Everything Out of Nothing

Thomas Doty – Storyteller

Image.

Before a storytelling the stage is an empty space. As I step into a story I look around me and see a map of that story. With a welcoming glance, I invite the audience to share the journey. A few words, a gesture, another step. The space becomes a landscape, and teller and audience enter together. Our presence inspires word tones, silences, characters, narrative twists and turns.... We saunter along the river and into the mountains. On the summit, I gaze beyond where we're at and see the beginning of another story on the crest of the next ridge. After a trek that stretches the distance of Mythtime, I whisper the last word of this telling. The stage feels full and I sense it would take centuries -- perhaps some marvel of imagination -- for the empty space to return. Yet at the next storytelling, there is nothing there but an echo of what is to come. Ah, the impermanence and endurance of oral tradition. I take a few steps, gesture to the audience to join me, and we share a story as if this has never happened before.