‘And Then What Happens?’ (Part III)

Editor’s Note: Click to read Part I, and to read Part II, to catch up on our exclusive series.

And then Kat Homan Soul’s canoe tipped.

Soul is a storyteller taking her tale to the next level, along with 10 classmates, under the guidance of Marc Unger and Rain Pryor during the five-week seminar, The Art of Comedic Storytelling.

Last week, Soul’s canoe hadn’t quite tipped before she had to step off the stage to battle her nerves.

This week, however, the class was treated to the entire tale.

“I went from basking in the sun with this hot guy, to flying head-first into the water,” said Soul, a White Hall resident, onstage. “And I came up, burst up out of the water like from a horror movie. My mascara was running, I looked like Alice Cooper.

"The life jackets were floating away, and our canoe paddles were floating away, and the boat was submerged, and I was cursing and yelling like a sailor.”

Pryor approved.

“This is about finding your specifics and really sticking with them,” she said, when Soul was finished. “Coming up from the water like a horror flick allows us to see that with you.”

Soul’s story has a happy ending. After she embarrassed her date by yelling for help rather than allowing him to save her, she said, “I thought this was it. You can’t emasculate a guy like this and ever expect to see him again. But I married him.”

Unger liked her ending.

“And then you married him. It was nice,” he said. “It was really nice. I think the way you did it was great. I think you touched me when you did it.”

Unger was more seduced by psychology, when Bryant McCray, of Windsor Mill, told his story.

“I woke up to find that I was actually snowed in,” McCray began. “Shouldn’t be a surprise in Buffalo, NY. But when I say snowed in, I mean literally, the snow was so high, we couldn’t even open the front door to get out to deliver papers.”

McCray, a teenager in his story, did not consider skipping his paper route.

“Was there ever a point in this story where you yourself were questioning why the hell you had to be so damn fastidious?” Unger asked. “I’m as fascinated by the psychology behind it. What drives you? What drives you through these snow-covered streets, going to houses, to people you barely even know?”

Unger counseled McCray to show the audience more of the story.

“Don’t tell us in the past tense,” Unger said. “Open your door, and see the snow. Take us through the streets.”

Vera Gabriel, a Baltimore resident, received the same direction after her tale of battling bed bugs.

“We’re going to want to see you attack,” Unger said. “I want to see more of your journey. I want to see more of those late nights. I want to hear in my head action music.”

Gabriel had ideas of her own. 

“I want to get people itching really badly,” said Gabriel, who had scratched herself a lot onstage to indicate the itchiness of bed bugs.

Pryor countered, “If you want us to itch, tell us the story of the bed bug. Don’t indicate. Don’t act.”

Noah Halle, of Pikesville, had no trouble getting a laugh when he told his tale about running to the bathroom at summer camp when he was a child.

“I am not one of those people who can wait,” said Halle, who’d been denied permission to leave the lunch tent by a camp counselor until the meal was over.

“I was running and stopping and gasping for air," he said. "I get to the top of this hill, and I can see my cabin in the distance, and I stopped, clenched my thighs … and my bowels released. It’s in my shorts, it’s on the trail, it’s in my shoes.”

Unger zeroed in on the explosive moment itself.

“That was the one time in the story where you were completely present tense,” he said. “And that’s what needs to happen beginning to end.”

Pryor said, “Take us on the journey, so we can see it with you, and experience it with you. Show us the different things that happened to you. We want to see that counselor, we need to see the clock ticking, we need to know your sphincter is ready to blow.”

Unger chided Halle for telling the whole story with a smile on his face. Bathroom humor aside, storytelling is an art.

“You tell the story like we’re all in on the joke. And we’re not all in on the joke. We’re strangers. We’re not just buddies who are hanging out,” Unger said. “Let the story carry your performance. When the moments call for a smile, then smile.”

You can continue reading Part IV .