storytelling

Swapping storytelling stories with First Person Arts' VIP raconteurs

"One time, people laughed for 35 seconds."

SHOW, DON'T TELL: (L-R) Kitty Hailey, Steve Clark and Marjorie Winther say the FPA community is "a family."
Maria Pouchnikova

Kitty Hailey is a good storyteller. But she wouldn’t need to be for people to be enthralled by what’s happened in her career and life. 

“In real life, I am a professional investigator,” she said at a First Person Arts (FPA) StorySlam on March 26, 2013. The night’s theme was “Virtue and Vice,” and Hailey wove an amusing yarn about following a lawyer whose church lady wife suspected him of infidelity.

Turns out the church lady was shacking up in a motel with a mystery gentleman of her own. 

But Hailey and a couple of her companions in the quest to tell the best stories in Philadelphia — Steve Clark and Marjorie Winther — don’t need to lead lives of intrigue to spin a good story. 

They say they just need to reach others on some real, human level — people relate to mistakes, to faux pas, even bumbling idiocy. 

“I can’t get up there and say I’ve recovered 26 children in my career and that makes me special,” Hailey says. “But I can tell the story about one where I fucked up.” 

Though the three elaborate on their various pratfalls, they’re winners in the Philadelphia live storytelling community.

Clark is the only storyteller to have ever won two Grand Slams, the FPA season-end event where the previous Slams’ winners compete for the ultimate title. He’s won three other FPA Slams, too.

Winther won the first Slam she ever did, earning 10/10 in every judging category. She’s also won the “audience favorite” title twice, as well as two other FPA Slams.

Hailey’s won the “Virtue and Vice” Slam, as well as a Philadelphia The Moth StorySLAM, and has also been an FPA audience favorite. 

This is a side gig for them, to be sure. Hailey’s a PI who’s written books on industry ethics; Winther is a former science teacher who leads professional workshops and does corporate training; Clark teaches sixth grade at the DePaul Catholic School. 

Even with their success stats, the three agree it’s not all that common.

“Winning is so rare, you can’t even worry about it,” Clark says. 

Winther adds, “You just talk about what you wanna talk about.” 

What they want to talk about, much of the time, is the relatable craziness of simply being a person.

“It was all about my romantic failures, in the form of an Irish drinking song,” Clark says of the Slam he bombed hardest. “The only reaction I heard from the audience, it’s Marjorie going, [enormous groan], like, ‘That sucks so bad for you,’” he says as Winther giggles. He later reworked it into a story that won a Grand Slam. 

That’s a theme with these three — personal failures turned into triumphs. 

“Well, my life fell apart,” Winther says, with surprisingly contagious laughter, of how she got into StorySlams. “My marriage broke up in a big blaze … my husband went to prison, it was about visiting him.” She ended up telling the story of the implosion at the Slam where she won all 10s.  

“I do [that] every week!” Hailey chimes in about visiting prisons, for her work as a PI. 

The two then launch into a commiserating exchange about not being able to wear bras with underwire through the prison metal detector. People have to make emergency undergarment runs to Kmart to comply with a prison sign reading,  “Undergarments must be worn.” “How can they police that?” a bemused Clark wonders.

Hailey talks about reading boring books to her younger sister when they were kids, so she made up a Nancy Drew-ish (appropriate, considering) alter ego called “Stony Lake” to make the stories more interesting. This makes Winther howl with laughter. She calls Hailey “Stony” for the rest of the afternoon. 

Clark says, “I think Marjorie and Kitty being as good as they are challenges me to be a better writer ... if you’re going to be competing against them … they’re really good at this. You're happy when they win.”

At that, Hailey lightly touches Clark’s arm and almost silently says, “thank you,” just as Winther explodes with, “Can I just say how much that I hate that it’s a competition?” 

Winther, for one, gushes over how warm and nonjudgmental FPA StorySlams are. She compares them to her past in standup comedy, though she admits it’s been nearly eight years and she doesn’t know the scene now.

“It was horrible,” she says. “It was all men, they were ‘edgy’ men who liked to talk about … ‘spooge’ or whatever.”

“Splooge,” Clark politely offers. 

But FPA Slams, Winther says, are very accepting. 

“I give 100 percent credit to Jamie [J. Brunson, FPA’s executive director]. She makes everybody feel like she’s glad they exist in the world. That spirit permeates First Person Arts.” 

It's true — at a Grand Slam last year, a storyteller told a rather tasteless account of an involvement with a so-called "tranny." Brunson took the stage immediately afterward to say words to the effect of, "We accept everyone, we love you for who you are, everyone is welcome here."

So what’s it like being not only repeat storytellers, but repeat winners? They’ve learned a lot.

“You can’t go first,” Clark says, and Hailey and Winther agree. 

“If you do a great story first, you can’t get higher than an 8, because [the judges] don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Winther says. 

She prepares, she says, by writing her story down. So does Clark. Hailey says she wings it.

The timing, they say, presents issues. Each FPA storyteller has five minutes.

“I’ve found that like 800 words is five minutes,” Winther says, “But really it’s not — one time people laughed for 35 straight seconds. That’s like 10 percent of your time!” 

The very definition of a great problem to have. 

As for not-so-great storytellers, they each point to a damning action: Clark says bragging. Hailey says rambling. Winther says self-deprecation that’s too deliberate. 

Asked if anyone’s heard a Slam story that they thought was bullshit, Clark jokes, “Most of Marjorie’s.” 

Winther does have a quotation from a friend that she holds onto: “The minute you try to impress or look good, you will die a humiliating death.” 

All three are quick to answer why they do this — why, week after week, with no guarantee of winning, or cash, with no guarantee of even being called onstage, do they partake in the Slams? 

“When I go to L’Etage or World Café Live, I walk in and I’m genuinely happy to see people,” Hailey says. “I mean seriously, Steve [Clark] will sit at a table with me … he is less than half my age. That’s cool. A group of guys saw me sitting by myself [at a Slam] and said, 'Hey Kitty, come have a drink.' It’s acceptance.” 

“I think as a culture, we are suffering from alienation,” Winther says. “This is a place where people connect. The stories that make people happy are ones where [you think], ‘Oh my God, my mother was that way, too.’”

FPA's Brunson agrees. 

"When a good story is told, the audience takes a journey with the storyteller all the way to the end. They cheer, cry and laugh with them. And when the story is over everyone feels connected," she writes in an email. 

And what do the storytellers hope audience members might be thinking when they’re onstage?

“Nothing. I want them to be paying attention,” Hailey says. 

Clark explains, “I would want people to think that there’s some work that’s put into it, that it’s not, like, easy to do, but that they can do it, too.” 

As for Winther?

“I want them all to be in love with me,” she says. 

The 14th StorySlam season begins with the theme “Family Matters,” Mon., Dec. 8, 8:30 p.m., $10, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., firstpersonarts.org.