Beginning at the end: Dublin's Narrative Arts Club
Coilín Oh-Aissieux chuckles when I tell him my blog is called "Seanchaí." That kind of storytelling is exactly what he's trying to get away from with the Dublin-based Narrative Arts Club, of which he is a founding member.
Along with friends Ciaran McMahon and Gerry MacGregor, Coilín puts on a night of storytelling about once every couple months in Dublin. Only this is not your typical sit-down-by-the-fire type of Irish storytelling. This is something modern, perplexing and thoroughly engaging, which knows no boundaries and succumbs to few taboos.
At the most recent session, tellers shared stories of plane crashes, weekend-long benders and -- gulp -- even drug use. Yet those stories were tempered with more traditional tales, such as an Appalachian myth involving Cherokee Indians, and a Siberian tale in which a man travels to the land of the dead.
There was one particularly Irish story, but overall the evening had an international feel. Here in the capital, banshees and leprechauns don't cut it.
The Narrative Arts Club is about a year and a half old. With it, Coilín said he'd like to lift the stereotype of the Irish storyteller as a rustic old man in a hat and waistcoat. He wants take the other arts on with a new type of oral tradition that's invigorating and often directly provocative.
Listen to him explain his idea through the lens of Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" here.
This post is dedicated to Andy, Natalie & Summer Hudak
Comments
Thanks, Chad, for your kind comments and beautiful photographs.
I'd like to take the opportunity to provide some more details about yesterday evening's event. The following stories were performed:
Around the World (two brothers from Greenland) - Coilín Oh-Aissieux
The ABC of Camping - Ciarán McMahon
Travelling Gun (repossessed by the Rah) - Coilín
Garuda (sighted off the coast of Bali) - Gerry MacGregor
Mushroom Soup (the hazards of driving under the influence) - Coilín
Sux Races (the things we do for love) - Coilín
Over the Wall to the Trinity Ball - Richard Marsh
(BREAK)
Exuberance - Yvonne Young
Ripples (accident at the bottom of the North Sea) - Seán O'Donoghue
The Asoh Defence (perfect landing in the Pacific) - Denis
In Memory of Freddy - Miren Maialen
The Knapsack, the Hat and the Horn (a folktale about militarisation) - Ciarán
Runs Wild (Appalachian story about wolves) - Gerry
In the Land of the Dead (Yukaghir story) - Coilín
I look forward to more such evenings of freestyle storytelling.
Best,
Coilín.
Thanks again, Chad.
I'd like to clarify what this club is about, as I don’t think I managed to get the message across to you very clearly on Saturday night:
The Narrative Arts Club seeks to promote good storytelling for listeners of my generation and the next.
I would like the club to /compete/ with the other arts, such as stand-up comedy, conventional theatre, movies and the cult literary classics of our time, for the attentions of young urban Irish audiences.
Some of the stories we performed on Saturday night are intended to speak to the popular consciousness in the same way that books and films such as Trainspotting and Fight Club do. Also, some of our material could possibly be performed in a comedy club. In fact, some of it has been performed in comedy clubs, with a good response.
I wouldn’t have said that I want to “bring the other arts into the oral tradition”. I don’t think that’s really possible, as each medium can do something that no other medium can. The movies and the comedy clubs can do something that live storytelling can’t do, and vice-versa. The Narrative Arts Club must explore and exploit the potential of live storytelling to do things the movies and comedy clubs can’t do.
For example, the movies never make eye contact, and they never reply to friendly heckles, as we did on Saturday night.
By the way, did you notice the comparison with Flatliners? That was clear acknowledgement that the story about the sux races addressed the same kind of theme as a popular movie.
We can certainly take inspiration from other media. We can take bits of newspaper stories or movies and make live stories inspired by them, for example. But I wouldn’t call that bringing journalism or the cinema into the oral tradition.
I don’t think I want to “create a kind of hybrid” either. Storytelling is and probably always has been a hybrid, an inscrutable mixture of rumours, strange dreams, mistranslated legends, half-remembered history and deliberate lies. I love to mix stuff together to produce good stories, but there’s nothing new in that.
Also, I must dispute your statement that “there was nothing said of Ireland”. For example, my story about the recommissioned gun is a quintessentially Irish story to the effect that he who lives by the gun shall die by the gun. I offered this as an example of the kind of story that is out there waiting to be picked from a stranged in Dublin city centre by anybody who cares to listen. This is Dublin, capital of Ireland.
Similarly, Mushroom soup is a story that has got plenty to do with Ireland. You could say that that was a very traditional story, if you cared to broaden your understanding of Irish traditions.
In your travels, I hope you will keep your ears open to the vast diversity of stories there is out there. If you spend too much time listening to people who represent your preconceptions of Irish storytelling, you will miss out on much greater treasures.
Gerry has very kindly corrected me as regards the dialect used in Trainspotting:
"It is written in Edinburgh street vernacular, which is a mixture of Lowland Scots, Travellers' Cant and Edinburgh slang."
Keep well,
Coilín.
Keep well.
Coilín.
Hi Chad,
Just saw your blog - great photos and an insightful take on the evenings events. I know you're going home soon, but if you see Kila playing anywhere in Ireland before you head back I think you might enjoy the performance. Good luck with your project!
Cx