2010 Storyteller Interview Series: Coleen MacPherson, Pocketology Collectiveby
St. Marys Storytelling Inc. on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 8:44am Q: Why Storytelling, Why Now? Why do we need storytellers? A: Without storytellers who would remind us of what it means to be human? It has always been the time for storytellers, but for different reasons. Today, 2010, we are confronted with huge global stories: political and religious tensions, wars, and environmental devastations – often these stories are given to us by the mass media, and not the single voice of an individual, but a system. It can be overwhelming. We need storytellers today more than ever as they are the single voice that synthesizes our common experiences, so we can understand it on a personal level. Storytellers make us laugh, cry, jump for joy, and mourn as a community – and it is through this common experience that we can heal.Stories are so magical. They transport us to another place. As in theatre, it is another world passing through this world. From the experience of narrative and the relationship we have with its characters, we come to see ourselves, and those around us in a different light: we empathize, we imagine, we dream. Without stories we do not have reflection, and without reflection we have no growth as a society. Pocketology is a unique invitation into story telling and social engagement. It is an invitation for everyone to be storytellers and story listeners, to stop and take a moment and “consider your pockets”. By excavating our pockets for objects imbued with stories, we begin to see the big story in the small details. Q: How did you get started in this field, and who influenced you? A: I come from a theatre background, and for me, theatre and storytelling are interchangeable. One goes to the theatre to be transported by a story, and experience something. Creative writing is my other passion. Great writers like Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Woolf all have an incredible ability with words and text, to tell a human story. Great playwrights have the ability to use silence, dialogue, movement, and design to facilitate a great story. Beckett is my favourite. My study of literature and theatre influences the type of stories I am drawn to and how I feel a story should be told for an audience. My interest in installation art, relational art and work that is about social engagement began when I studied Theatre and Development at Concordia University. When in Montreal, I saw a piece by Geoffrey Farmer called The Last Two Million Years. This piece, placed within a contemporary art museum depicted the last two million years of human history by using foamcore cutouts from selected pages of the history book The Last Two Million Years. The cutouts were small, and one had to look closely and engage in the art on a different ‘level’. Each cutout had a story attached to it – sometimes funny, sometimes tragic – about the events in human history. It was a visual representation of the story of humans until now through small objects and pictures …Then when I met Rachel Ellison at a conference on Community Arts with Jumblies Theatre in Toronto, she introduced me to Pocketology. I found it fascinating as a writer and actor that I was carrying such strange and seemingly small stories with me all the time! These little stories when pieced together speak about a bigger journey, my history. Rachel and I decided to create The Pocketology Collective and began excavating people’s pockets for small stories with great meaning … the rest is history. Q: For those who have been here before, what you like about St. Marys and Perth County. For those who haven’t been here before, what have you heard about this area? A: I grew up in Cambridge, Ontario, and most likely passed through St. Marys - but never stopped. I wish I had stopped so I would have more to write, but there are so many towns in Ontario! It would take a long time to stop in each one. I know there must be a tight-knit community and there is a river running through the town … and it is twenty minutes from Stratford, Ontario. Q: Who were the storytellers in your family?A: The storytellers in my family are all the MacPhersons: the Irish and Scottish have too many stories to tell! So my Dad, and all his brothers and one sister would be some of the storytellers from this clan. Some stories include my Uncle Sean learning to live in a forest and cooking frogs for dinner. Sean and my Dad also would race cars in Kingston Mills, and one time one of the cars landed on an outhouse off a cliff after missing a turn. Apparently all of the power in Kingston Mills went out! There are many other stories to which each family member has their own particular version.My maternal grandmother is the other storyteller. She would always read to me and tell me about her childhood in India. I remember the monkey that played the cymbals pulling her hair sneakily as she walked down the street, and how she was always scared of being caught by her mother stealing candy from the kitchen. Q: Because we’re focusing on themes related to ‘coming home’ at this year’s festival, have you ever experienced “A Sort of Homecoming”, and the bittersweet emotions that ensue. Do you think that we can always come home again? A: I grew up in Cambridge, Ontario and lived in Montreal and currently live in Toronto. Home for me grows in the different places I have been, including all of the many different neighbourhoods of Toronto. When I return to a place I have lived, memories wash through me and remind me of where I have been and where I am going. The idea of home is constantly changing. Falling in love is almost like returning home, since I feel at home with the ones I love. When I travelled to India I felt a sense of home in a foreign land. Since I am half Parsee-Indian, returning to where my mom was born, was a type of cultural homecoming. The emotions I felt were connected to a historical homecoming – thinking of the ancestors that lay before me so many generations back.If the story tells of a journey back home, the details are the poetry and the theme tells of how the story connects to a universal concept or experience.Q: How do you see storytelling evolving over the next while, or do you?A: In a digital age we are becoming more and more isolated with our technology. The impulse is to connect to others, to have immediate interactions with those who are not in the same space as us. But the irony is we are disconnecting ourselves from our immediate surroundings. The act of gazing at the sky is a remarkable thing! Eye contact is a revolution. Storytellers need to claim a sacred space. Storytelling, I hope, will grow as a reaction against isolation and against mass consumption. Storytelling is a free exchange from an individual to a group and it is connected to ritual and creating community. If storytelling can make us stop for a moment, connect to each other and reflect, our society will be the better for it. I hope storytelling evolves and helps slow down our lives and cultivate meaning. Q: What kinds of stories do you like to tell? Do you have an absolute favourite story or song, and why? A: I like to tell travel stories, and stories where people surpass great personal obstacles. My favourite story comes from a novel I read in Grade 5. It is about a young woman who proves her abilities working on a ship alongside a group of men. There is a heron in the story, which resembles her – steadfast, strong, strident, grounded, ready to take flight at any moment, but fragile. There is a moment in the story where she climbs the ropes of the ship and is confronted by the wind, the things greater than her, for a moment we think she cannot move forward – but she manages to encourage herself to the point that she finishes the task in front of her shipmates. I love stories where women demonstrate their strength of ability and confidence in their values and beliefs. Q: Any advice to aspiring tellers? A: Stories surround you. The comedy of life and the tragedy of life confront you every day, and there is nothing that cannot be constructed into a story to be told for an audience. Trust yourself, trust your voice, and tell the story!
