Donna Lubow, Short Story Theatre creator joined us this week. She has uniquely empowered people to tell their stories to a live audience. This is all done in a cafe-style place where people come to listen to other's stories. The stories a 10 to 12 minutes long to hold the attention of the audience and they can only be true stories. Donna has impacted many peoples live, another episode you don't want to miss.
Guest Co-host: Bonnie Shay: Bonnie@mariposaphotoorganizing.com
Bonnie's Website: https://mariposaphotoorganizing.com/
Donna Lubow: dramadonna@aol.com
Donna's Website: https://www.shortstorytheatre.com/
Transcription:
Kris Parsons00:02
Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:16
Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. And one of the reasons I'm lucky as I'm sitting here in the podcast studios at wildfire podcasts in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I have an engineer here, Taylor, who just takes care of everything. So I don't have to think about any of this stuff that goes on in the background. So uh, thanks, Taylor for being you. And thanks for being here. And today, our guest is a really interesting Young lady, her name is Donna Lubow. And we're gonna bring her on in a couple minutes. But she's going to talk about storytelling in a unique way. And but before we bring her on, let me kind of refresh everybody's memory that the name of our program is changing the rules. And the reason that we believe in changing the rules is that we have too many of them. We're given rules by our parents, by our jobs, by our church, by our schools. And sooner or later, they just kind of start to clutter our lives. And one of the interesting things is if you want to live your own life, you have to live by your own rules. We do need rules, but we need to make sure that the rules are our rules. And you're going to see here that both Bonnie and Donna who our guest today, both do adjust the rules to suit them, and make them work for them. So our guest today, first of all, our co-host is Bonnie Shay. And Bonnie has been with us a number of times she's been the co-host for the month of July. And Bonnie, thank you so much for doing all of this for us. And she's been a guest on several podcasts in her own right. So, Bonnie, good morning. Good morning, Ray. And you're going to introduce us to Donna. So why don't you do that? And then we'll get into this really good stuff that we have to talk about today.
Bonnie Shay02:13
Absolutely. So I want to sort of set the stage on how and no pun intended set the stage on how I met Donna. I met her when I attended her short story theater about six years ago, right near my house, literally down the block from my house, and I loved the event. And during her emceeing of the event, she gives out a request to everybody in the audience asking for future storytellers. And you need to understand her short story theater is not for professional storytellers. She believes everyone has a story to tell. So she has given the opportunity to so many people to tell a story over the years that she's had this theater. So I took it, I took up the opportunity. And I would have to say the experience, the telling my own story was life-changing for me without a doubt. So when I chose the theme of our podcast Ray as co-host, the theme was storytelling, I immediately said, I would love to have Donna on as a guest because like you say she has a unique way to weave storytelling into people's lives. And I would love to have her as a guest. So luckily, she was available. And knows she's going to have some fun. So Donna, thank you for joining us. I'm so happy that we have you here. And I'd love to just let's get off the bat. Let's have you share your story, please have your journey to what brought you to establish the short story theatre.
Donna Lubow03:50
Okay, hello, Bonnie. And hello, Ray. I'm very happy to be here. And I think that my path was kind of circuitous. But I think because I started out as an editor, and a writer, and then became an English teacher. Speech and English teacher and then eventually went on to get a theater degree. It kind of all led up to this storytelling, I think because it takes in both the written word and the spoken word. And so it has it certainly has been a pleasure working with you, Bonnie, and knowing that in some way that I enhanced your life because I think that's what this is all about. I think part of the reason that we started this is that we did want to give people in the neighborhood an opportunity to tell stories, and I mean, yes, we do have some actors. And we do have some professional storytellers on occasion. But most of the people that we have are people that are just from a neighborhood and have different backgrounds, whether they're doctors, dentists, advertising people, we get A lot of people from advertising and business people and so on. But, you know, I think that you know, my background lends itself to this. And, hopefully, it's something that we can continue after the pandemic is over. And that's my hope.
Ray Loewe05:18
You know, Donna, I know you started early in your career as a copywriter. Yes. And, you know, I had, we had somebody else that we interviewed who started as a copywriter. And she was telling her that her father never forgave her because she went through all this schooling, only to be schooled into being able to write in complete sentences.
Donna Lubow05:42
Well, I certainly had to learn how to write strange things like trash cans, because I wrote catalog copy for Montgomery Ward's, I don't know if anybody remembers that company, it's long gone. But that's kind of what I did. So and I had to always keep it very brief for the catalog. So I had a certain amount of space to write that copy. I don't think my parents ever even gave it a thought, frankly, I think they were just happy that I had a job.
Ray Loewe06:09
A job is a job. But you started with copywriting? Then you taught school? And would give us a quick summary of your school teaching experience here. What grades did you teach? uh, what subjects did you teach?
Donna Lubow06:24
I taught, my main job was as a high school English teacher and I taught for and then sophomores, and I taught both speech and English. And, you know, basically, I was one of my strong areas was composition. And I did have, I was kind of a composition Chair of the Department for a while. And that, you know, I was always interested in writing. And because before that, I'd also been an editor for a dental magazine, which was a very difficult job, because I had a lot of people sending in from foreign countries, and I had to basically put their words into perfect English if I could. But anyway, back to teaching. And then I also taught sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. For part-time, and that was a whole different kind of experience with teaching, but, you know, basically, composition was my strength, teaching that and of course, literature, I'll never forget that I, taught Silas Marner. And, and, you know, the great expectations and things like that. And so, you know, that literature background, I think also helped me, eventually, in learning how to tell stories.
Ray Loewe07:38
Yeah, I think it kind of sets you up for what you're doing now. And I also understand that during the course of your life, you started a couple of community theaters. You're actively involved in neighborhood newsletters and things like that. So you're a person who's out in your community. And it's, I don't know that it's a natural step to start a storytelling cafe, but it certainly is not out of character for you.
08:05
No, and the theater did. A lot of the, you know, the storytellers that tell stories for us have come from that theater background. They're actors that I've worked with, but they're not professional actors are primarily amateur actors. I did work for a couple of professional theatres thrown in there. But the ones that I actually started on my own, I got to know a lot of people in the neighborhood. And, you know, so I would say that, you know, out of, I think we have about, we have had about 70 storytellers over the course of the past several years. And I'd say a good 20 of those people have been in place that I've seen or directed or in on, there's another group that comes from the neighborhood. And, you know, frankly, every time I met somebody, whether it was my dentist or you know, somebody just at a grocery store, I'd say to them, you know, I'm running this storytelling event, and maybe you have a story I'd like to tell honestly got my dentist has told stories three times now. And so when I when I'm sitting in his chair, it's really a lot of fun because it starts telling these stories, and I can't answer him, but
Ray Loewe09:17
Evil dentists, I know. They're all alike right?
Donna Lubow09:20
He likes to tell jokes, but he's also a pretty good storyteller. But you can't laugh when your mouth is open with the dentist, you know, so. So a lot of them, they're also some authors I've known and I've got a couple people who have published authors that have, you know, come to us, they're not necessarily you know, oral storytellers, but they know how to at least put a story together and we kind of give them hints and techniques of how to present their stories, so.
Ray Loewe09:53
So how does one all of a sudden craft the idea I mean, I understand your background and I understand where you're coming from. But how does all of a sudden one decide to invent a storytelling cafe or Bistro?
Donna Lubow10:10
Well, it started with my brother, who also has an advertising background. And he also was a producer for NBC the today's show. And he decided that he wanted to get some insurance rather inexpensively. So he enrolled as a full-time student at Northwestern University here in the Chicago area. And he had to take several classes. And to register as a full-time student and one of the classes he took was a storytelling class. And he just excelled at it, because that's part of what he did for the today's show is he helped produce stories that one of the correspondents had, Mike Leonard had put together. And so he told stories at a venue in Chicago, that was pretty well known for storytellers. And I went to see him a couple times. And I said This is so much fun. And their format was kind of the format that I adopted, they had four storytellers. And each storyteller told a 10-minute story had to be a very personal story. And some of them were better than others. That's always the case. And my but when I listened to my brother tell his story, and I heard the audience response. And I thought This is fantastic. We don't do this in the suburbs that I knew of. And I thought because I was with a friend, I thought, we've got to start this in the, in the area that's closer to where we live. So we don't have to trek to the city for this, and so I got my brother involved and a friend involved. And that's how we started. And so actually the three of us. And then we got one other person, they were actually four of us, to begin with, we started out with just four people, and we were the only ones telling stories for a few of the sessions. And then what wound up as Bonnie said, we would always ask audience members to think about if they had a story, and we encouraged audience members to submit stories. And that's how we kind of built up to having, you know, seventy different storytellers over the years.
Ray Loewe12:18
Okay, so let me switch back to Bonnie for a minute, so Bonnie you went through the experience of telling the story in the environment that Donna set up. And I think if you're going to make this grow Donna obviously has a knack that she hasn't talked about yet about how to make people feeling comfortable and excited about telling their stories. So make a couple comments here.
Bonnie Shay12:45
Well, what's great is like Donna said, she's looking for people to tell personal stories that have to be true. That's one absolute rule. So that people really get that the story happened. It's not just a fantasy, or you know, something made up. And you submit because it has to be, you know, reviewed. And like she said, she gives you tips a little bit on how to storytelling, because just writing a linear story, it may not be as interesting. So you can mix it up a little bit just to, you know, maybe build in some suspense or some surprise or whatever. And I want to point out Ray and Donna that these stories can be funny, they can be sad, they can be lots of different emotions, it's depending on the nature of the story, but you never know where they're gonna go. And it's always entertaining. So I did one initially, and I've done three more. I even did one with my partner, we did one together. And that's sort of fun to have a buddy like Ray, you and I are co-hosting the podcast. What about co-hosting a story? You know, it's sort of a similar thing, sort of fun?
Ray Loewe13:54
Well, I think it's a great idea. But I think it takes talent because Donna actually was able to set this up in a format that made you feel comfortable. Because I knowing you, you're not a person that naturally gets up and says I want to tell a story, right? Maybe one on one, but not before a whole group of people. And yet, here you were right.
Bonnie Shay14:17
But let me lay out Ray that typically the people at the storytelling event, it may be strangers that just know about it and come but oftentimes you invite your family and friends. So it's a friendly audience. It's a safe audience. You know, it's something that you're familiar with. And I think many of us had a fear of public speaking, which this is sort of a format of public speaking. But when as kids we were taught public speaking, you were making up speeches of other people's messages and other people's expertise, and you had to memorize it. And that was just like, Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and stand up in front of your class. Well, this is your own story that you know, real well. And Donna, I think this needs to be pointed out because it's key. She has you write your story and read it. You know, you have a notebook on the stand in front of you that you read it. So you're not memorizing your story, although a couple people like to do that. You can make eye contact with the information with the people, but you're reading it. So you're not worried about forgetting something, or, you know, saying the wrong word. The words are right in front of you. So it's very comfortable.
Ray Loewe15:29
Yeah. So, Donna, you've created something that is comfortable for people. That is, I think, significant. So you get standing room only at these sessions, don't you? Yes, that seems to be the case. Uh, yeah. And yeah. And so, you know, where are you going with this when you, you know, we had an excuse to hide during this pandemic? I think that's largely over now. Where are you going with this whole storytelling concept? What's next?
Donna Lubow16:01
All right, now we're doing Audio Stories. And that's available, people who have signed up for our mailing list, get those, and we have a website that tells you to go to Facebook to short story theater, and you can listen to the stories. But you know, I think that is sort of coming to an end, I have a few more stories to do Audio Stories to put on. But I'm hoping that in the fall, that we can go back to a live venue and I have not talked to the venue at all. It's a shame because if it had been outside, we could have done this outdoors this summer. But I don't think our audience would be ready for then our audience does skew older, we seem to have more people, you know, over the age of 50, and up through their 80s telling stories and in our audience, and it's pretty crowded, and people are right on top of each other. And I wasn't sure you know, this summer that that would be a good way to approach it. But maybe in the fall, we'll you know, we'll start it up again. And try to get it going.
Ray Loewe17:05
Well, you know, what a successful venture out of an idea. And I think you know, one of the things that makes you one of our luckiest people in the world is that you were able to craft this idea and build it basically out of nothing out of scratch. But let me ask you a couple of other questions. Let's talk for a couple minutes about the importance of storytelling in life. And I think you were telling me a while ago about you've got a husband to tell stories to right?.
Donna Lubow17:37
Yes, he's very good. He's actually arrived. He was also in advertising he had his own ad agency for many years. And he's had many short stories published in magazines, you know, worldwide. So he's, you know, primarily a writer and but he's actually I actually have to tell one story for us. I think it was on our anniversary. And then I got him to get up at our storytelling to tell a story about what he likes to do. And he's been doing you know, every he writes every single day, he sits in his computer and he writes, and they're all memoirs things from his past he calls them souvenirs from his past and he when I watched him writing, he sits at his computer, he's got a big smile on his face. He enjoys it so much and the latest thing he's been doing is reading stories for our grandchildren. So I know you introduced me as young Ray young lady but I think I'm closer to your age and anyway our grandchildren every Monday night we call them my he calls them Monday night tales they get an email from him telling a story something about his childhood and his past and so he's sharing with our kids and of course our son the father of these grand of these children also hears the story sometimes for the first time and I think it's just an important way to have your family know about your life. Any My husband has also written a couple other memoir-type books, which are you know, which are about events in his life. And I think that's what a lot of people do as they get older. They like to reminisce and a lot of our stories are like that people talk about their past but some of the stories are based on things that happened yesterday. You know, there could still with my husband to he will tell about a birdie saw and make a whole story out of it for the grandchildren. So it doesn't have to always be from your past or from your childhood.
Ray Loewe19:42
Well you know, I love this "stories are souvenirs of the past." Yes, what a great quote. And we're gonna steal that from you and somewhere and put it up.
Donna Lubow19:54
He's ready to write his next book that's got that title.
Ray Loewe19:57
Well, we'll give him But, you know, it's the way we ought to think about things because stories are are souvenirs of the past. But they're also ways to communicate with new people and new acquaintances. So I think one of the other things that you were telling me when we did our prep thing about you have some Australian relationships that you've cultivated recently.
Donna Lubow20:22
I heard from a distant Australian cousin, and I did not know of her existence. And basically, she said was your grandfather's sister named Dinah? And I said, Oh, yes, I knew that right away, because and then we started exchanging little bits of stories that we added a few more people to this Facebook page. And we've been going back and forth saying, Well, do you remember this uncle lived in California, and he was in the music business, and he was in a Roy Rogers movie. And so we're hearing like all sorts of little stories. The other day, my brother actually is on this site now too. And he found a picture of our great grandfather. And we put that on, no one had ever seen that before. These distant cousins didn't know that our great grandfather who was there, great grandfather, or great, great grandfather, they had no idea what his name was even. So it was kind of fun sharing information with them. And, you know, that's the kind of, that's the kind of it was stranger, basically, they're strangers, but we hope we do hope to me, it's kind of cool that she's from Australia, but you know, she was originally from here.
Ray Loewe21:32
Well, and it's, kind of cool that stories, start the conversation, they tie life together. And whether you're dealing with grandchildren, based on what your husband's doing, whether you're talking to new people that you've met from Australia, and you're telling these stories that create common thoughts and things like that, and then go back to your cafe, your storytelling theater concept. I think you've done some wonderful things here. And can you take a minute, and if one of our listeners wants to get on your storytelling theater, somehow, what do they need to do?
Donna Lubow22:10
Well, they can contact me via our website, which is www.shortstorytheatre.com and theatre we spell with an R E. And, or they can go on the Facebook page or short story theatre and, you know, contact me that way. But if they would like to be on our mailing list, and they get, they're can hear, the Audio Stories, and then they can also get notification of when we're going to start live again. And they should also on our website also has a list of guidelines before submitting stories. And I think that's really important. I'm not sure everybody always looks at it, but we have, you know, things on it, like, you know, make sure your story is based on a true event and make sure it's only between 10 and 12 minutes long because that's what audiences, that's pretty much you know, what audiences want to hear. Otherwise, they start getting fidgety. And things like your story should have a universal theme, something that everybody could relate to. So there's a lot of good pointers on it, and even some pointers about, you know, the presentation of it. Like we really suggest that people, we don't ask anyone to memorize, but we suggest that you know, the introduction to your story, so that you can immediately connect with the audience. And you don't have to read that. And you know, your conclusion. And we often say, by the way, that the introduction. And a conclusion should somehow it shouldn't be sort of circular. That's the conclusion of your story should somehow tie back to the beginning. And that just makes everybody you know, understand the story even more. So I mean, we've got a lot of good guidelines on that website. We've got bios of all the 70 or so storytellers that we've had, and they come from such fascinating backgrounds. You couldn't get over it if you looked at it, you'd be so surprised.
Ray Loewe24:03
Well, unfortunately, we're near the end of our time. So we have time for a couple of closing remarks. So Bonnie, do you have any closing remarks that you want to make before we end this?
Bonnie Shay24:14
Well, my closing remarks, first of all, would be to thank Donna for what she's done. Because as we've identified, she's made a difference. She's changed people's lives, that have come to hear the stories that have told the stories and have learned something new in their life, which is always learning is always a good thing. But I also want to wrap up Ray, to tell our listeners that you are on the docket for writing a story and for contributing to short story theater. You know, you're not local. So we have to do it on the Facebook page. But you took that idea and you want to do it. So we're going to hold you to it. Yeah. Uh Oh, you've written a book. So you can write a 10-minute story if you've written a couple of bucks or a few bucks,
Ray Loewe25:02
well, I think the short stories are harder to tell you the truth. But again, Donna makes it so easy to do this. And I think that's one of the things that Donna is done here is it's not only the concept and the idea, but it's a way to actually get people who otherwise might be on this fence to do something. So, Donna, any closing remarks from your standpoint?
Donna Lubow25:24
Um, no, but I appreciate Bonnie's comments. And it certainly is gratifying to know that somehow that what we've done has made a difference in people's lives. That's probably the number one thing that makes me feel happy that we're doing this has changed lives in some way.
Ray Loewe25:42
Yeah, you know, I've just learned that storytelling is so important. It's the way to communicate and have people understand and remember what you're talking about. So what you've done here is magnificent. And I look forward to I will be on your website and look at this thing. And I'll get a story off the shelf over here. And maybe somebody will actually listen to it even. Maybe, well we all want to be known? Okay, so well, I'll trust you on that one. And we'll see how this experience works out. And I'll let everybody know so. So thanks, everybody for being with us. Donna, thank you for being here. Bonnie, thank you for being our co-host. And you know, stay tuned next week because we're going to have another guest and the podcasts go on. And we have some great lucky people who are sharing their lives and their experiences with us. And we found that those lucky people are not only lucky they're some of the most interesting people in the world too. So thanks, everybody for being with us and Taylor, you can sign us off.
Kris Parsons26:52
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.