Life stories

As a creative facilitator working in drama and creative writing with a diverse mix of community groups, I recognise the importance of stories in all of our lives. The ways in which we explore, manipulate and extend those narratives is fundamental to our wellbeing. It is not simply an artistic medium; it is a life-line.

I work with a number of groups who are pushed to the periphery, inhabiting a space beyond the societal centre, such as young refugees (with Attic Theatre Company), women who experience mental distress (for CoolTan Arts), and addicts in recovery (for a Crime Reduction Initiative), to name just a few. When I enter their space to facilitate a workshop, I am, inevitability, entering into their life-narratives. For some I hope the work punctuates, provides a hiatus, starts a new paragraph (or if we’re lucky a chapter), turns a page…extends a metaphor. We might shift the story a bit, or give them space to write a new one: for those in the margins, the arts can facilitate the journey from beyond centre-page to centre-stage.

The social importance of storytelling, and its symbiotic relationship with cultural heritage, is neither a new nor an especially provocative topic. From ‘Beowulf’ to ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, we can all recognise the importance of sharing community narratives – both communities of location and communities of interest. It is more than the thread that binds us together; it is an umbilical-like rope. Storytelling, and the told stories all around us, can both help us in our understanding of who we are and make us feel less alone. But if we move on to thinking about autobiographical storytelling, the benefits to personal and societal wellbeing are particularly clear. Deidre Heddon(1) discusses the opportunity that autobiographical performance offers to those who are marginalised, to “talk out, talk back, talk otherwise” and to “engage with the pressing matters of the present which relate to equality, to justice, to citizenship, to human rights” – integral to the well-being agenda. Indeed, autobiographical performance not only highlights the potential for sharing otherwise silent narratives with the community, but can also provide a vehicle for self-examination. Telling an audience our story necessitates self-reflection and demands self-selection on which parts we decide to disclose. It also provides the opportunity to analyse our life as a continuous journey, rather than reflecting on events in isolation; through this it may be possible to identify patterns in our behaviour, and whether there is a dominant narrative that drives us. We can thus gain insight into our own lives.

The power of self-constructed narratives has been recognised as crucial to the construction of our own identity; in fact psychologist, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks has stated: “It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’ and that this narrative is us, our identities”.(2) If we are aware that we understand the world and our self through narrative, then it becomes easier to see our identity as fluid, rather than fixed and inflexible; this could give us a greater degree of control over our perceptions of the world, as autonomous subjects who can mould the stories we tell of ourselves. This is even before we consider entering the world of fictitious performance, where we experiment with role and metaphor, where we can take on a new character with a tilt of the head, and relay stories miles away from our lived reality, yet which we still feel could be about us. Or don’t, and enjoy the liberation of that. Through story we can take amazing journeys. Through story we can also come home.