Radio Love Fest preaches storytelling at BAM
Ira Glass and the ‘S-Town Creators’ share their creative mojo
Good stories are like icebergs in a way. We read, listen to or watch the part that exists as the visible tip, gleaming above the surface. Behind the scenes, though, lies the bulk of the story — a volume of information so dense that were it presented to the general reader, most would never finish wading through it before moving on to something else (although there do exist those bookish Silmarillion types with the courage — and the time — to proceed).
The Brooklyn Academy of Music focused on storytelling this week in its fifth annual Radio Love Fest. The public radio celebration, sponsored by WNYC and others, featured appearances by Neil Gaiman and Brooke Gladstone, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Gerardo Contino and Kate Teller hosting The Moth. Radio storytellers from “This American Life” and its associated programs also took the stage at the Howard Gilman Opera House, sharing how storytelling has changed and how they’ve tried to make it better.
“The forward motion of events is the basis of a story,” Ira Glass, founder and host of “This American Life,” a weekly hour-long nonfiction program broadcast on public radio and online, said Saturday evening of his storytelling “aha!” moment. “People will stick with something they’re not interested in just because they want to find out what happens.”