Changing Normal: The Storyteller as Culture Bearer, Researcher, and Change Agent

Abstract

In Changing Skins: Folktales about Gender, Identity and Humanity, Milbre Burch challenges the binary construction of gender, advocating for gender fluidity in the place of gender dichotomy. Performed during the 2013 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, Changing Skins is refreshingly brave in terms of its contemporary content and dynamic form when compared to typical per- formances for the festival audience. The form matches the content: stories about gender fluidity are presented with genre fluidity.Burch defines Changing Skins as "performed research," a blending of platform storytelling and research. While research is common in preparation for telling stories, the research and researcher are rarely the focus of the storytelling event. Likewise, in the world of research, traditional stories are rarely considered valid, factual data. Research is based on logical, analytical thinking. Story is based on narrative, metaphorical thinking. The storyteller asks you to suspend your disbelief, the researcher asks you to address your belief.As "performed research," Changing Skins is not a treatise, fixed and didactic, but rather an ongoing search for answers to a contemporary social issue. From the Middle French of the fifteenth century, "research" means "the act of searching closely." As a verb, "to research" is "to seek out, search closely." The act of research is inherently a quest. Burch's research is the narrative through line that ignites the dramatic action of the piece, and Milbre Burch, as "Milbre-the-Researcher," is the questing hero.Changing Skins was performed at the International Storytelling Center theatre, an intimate, ninety-five-seat theatre with a modified thrust stage and shallow proscenium providing offstage areas to the right and left. Upon entering the theatre, we knew we were in for something different. Framed photographs of gender-bending youth were displayed from the aisles to the stage, where they defined a semicircular playing space. Burch entered from the wings carrying her script, walked to center stage, and announced to the audience that this is a work in progress. There had not been time to adjust her blocking to the stage, and a mistake might trip up the text. What we will experience is ongoing research, and we shouldn't miss a word. With that, she placed the script downstage center for her reference, if needed. Although she did not refer to the text again, this simple gesture broke the theatrical fourth wall and invited the audience into her process. We were on this journey with her and a work in progress became an adventure. According to Burch, "The script was present as a Brechtian reminder that research and script development are ongoing, living processes."At the top of the show, Burch questioned "the mechanisms of cultural bias that pit men and women against one another and ostracize anyone who exists in the liminal-ambiguous-spaces in between those designations." She acknowledged the lens through which she approaches this research, using personal narrative to do so, setting up the stakes for her character. The format is crucial to how the content will be perceived. Burch's choices created an environment conducive to changing minds.Peter Alsop's "It's Only a Wee Wee" was a playful introduction to the topic of gender construction. Burch entered the stage for the last verse and invited the audience to sing along:It's only a wee wee so what's all the fuss?It's only a wee wee so why do you watch?It's only a wee wee and everyone's got one.There's more to life than your crotch!Burch's opening direct address picked up where the song left off:When a child is born, what is the first question anyone asks: Is it a boy or a girl? From that accident of anatomy, everything else about a human being's life begins to be directed. . . . Before you can make your mark in the world . . . you are judged by what's between your legs-something most people never see. …