Google Meets and Zoom Performance. It's a New World

Well, like a lot of people, my work dried up. Boom. Stopped. No income. This, I believe is the same for any performing artist, and entertainer. It even effects the music, theatre, tv and film industries as studios and the like shut up shop during the COVID-19 lock-down.

Compared to the average actor, as a storyteller I don't need a script or director to do work, I can make stuff up on the fly. I don't need a stage, editor, sound crew. I have experience of doing a lot of this myself as I travel about the country, when the world is less pandemic!

I have been fortunate. I have set up my own very make-shift and somewhat chilly studio in my garage. There's no fancy or expensive gear, just a bunch of jimmied together lights, my old laptop, and some sheets and the backdrops I use when I travel around schools, colleges and libraries.

It doesn't look too bad when I broadcast. It sounds pretty good too. The garage has served as a 'play space' for the kids since we moved into the house, so it's had carpet pieces on the floor since we moved in, old chairs, a dilapidated karaoke machine, and as you can see, my record collection, and very old turntable.

I have already done a number of school presentations, and this weekend - starting tonight - I have a couple of events I am broadcasting live. One of this weekend's performances is an event for a now-cancelled festival I was supposed to travel to in Woodruff, South Carolina earlier this month. To keep the festival alive and in people's minds, the storytellers and producers got together to present a one hourish show, each of us performing for ten minutes, each of us broadcasting from our homes. Tonight, Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, I am doing three more performances (from my garage in isolation) for the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College, under their HopStop program.

So what's it like performing for an audience who is not there with you? Odd. Decidedly odd. I am feeling more nervous before an event than normal, but it is a different sort of nervousness. Before getting out in front of a live audience, one who is there to reach out and touch, if one was so inclined, there is an electric nervousness, one full of energy and vitality. The 'anxiety' before going live without a 'studio audience' feels, for me anyway, how I felt before sitting for an exam at high school! Not the same feeling at all.

If you make a rare mistake with a live, physical audience, you can play with it, because, as a storyteller, there is no real fourth wall. Or if there is you can easily break it. If you make a mistake when broadcasting live you don't see if the audience noticed or not, you can't see their reaction if they do notice it. You cannot respond, alter and correct. I mean, you can, but... You can't be as playful as you might have been.

Performing live as a storyteller, there is a flexibility to the performance, there is spontaneity, you feed from that audience. For me, there is a buzz, or natural high coming off the stage, or stepping away from 200 kids sitting on a gym floor. There's often an unscheduled Q & A afterwards, hand shaking, high-fives, the noise and excitement of people leaving, chatting to one another. You see people walking away smiling, laughing.

In my garage it is very different. It's a kind of sterile feeling. There's no one to engage with before the performance starts. When I look into the lens on my old laptop and say, "Hello! How is everyone today?" There's no 'visible/auditory' hello back. If you're doing a Facebook Live event you wonder if there is anyone watching. You know there is when there's a ping, or smiley face that wobbles up the screen, or someone posts a comment. On Google Meetings and Zoom you see a few faces on the side, but you wonder if they are able to engage and commit to the story you're telling, or if there are too many distractions in the house - is there a screaming baby, a FedEx delivery, someone that needs help with the at-home schooling. There's the concern for me that the internet might crash. And yet, I feel that I put more energy into a digital performance than a live one. I feel I have to overcome the portal I travel through into people's homes. Sometimes there's a pause between the stories where the audience on Zoom or Google Meetings can show their appreciation when the moderator or host opens the mics on the audience! For a moment there's a buzz, and then back to me in the garage and the sound of my own voice.

The performances I have thus far done, when it's over, have allowed for an on-line meet and greet, a Q & A and a quick chat with the host or moderator, then, click - leave the meeting. It's a good feeling that I come away with. There are smiles, positive comments, even - "we should do this again, it works really well." But then quickly and quietly I am in the garage turning off the equipment, rejoining the family upstairs. The high isn't there, but there is a sense of well-being and satisfaction. Not a self-congratulatory feeling, just a good feeling, a warm feeling.

Sometimes you get a glimpse into people's homes, and you might get a sense that some are struggling more than others during this time. I feel, I hope, in that brief moment of time I told the stories, those characters, those scenes, transported the listeners. The listeners who, like me, had to work a little harder to hear and see in their minds-eye those same scenes and characters, were taken out of their new normal and went somewhere with me to a place that offered hope, transformation and a bit of a giggle even for a brief moment, and they found some joy.

The Darkness of "Rinkrank", Grimm tale No. 196

I was recently reminded of a story I read a Long Time Ago. It never really appealed to me at the time, but on re-reading it, now, with 16 years of experience as a professional teller of tales, it has a very different sound to it.

The story of "Old Rinkrank" is tale No. 196 in the sixth edition of Grimm's Children's and Household Tales. It was collected by the brothers, found in Frisian Archiv von Ehrentraut - the archive of Ehrentraut.

The basic story is this: King has a glass mountain 'created.' Anyone wishing to marry his daughter has to cross the mountain, and if they fail, they lose their heads. A young man wants to marry said princess, who goes with him to help. She falls through the mountain herself and vanishes as it seals up. Young man goes back to king. King 'brings down' glass mountain. Girl finds herself in the bowels of the earth confronted by an old man with a long grey beard. He makes her his slave and takes her to his cave home/dwelling. Daily he leaves the cave-home climbing a ladder to the top world, returning with gold and silver. This is Rinkrank. When the princess becomes old, he tells her his name and names her Mother Mansrot. She has enough and plans her own escape. She lays a trap for him and locks his beard in a window. He eventually tells her where the ladder is, which she finds. She climbs up the ladder and with a string she has with her, attached at the other end to the window, releases Rinkrank from the trap. Princess goes home, tells her father the king, who digs up the underground lair, and kills Old Rinkrank. Princess marries her sweetheart who is still waiting on her and all live Happily Ever After.

This, to me, is a very different and sinister if not outright dark fairy tale, which I recently reacquainted with through the legendary Gwenda Ledbetter. When I re-read it today, I find a story unlike many others. To begin with the princess is old when she gets married. She rescues herself. She is renamed by her captor, who appears to only reveal his name years later when she is grey.

Let’s dig in.

Looking deeply into Old Rinkrank, if the king has the glass mountain made, he would have known that the mountain would open up and reseal itself. Did he plan to have his daughter vanish, or was the plan that his daughter would never marry? Was the mountain designed to capture the suitors, who would fall through the magical glass, never to be seen again? The king, then, would not have to marry his daughter off. If she were married there was always the possibility that the king would lose his kingdom. Kings and queens were often overthrown or murdered back then. Glass is a liquid, and quite often liquid is seen as representing love - Cups in Tarot etc.. Is the king freezing the love of his daughter as the glass mountain? The princess obviously loves this suitor (not a prince, or if he is, it is not specified) as she says she will go with him to help him succeed. The king does not object, so does he even know? Does she sneak off in secret to assist her true love?

Did the king know of the old man, Rinkrank? Again, he should if he had had the mountain built. Was the old man Rinkrank there to 'take care of' any falling suitor? Daily, Rinkrank goes to collect gold and silver. Is this his promised payment from the king in return for his deadly services? With the princess captured, is the payment now a bribe or ransom?

The king, frightened that the truth might come out, brings down the glass mountain. After all, neither he nor the suitor go in search of the princess. And Rinkrank hiding in his underground cave dwelling/home, collects the money still, presumably not giving away the secret to the king's daughter. She is made a servant, a slave to Rinkrank. The old man gives her the choice of slavery or death. She picks for the former and cleans and cooks for him. Everyday Rinkrank leaves, climbing a giant ladder to the above ground. He pulls this out of his pocket. Once up there he pulls the ladder after him only to return with the gold and silver.

For years she works for Rinkrank, and when she is grey and old, he names her Mother Manrot, and tells her his name. Bear in mind these stories are old and life expectancy was not as it is today. The king might have made it to fifty, so, if he had her when he was sixteen to eighteen years of age, not uncommon then, she would be around thirty years old now in the story, possibly. Why name her now? Did he feel he is losing his power over her and wants to strengthen that grip? The names are not kind nicknames but harsh names. Does Rinkrank smell? Mother Manrot - has she become rotten herself, or so ugly her appearance makes him rot? This is not important. Naming things - oneself or others - is powerful; that is what is important, and that she is there a long time before he names her and reveals his name. If it is because he feels his grip over her is weakening, and the naming will stop this, it backfires! It is at this point she decides to escape.

A colleague of mine, Charles Kiernan pondered on a possible Bruno Bettelheim explanation… The conflict and struggle between Mother Mansrot and Old Rinkrank reflects the internal struggle of an individual in whom the authoritarian superego (Rinkrank) has subjugated the id (the princess’s wants and desires) until the ego (in a burst of tenacity) releases the superego’s stranglehold and restores equilibrium, allowing the individual to reintegrate their personality.

Kiernan does not think this is the real reason. But the naming has to be the catalyst that has her finish her chores and then set a trap for Old man Rinkrank. She locks up the house, doors and all but one window - a small window which she leaves open and attaches a string to. She goes to another part of the house. Rinkrank arrives home and demands to be let in. The princess refuses. He finds the open window and puts his beard through planning on following, but the princess yanks on the string which traps his beard. He pulls and tugs but she will not let him free until he gives up where he keeps the ladder. We know from earlier in the tale that it is kept in his pocket, and he pulls it up after him once he has ascended. There must be another, as he admits it is hidden with the treasure. She finds it, climbs it, adds to the length of string until she is at the top and only then frees Rinkrank.

The princess, leaving Rinkrank to nurse his beard, runs off back to her castle. Her father and suitor are still alive and there waiting for her. The king immediately acts. The king has the old man killed - to keep his treachery concealed, I presume. They take the money, and the princess and her suitor are married -  and they All Live Happily Ever After.

This is, or could be, a very duplicitous story. The king is a complete tyrant, at least from this point of view. What are the king and the suitor doing all this time? Presumably the marriage would have taken place when she was sixteen at the latest, if this is a very old story, making her absence last fourteen years. If the plan was to be rid of the princess all along, and the suitor was in on this, why did they get married? Maybe the suitor figured out what happened, sent her a message, and he and the princess killed the king as soon as they could. This story provokes so many questions and gets me all excited about all the possible answers, and which ones are most relevant for today's audience.

Old Rinkrank is interesting and, if taken from this point of view, very dark indeed! I love it. I might, of course, be reading way too much into the story. But it is fun to ponder on these things.

What would you have the princess do? Is the suitor as much as a tyrant as the king? Is the story pure entertainment, the sort of Michael Creighton, Lisa Unger, Gillian Flynn, or Patterson story of it’s time? What are your thoughts? How would you tackle the story?

Curiously,

Simon