In Whispers from the Walls Omnibus Theatre celebrates stories and their telling across different forms and genres. The theatre walls once housed books, and were a place where stories could live in readers’ imaginations. Omnibus is keeping this heritage alive.
Humans need stories. We are born into language and make stories with our first sounds. Narrative expresses something about our identity, and it seems that wherever there are people, stories will spring up. Stories are a way of understanding. But a story is nothing without a listener. Stories need an audience. The writer Umberto Eco, in his collection of essays Six walks in the fictional woods discusses how the reader is a collaborator in the writing process. Eco describes the “presence of the reader in the story” (Eco 1994:1) and how the reader’s engagement in the story is a vital act that co-creates the narrative.
For a storyteller, the listening audience is fundamental in creating both the performance and the story. As the teller unravels the thread of the tale, the listener holds the thread with their attention. The listener anticipates what is going to happen next, casts the story with people and situations that are close to them, and fills the story with their own emotional experiences and values. Each person hears a slightly different story as it resonates with their life. This emotional involvement feeds the teller. The stronger the listening, the more powerfully the teller can tease out the thread. The story is woven between teller and listener – an invisible weaving of images and emotions.
The listener seems to be in two places at once. In the outer world of the performance, and in the inner world created by the story. Although each listener might hear a slightly different story, this individual listening is sustained by the wider audience. Listeners become a larger ear that responds with a collective wave of exclamations, laughter, silence, clapping. Inside this group ear, the listener is free to enter the secret space of the inner ear. Here the listener can travel to the place where wishes are satisfied, forgotten things remembered, and sorrows spoken of. The collective ear and the personal ear, both feed the experience of listening and make it nourishing.
Umberto Eco believes that fiction is a hidden place we can visit through listening to or reading stories. In this fictional space we are able shape the known and the unknown. He writes that stories “give sense to the immensity of things, that happened, are happening or will happen, in the actual world.” (Eco 1994:87) By putting life’s events into a structure, stories can give meaning to endings, and bring courage and hope. By telling stories we can connect the events of our life and make a shape out of them. Whispers from the Walls invites you to co-create its performances through listening. Our stories might just lead you through the whorl of the ear and back to yourself!
Sally Pomme Clayton will be curating this month’s Engine Room, as well as performing family show The King With Dirty Feet and running her A Life On The Wind: Telling a Story For Absolute Beginners as part of Omnibus Theatre’s Whispers from the Walls season – grab your tickets HERE
