This year’s Gotham Storytelling Festival at Frigid New York showcased a range of shows, and I opted to review a selection of those available to livestream – my thanks for access to recordings of these after they were made available to public audiences.
Curated for 2023 by Brad Lawrence, the Festival brought together a diverse set of storytellers to deliver the shows they did best.
For more details, go here.
Sighted People Suck!
“Writer and performer Leona Godin has lived on pretty much every notch of the sight-blindness continuum and has been on all kinds of stages. From presenting animals to other kids at the San Francisco Zoo, to banging drums in a New Orleans punk band, to finding love and her (decisively not-angelic) blind voice in an East Village basement theater open mic, she’s learned a lot.
Like how to handle a boa constrictor, play the accordion, have Blind Pride in an ocularcentric world, land a TV commercial and wield a white cane with authority while wearing high-heel boots (OK, maybe she’s still working on that one). Most importantly, she’s learned the hard-fought lesson that blindness isn’t really the problem. It’s just that sighted people kind of suck!”
Her show brings her lived experience and story to the stage, giving insight into what it is like to be able to see without seeing, to deal with people’s curiosity when they ask “were you born blind”, and in the way sighted people retain a dismissive attitude to visual impairment.
As both a gifted performer and advocate for the blind community, Godin is a confident and unassuming storyteller who makes her hour-long show an interesting experience for both sighted and visually impaired audiences.
It has to be said that in digital format the sound is extremely poor and the shows deserve some form of captioning to do them justice, but as Godin is such a talented racounteur, you can get past these limitations if you whack the volume up.
These stories are as funny as they are set in reality, and underline, if it is really needed, those those with impairments have the same issues, preoccupations, and failures as the rest of us in jobs, living spaces, and relationships.
Did I mention there was music, too?
Find out more about Leona Godin at her website.
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Pearl Necklace: A Gay Sexcapade
“Writer-performer Jamie Brickhouse’s sex life gives new meaning to the term parks and recreation as he takes audiences on a hilarious, bawdy, and touching romp through his amorous adventures in bathrooms, beaches, bookstores, and appallingly decorated apartments.
Called “a natural raconteur” by the Washington Post, this 5-time Moth champion’s darkly comic stories of his sybaritic journey reveal his struggle to shed shame and guilt, discover self-acceptance, and find one true love.”
Pearl Necklace is funny, sharp, and camp, as it reflects on Jamie’s life from his schoolboy fantasies in 1982 through to heavily detailed and recalled moments of congress and copulation.
It’s a hugely enjoyable and hysterical romp through a personal tale delivered with a bawdy panache and a naughty sense of the comic laced with a layer of black and a realistic dose of shame and stigma.
This runs around 75 minutes which gives the show room to breathe and develop, and Brickhouse connects on every level with his audience, even as we sometimes give way to slightly uncomfortable laughter.
From the PE shower to the library (“for knowledge, both cerebral and carnal”), young Jamie finds his interest and intrigue perfectly satisfied, and starts to accept his identity as a young gay man.
Viewed in digital format, the visual and sound elements are absolutely fine on this recording, which adds to the ability to follow the story and enjoy the performance completely.
Brickhouse brings each character to life and makes each encounter real and immediate, with a wild sense of wordplay, as he navigates the lure of getting laid and the longing to be in love.
Find out more about Jamie Brickhouse at his website.
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