at least-- three to five hundred people -- learn how to tell stories for Story District every year. So it just seemed time for a real brand change and to communicate how different we are now-- we-- and we have the same fundamental values and are purists about what we do, which is very simple, which is to tell a good true story, but we have just grown so much. Jo Reed: How did you get into working with companies about storytelling? Amy Saidman: Oh, my gosh. I’m not even sure how but, our intention is to build a whole business model around it and we’ve had this lucky problem of getting requests. I say that because any business would love this. Rather than having to market or do all this stuff, basically the stuff we already do has drawn an interest and I think storytelling has tipped in the business area; there’s much, much more talk about why storytelling is valuable to business and-- or to nonprofits or to-- government agencies are really-- have become much more of a client than we ever expected. A lot of this is companies and agencies want to figure out how to take their data and make it more accessible to an audience; “humanize it” is a phrase they use a lot. Some of these companies just want to have internal knowledge shared better. We have had granting foundations or organizations that want to help tell the stories of their grantees better and things like that. I’m not actually sure how we really started, but I do think that it’s built by word of mouth. Jo Reed: I think it’s interesting because I think within any work culture, government culture or corporate culture, there is language that gets spoken internally that it’s very difficult often to translate on the outside. I mean I often joke and say, “Who reads government here? Can somebody translate?” and the point is to translate that from government to a story. Amy Saidman: Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of this is just giving people permission to make it personal, have an arc, have a protagonist that you follow and care about. I think that’s just not been the model. We learn this essay format. You have your thesis statement, you have three supporting statements and a conclusion that wraps it back up, and that’s pretty much what you see over and over, and what-- I guess people are finding that’s really hard to connect to and the data is a whole another layer to that. I don’t think storytelling should ever replace data but the combination of the two makes a big difference -- ‘cause the story helps me understand what I should care about, but if you just throw data at me I’m just not-- I’m not sure where to ground myself in what I’m hearing and why I should care and what I’m invested in and I think that that’s what people are finding that the storytelling really does. And I think if-- there’s so many things you read and-- or you hear and you don’t know what they’re really talking about. The shape is all over the place, it’s not clear what the core is and what the core message is, and so I think storytelling helps with that because there’s a real structure that you need to follow and when you do follow that the reward is great because it’s interesting, it’s memorable, and it taps into people’s emotions; it has all these things that are very rewarding that can help your greater message. Jo Reed: How is storytelling transformative often for both the teller and for the audience? Amy Saidman: I’ve definitely found that it’s quite transformative for the teller, which is one of the things I love about doing this work, and I think it’s because we don’t get a lot of time to examine our life. It’s definitely hard to find places where you think about the moments in your life and you spend time with it and you re-create it and you retell it and in the telling process you really have to reflect what did this mean to me; why did this matter; why do I think this is going to matter to the people in the audience; what meaning does this have? And so, that alone, I think has changed people’s lives or just-- not changed people’s lives but changed the way people have thought about their lives and in doing this process they think about it in a new way. There’s other things that I love: When they go back to people-- characters in their story and they say, “Actually, Mom,”- or husband or whatever- “what do you remember about this?” and not only does it spark a new conversation, but they also learn new things or from a new perspective. Wow, it’s amazing the-- sort of the revelations you might have around what you did think and what you do think now. And anyway it’s just a very interesting process and so I like both that kind of change in the way you relate to yourself and your past but also the way you might relate to the people in your life that you end up sparking conversations with around the process of re-creating the story. Jo Reed: And what about the listener? How is it transformative for the listener? Amy Saidman: I think it can be for the listener, too. We talk about how-- storytelling ,and this is our hope, that through storytelling we promote compassion and understanding, and I do believe that and I-- a great example is the Pride show I mean and we’re obviously in the midst of constant backlash around any progress that the LGBTQ community makes and every story makes a difference. We have a few storytellers that get up in their-- on stage in their wheelchairs and you make all these assumptions about them and then they start to tell a story and you’re like “Oh, wow. That is a person with so much life history that I didn’t think about. I just made all these assumptions” I mentioned the story about living with mental illness. I mean that’s a real taboo subject, it’s something people misunderstand a lot, and so you get real people talking about their real-life experience, so one of our storytellers gets up and she’s bipolar; she’s been in and out of the hospital seven times, but she gets to tell her story with her voice. It’s not someone else talking about women with bipolar disorder; it’s her and she’s hilarious and she’s self-aware and you get to really identify with her experience. Joani Peacock : Once I got home and I was taking my prescriptions as advised by my doctor, I thought I was just getting over one hellacious, crash-and-burn, colossal, once-in-a-lifetime depression, and then something funny happened, actually funny so, please laugh.<audience laughs> When I got home, I turned into Martha Stewart on speed. Martha f’ing domesti-queen Stewart on speed. I stayed up nights on end. I had this brilliant idea to turn my spice racks into towel racks. I rearranged my furniture. I reorganized my kitchen cabinets and when I got to see Dr. Bishop, I said “Dr. Bishop something funny is going on.” He looked at me from across his desk and he said, “Joani, I think you might be bipolar.” So he pulled his bible off of his shelf, the DSM 4R, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Version Four, revised, and he put me through a 39 point checklist like I was a car. Like I was a car, at Jiffy Lube. And he tallied up my score and he said “Yup, bipolar”. I said “No! My mother is bipolar, not me.” And I absolutely believe the next person you meet with-- who has bipolar disorder you’re going to think about differently. That was Executive Artistic Director of Story District Amy Saidman. We also heard excerpts from: Yev Kirpichevsky as part of Story District's My So Called Jewish Life at Sixth & I in 2014 Joani Peacock from Story District’s Mind Over Matter  performed at the Emmanuel on High Episcopal Church in 2015. You can find their full stories on You Tube. You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAarts on Twitter.or the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Everyone has a story; Story District helps tell it.