The Kennesaw State University Tellers performed on campus at the Onyx Theatre in front of a small, intimate audience Friday night.
The Tellers are a group of students enrolled in Storytelling Practicum, a theater and performance studies class taught by Dr. Charles Parrot, who is in his sixth year of teaching the class. The workshop-style class meets once a week on Friday mornings. In order to enroll in the class, students must take Intro to Performance Studies and be handpicked from an audition.
Eleven students performed, each delivering his or her own monologue. Topics ranged from personal stories to historical retellings. Parrot said that this year’s performance featured more tragic and historical stories than in previous years. Some stories were lighthearted and comedic; some were deep and emotional. However, most of the stories were a combination of the two. Regardless, each story reflected the personality of its student.
Parrot works with his students on an individualized basis. One of his goals is to figure out “how to theatricalize their personalities,” he said. Parrot explained that while most theatrical performances are about actors fulfilling the director’s vision, his job is to be of service to his performers. Each Teller creates and performs his or her own story, not someone else’s.
Maddie Fay, a sophomore theater major specializing in design tech, points to the group’s academic diversity as one of its strengths.
“The group is more about personality than specificity,” Fay said.
Instead of focusing on students’ academic specialties, the program works with a wide range of theater students with a focus on bringing out personality traits.
Rachel Wansker, a senior theater and performance studies major, said she wanted to “create something that was my own.” Her story was about one of her ancestors who was convicted of a crime with little to no evidence shortly after immigrating to the United States. She used this platform to speak on the sexist discrimination that her relative faced in order to shed light on issues that are still prevalent in society today. She credits Parrot’s respect for his students and the troop’s overall support for each other as the fundamental reasons why the program is successful.
Connor Clifton, a sophomore in his first performance, told the comedic tale of a highly successful con artist who escaped prison multiple times by simply walking out of the facility. He said he was inspired by an online article and thought that more people needed to hear the story.
Lalia Cohen, a senior graduating in May, told a hilarious first kiss story in which she mistakenly called her date the wrong name twice.
Sarah Steele, another senior, detailed an account of a wreck she was in during the great “Snowpocalypse” of 2014. She wanted to tell a story about a transitional moment in her life, and the crash inspired her to change her life and go back to school.
“Stories make us feel like we’re not alone,” Parrot said in his introduction.
On a night when hundreds of people lost their lives in Paris, the KSU Tellers got up on stage and executed their craft. Sometimes art is just a form of entertainment. Other times. it is a distraction from the monotony of the everyday, or problems in one’s personal life. But there is the rare occasion when everyone grieves for the same reason, and the world feels like a lonely place. Friday was such a night, and the KSU Tellers got vulnerable, making the audience laugh, empathize, think and feel. Most importantly, they made sure nobody felt alone
