Laughter Makers and Heart Breakers
Making the Palm of your Hand a Hospitable Place for an Audience
“Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory of what it was once needful for the wise to know.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
Every once in a while, you’ll hear a tale that floors you. For me, such a tale came to my awareness from an unexpected source, far beyond my own cultural context. It isn’t The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, or a tale from The Popol Vuh, rather it is a humble urban legend. A relatively recently forged one, at that. Rather than hearing it, I read it. Rather than having the unknowable genesis that most urban legends have, this one’s origin is well documented and utterly mundane. All this enhances my enjoyment of the tale, rather than diminishes it. It’s called ‘Who killed Ronald Opus?”, and the version I first read goes like this:
"On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth-floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this."
“Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended.
That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands.
"The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the a window striking Opus.
"When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her -therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.
"The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.
The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
There was an exquisite twist.
"Further investigation revealed that the son had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window. His name was Ronald Opus.
“The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide but added an addendum:
*This was a murder committed by Ronald Opus on Ronald Opus*."
There are many delightful aspects in this tale – it is positively filmic, the narrative unwinding in a fashion that keeps the listener wanting to hear the next portion. The sense of place and circumstance is clear too, painting a picture of the tale that places the listener within it. But these aspects are common to many tales, modern and traditional. What is unique here?
The first unique element that I love about the tale is its genesis. You see, this story was originally told by a Doctor Don Harper Mills, the president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, at a banquet in 1987. He had created the story himself, describing it as “an illustrative anecdote” to "to show how different legal consequences can follow each twist in a homicide inquiry". The tale has since whirled its way around the internet and into the minds of screenwriters, having been the subplot in the 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson movie ‘Magnolia’ (as well as inspiration for TV show plots). Talk about “coming from humble beginnings”.
The version I tell, as derived from other versions, and my own interpretation of the source, is slightly longer and more detailed than the one shown above. Any “changes” that I make in telling the tale are to aid in its telling; enhancements in characterisation and plot movement, but the bones of the story remain unbleached. I don’t make any substantive changes at all – to plot, the nature or role of the characters etc – how could I? It’s an absolute banger! Therein lies the other aspect that delights me about this particular tale: it is a contemporary, observable example of how tales are born, begin to move around, and develop. It is a process that I am more than happy to contribute to; it is not often that storytellers in the oral tradition get to contribute so directly to the canon.
This story was also the first tale I’d really latched onto when trying to “find my voice” as a storyteller. One of the main reasons I’d left my previous career (as a TV actor) was that I was getting increasingly hostile to the fact that I was confined to performing other people’s words and directions. When I was a stand-up comedian, conversely, I quickly found that I was getting annoyed by the sound my own voice or, put more ironically, my own words and directions. When I first discovered that storytelling was a thing (thanks to Clare Murphy) and not just something grandparents did for children, I found a happy medium: time-tested words of others and my own direction.
Stories like “Who Killed Ronald Opus?” exemplify the dynamism of the artform. This story is still on the move, so to speak; I love that I can aid in plotting its path. Such a dynamic quality inherent in such a tale has rubbed off on me; it is this tale that has directed me to focus on the nature of the plot, to hone in on the meaning and detail in every aspect of the tales I tell. I find that if I lose one bit (or breeze over too quickly), I cannot deliver the tale in a way I feel it deserves to be delivered.
The sense of “danger” in telling such a modern story also excites me – we’re more accustomed to the delivery of better known, often ancient tales, ones that have far less play in the joints. As much as we love them, and as necessary they are to the legitimacy of our roles as custodians of the oral tradition, sometimes we would like to have some anarchic fun. Care must be taken, however – it can be like feeling that you suddenly want to do some clay pigeon shooting whilst in a museum. Probably not the right place to engage in some shotgun-based activities. Museums can be fun, shooting clays can be fun, but never the twain shall meet. Security at the V&A have my picture up in their office, by the way. Just in case….
“Bear in mind that you are not making music for your own pleasure, but for the pleasure of your audience”. – Richard Strauss
As much as I tend to choose tales that delight me, it is inherently delightful to also consider that others can share in such a delight. Let us consider the above quotation: rather than intending to deny the artist an ability to enjoy their own work, the composer Richard Strauss is cautioning against a purely self-serving motive for the production or practice of art. Careful consideration of your material is essential. But how does one choose tales based on a measure beyond “well, I really like it”?
The title to this piece is derived from author Chuck Palahniuk’s concept of a ‘good story’ – according to Chuck it should “…make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart”. When we consider the ‘sock and buskin’ masks that represent Drama (you know, the smiling and frowning masks that are universally understood to represent theatre), perhaps Chuck is on to something. Something ancient and archetypal. In our artform, storytelling in the oral tradition, the artform that is the forerunner to drama itself, it is usually down to the teller to engineer this desirable outcome. The tales themselves aren’t ours and can be delivered in a way that will not engender the response they deserve – to put it another way, the tales cannot tell themselves. It must therefore be the teller who extracts a laugh from the tales, to throw characters at the audience like shaving cream pies or to pull so tightly at their heart strings that it draws their tears.
Try reading, say, Lady Charlotte Guest’s excellent translation of the Welsh legend of Branwen ferch Llyr and laugh out loud. Or, indeed, cry. One must have an extremely unique (perhaps non-human) sense of humour, or latterly, be constantly on the verge of tears, to allow the dry, formal Victorian writing of this, and indeed most, written renditions of the legend to truly move you emotionally. Consideration of the themes and characters in the tale in abstract may get you there, but the prose seldom will. That is where we, the story-tellers, come in. The tale, as with most legends, was designed to be delivered by such people.
The rock band Grateful Dead described the role of the storyteller quite beautifully in the lyrics of their song “Terrapin Part 1” like this:
“The storyteller makes no choice. Soon you will not hear his voice. His job is to shed light, and not to master”.
Alongside this elucidation, we get an acid-rock tinged re-telling of the English folk ballad ‘The Lady of Carlisle’ during the song’s first part, where the characters enter the room as the tale is spun by the fireside. Jerry Garcia, like Chuck Palahniuk, is certainly on to something here. The motif described is not merely to highlight the vividness of the tales themselves but casts the teller as a conjurer who makes it manifest. An historian of folk traditions delivering a lecture on the same story won’t make such magic happen (unless they are able to skilfully engage in some storytelling…something very few academics have a flair for, in my experience). That, of course is not in the purview of their role. It is in ours. Indeed, it is our role entirely.
There is a quick measure one can use in considering material choice: the more ancient the tale, or the more it has been shared and re-told, the more likely it is to be of sufficient quality and warrant telling. That’s a pretty rough measure, but it tends to work quite well. It’s like the karaoke-lover picking “My Way” by Frank Sinatra or the busking guitarist playing “Wonderwall”; “you know ‘em, you love ‘em. The hits are the hits”. So how can we allow for a Ronald Opus to get in on the fun, given that he was ‘born’ in the 80’s?
If the tale doesn’t comport to this rule of thumb, we should consider that one can infer the aptness of such a tale based on observing category similarities with other, better-known tales. This is why to know stories is just as essential to performing them for storytellers.
You may also have heard the role of the storyteller described as “the vessel through which a tale flows”, or words to that effect. Consider then the tale as wine. If an inappropriate vessel is used, the wine will spoil, and you’ll end up serving vinegar to accompany the meal. The euphemism of the teller as a “vessel” may be taken to mean that they are to be passive, inert even, a mere device to transport contents, but the function of the vessel is not merely to dispense but also to preserve the quality of what is held within. If we consider “Who Killed Ronald Opus?”, the vessel is also tasked with enhancing the wine – so should we therefore aspire to be a smoked oak cask once used for Cognac when dealing with urban legend? Wouldn’t you love to be served one of those, maybe just to try it once? In this storyteller’s thirsty opinion, yes.
“I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage, and I'd be out there watching them”. – Ethel Merman
Considering this approach to practicing the artform, it may be easy to see why many performers (maybe many storytellers) tend to have inflated egos. “I had them in the palm of my hand” is an oft-repeated idiom, regularly perceived as being the inevitable expression of such an inflated ego. The idiom also engenders potent mental images for the person who hears them – the performer holding a miniaturised group of clapping people on their giant palm, a huge eye casting a hungry gaze to see if enough laughter or clapping is being produced, moments away from closing their fist and crushing them if the reaction does not satiate their greed. This is certainly how many employ the idiom.
There’s a seriously destructive problem highlighted by this conceptualisation, a problem I have perceived in many of my former colleagues in comedy and acting. A problem I have struggled through myself, in fact. Adulation from an audience, although not something that should be met with hostility, should not become a currency. Laughter, even more than an ovation, is less a currency and more a potent narcotic. You begin to chase it. You want it. You’ll consider doing anything for it. The same can be said for the good reviews, face-to-face praise, and pleas for autographs and photos.
In my experience of comedy and (minor) fame, these pitfalls are deep and full of alligators. It is easy to begin to use these as measures of personal worth, let alone professional quality; often the sole measure – you can see the danger inherent in this if such measures become scarce for the performer. It is certainly your responsibility as an artist to avoid such traps, and it is also your responsibility when you succumb to one.
Realising what governs such a tyranny is the first step in avoiding the ‘gators. It’s the audience, that is to say the faceless mass of laughing, jeering, clapping forms that, if one is deep in the artist’s’ equivalent to a narcotic-derived psychosis, that ushers forth your drug, lifts your arm and sends you off to paradise/hell. This occurs when one views and audience as the audience, a monolith to own and to worship. On recognising the destruction if you continue this pattern of behaviour and thought, you may be tempted to leave that world completely, to go ‘cold turkey’, so to speak. That may very well work in bringing a cessation of the problem, but you will no longer be a performer/artist. I think there is another, healthier way. It is to be found in how one perceives the aforementioned idiom itself.
The phrase “I had them in the palm of my hand”, when not intended as mere braggadocio, can be used healthily. Good for us as tellers, and for our audiences. The palm of the hand does not need to be a place to inject an adulation-derived drug or an awful place for an audience to sit, stared at by a clap-hungry giant on the stage. Indeed, it should be our aim to hold them there, make them comfortable and share what it is we do with them – the “palm of your hand” can be made a comfortable sitting room, a grand court in a magical palace, a terrifying wood full of hungry beasts, or a battlefield where glory and gory meet. The giant stature of the artist whose palm holds the audience should be gained by absorbing the source material, not the self-defined quality of their talent or fame.
Old Ethel got it right in the quotation above – to be a servant to your audience is not to be their self-captured slave. There may only be a fine line between hating them entirely and loving pathologically, but with adherence to the sober ideal of giving the tale it’s just telling, one can easily walk that line.
To put it in gastronomic terms (because I’m hungry right now), the tales hold all the ingredients, it is we who must put them together, mix them up, cook them and present them to our guests. Left untouched, the tale is merely an assortment of ingredients sitting on the counter. Cooked poorly, with the ingredients prepared badly and timings all out of whack, the meal is ruined. If the cook does everything right, but yaks on about how delicious everything is and opines that every previous meal has also been an unmitigated triumph, demanding that the guests keep giving a ‘chef’s kiss’ after every bite, many will be so put off that they never return, even if the food is good. There’s nothing sadder than a banquet with no guests – luckily for me, and all who love the story of poor Ronald Opus, the banquet Doctor Mills spoke at in 1987 was well-attended.