By Rachel Sandler
In the vein of “The Moth Radio Hour,” Northern Virginia-based storytelling troupe Better Said Than Done has been hosting monthly storytelling shows since 2011. While storytelling shows are nothing new (The Moth, for example, was founded in 1997), Better Said Than Done is creating an entirely new live storytelling format: choose your own adventure.
Previously, “choose your own adventure” was a literary tool reserved for fiction. Now, Better Said Than Done is applying this same device to a different type of story in a live setting.
What makes storytelling shows different from, say, a book reading or a comedy show is that every story told on stage is personal and true. The “choose your own adventure” event will stay true to form in this sense. What will change, however, is that the audience will pick which stories they want to hear and how those stories can be interpreted.
Jessica Robinson, founder of Better Said Than Done, gives this example: “My story is about a trip to Montana where I was unsure if I was pregnant. The trip itself was fairly disastrous, and so was the pregnancy. So the audience gets to choose at the beginning if they want to hear more about this ‘maybe’ pregnancy or if they want to hear more about the disastrous trip Montana, not involving the pregnancy.”
Within one story, the audience will also choose an optional ending. Because each story has to remain true, these endings will not change the plot or the narrative of the story itself. Rather, these endings will offer two different interpretations.
Robinson, again, gives an example: “You might interpret the end of a dating story as, ‘Well, I learned from my mistakes and have since never dated a guy like that again,’ or you might interpret the end of the same story as, ‘I will always miss him and love him, and he broke my heart, but since then I’ve moved on a married a wonderful man.’”
Six experienced storytellers from the region are slated to tell their own “choose your own adventure” stories at Auld Shebeen pub in Fairfax, where the group hosts most of its monthly storytelling events.
Better Said Than Done presents “Choose Your Own Adventure”
Aug. 29, 7 p.m.
The Auld Shebeen,
3971 Chain Bridge Rd, Fairfax, 22030
703-293-9600
Tickets: $10
