INTERVIEW: Gotham Storytelling Festival returns for 11th year
Photo: The Gotham Storytelling Festival features a performance of Annie and Michele Get REAL, written and performed by Michele Carlo and Annie Tan. Photo courtesy of the artists / Provided by Emily Owens PR with permission.
The Gotham Storytelling Festival has been going strong for more than a decade. This year’s rendition, headed by festival curator Erez Ziv, continues performances through Nov. 8 at the Kraine Theater in New York City. For newcomers and veterans alike, the festival is a celebration of the storytelling art form, with performers offering monologues that are comedic, dramatic and everything in between.
This year’s festival includes Mike Lemme: The Roach (Interlude), which is about Lemme preparing for a high-stakes job; A/S/L by Andrew McGill, which is about a 14-year-old boy venturing on the internet; and Annie and Michele Get REAL by Michele Carlo and Annie Tan, which is about connecting with one’s parents and “growing up,” according to press notes.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Ziv about this year’s Gotham Storytelling Festival, which is presented annually by FRIGID New York. Ziv is the managing artistic director of FRIGID New York and an Obie Award winner. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How do you choose the selections for the festival?
This festival is an invitation festival. We don’t take applications. We just invite the best storytellers we know and hope they say yes. This year we have one of the founders of the festival, Seth Lind, joining us for the first time in 10 years. We have a storyteller we only first met this year, and we have a few that we met in an entirely non-storytelling context.
What qualities make a good storyteller?
If they can keep your attention for a while with no props or costumes, and in their own words, then they have what is called for. If they can pull you in and make you feel something along the way, they are good.
Do you believe some of the pieces offer snapshots of life and society in 2022?
I would say they mostly provide snapshots of society late in the last century and early in this one, thru the prism of a 2020’s society.
For first-time audience members, what’s a good play/story to begin with this year?
People love to see themselves in stories, so if you have been around the block a few times, come see Funny Never Gets Old. If you are a man that first started learnng about sex as a teenage boy on the itnernet, come see A/S/L. Were you in the school band? Come see I Could Die Now. Did you grow up a child of immigrants in NYC, come see Annie and Michele Get RAL. If you are from Canada, or like to laugh until it hurts, come see Hutch NYC. If you believe in dreams, then this Mike Lemme show and every Mike Lemme show is for you. And if you have a fascination with the afterlife, then come see my favorite storytelling show we have ever presented here, Told: Resurrection.
When did you first fall in love with theater?
I don’t know if I ever fell in love with theater. Oftentimes I enjoy the audience reactions a lot more than I actually enjoy the work on stage. What I fell in love with, that we can do exceedingly well in small NYC venues like ours, is doing the RnD work of American theater — finding and nurturing seedlings that 20-30 years later will drive and represent and expand the form.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Gotham Storytelling Festival, curated by Erez Ziv, continues through Nov. 8 at the Kraine Theater in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
