Black and Blue Storytelling at 27 steps brought me right out of my comfort zone. To be heading into Christchurch whilst stone cold sober and on my own on a Friday night after 10pm was a big thing for me - but there aren't that many opportunities to hear adult storytelling. In my excitement I hadn't really reflected on the name - black and blue storytelling in that some of the stories might be a bit risqué.
According to the host, Derek Flores aka 'The Unicorn', the aim of the evening was to conduct a social experiment to find "an inconvenient space and cram as many people as possible inside". It was hot, or as the Unicorn described it "toasty" and the vibe was becoming a lot more like hot yoga - we were achieving weightloss through storytelling - yay!
To add to the surreal vibe, Mitchell the bar tender circulated bills to the people seated and unable to get to the bar. It is virtually a story in itself that, at the moment of Ivan E. Coyote's introduction, Mitchell was trying to rest payment from them for Ivan's bourbon.
Ivan had a simple message for the crowd in "A Cautionary Tale". A tale involving a retro, blue polyester tuxedo, beer, ecstasy, air travel and inappropriate packing told with humour and panache. Don't drink beer. We laughed, empathised and cringed together.
This tale features in the book "Gender Failure" written with Rae Spoon, exploring their failure to fit into a gender binary world.
The Unicorn and Alice Canton wove an improvised tale that spun, as improvisation can into a surreal meander where the thread was almost lost until the Unicorn brought it all back together to a conclusion. The contrast between the crafted story and improvisation offered two very different oral narratives - a rare and welcome alternative offering in a literature festival programme.
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