Storytelling may not be the oldest profession in the world, but it’s probably the oldest unpaid gig, and might be the oldest art. It’s a method of historiography, a means of storing memory, a desire to capture an instant like a fly in amber, and then pass it hand to hand.
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A snappy little label usually credited to writer-performer Ian Belknap, live lit is a hybrid form. More stripped-down than spoken word, more intimate than a reading, less frantic than stand-up, less showy than theater, it’s essentially a reader and a mike and a room full of people. Live lit is verbal seduction, polemic, rhythm and lyric, bedtime story, bombast, and lament all at once.
“In stand-up, I can feel good about the material I wrote, and it can still die a thousand deaths,” says Belknap, a comedy and acting veteran who’s forsworn both and is now overlord (his word) of Write Club, the biggest live-lit show in town. “There’s not the freedom to explore ideas and emotions and experience in a rich way.
Keith Ecker, who cocurates the show Guts & Glory with Samantha Irby, is sitting next to Belknap. “But in performance, you only have so much time to get a point across,” he says, “so you don’t get to do lengthy descriptions of what the hills look like at sunset—you have to talk about what actually was happening.”
Ecker says mildly, “It’s very Christ-like.”
Welcome to PleasureTown With Ian Belknap, Dana Norris, Keith Ecker, Shannon Cason, Don Hall, Jen Bosworth, and others Fri 10/4 and 10/11, 8 PM Stage 773 1225 W. Belmont 773-327-5252 stage773.com $15.
