It started in darkness.
"Well, the first thing you have to realize is that it's radio," said Ira Glass, the voice piercing the darkness of the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theatre on Saturday night.
Glass is the host and producer of Chicago Public Radio's popular program "This American Life," a journalistic non-fiction program focusing on the lives and experiences of Americans from all walks of life. Distinguished for its poignant and riveting storytelling, the program is distributed by Public Radio International and reaches about 1.7 million listeners weekly.
Locally, the program is aired on WBFO, Buffalo's UB-based National Public Radio affiliate
The lights came up on Glass sitting at a small desk dwarfed by the expansive stage. Though unassuming in presence, Glass' voice filled the theater richly. Set on the desk was a microphone, some papers and two small machines the size and shape of VCRs. With the one on his right, he played quotes from interviews that he used to punctuate his own speech. The one on his left controlled music, a mood amplifier used on stage the same way it is on "This American Life."
Entitled "Radio Stories & Other Stories," the presentation on Saturday focused largely on what Glass does: tell stories on the radio.
"One of the things radio is good for is telling stories, and it's one of the things it's rarely used for," Glass said.
But telling stories is no simple thing. The reason that "This American Life" draws so many listeners is because of the superb storytelling craft employed by the show. Glass gave pointers for getting and telling a good story.
"In ten minutes I can teach you how to be mesmerizing," Glass said.
As an example, Glass plays a clip from his show about a man working in an office, crab-walking towards a little girl he knows and saying, "Oh no! It's you!" in a funny voice, only to find on closer inspection that it is not that little girl at all but is, in fact, a midget.
As the man, not wearing his glasses, crab-walks down the hall towards the small figure, Glass stops the narrative and says, "At this point, nobody turns off the radio. But why?"
If you look at the story on the surface level, it's nothing more than a simple case of mistaken identity and slight embarrassment such as we have all encountered at some point. Not especially enthralling.
"There is something in the telling that makes it more interesting than the facts it depicts," Glass said.
But it is not enough to have an interesting story, there has to be a point.
"What is universal about that moment?" Glass said. He relates the crab-walk story to a night out, being the life of the party.
"You are the party. Then, at some point you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and... you are an ass," Glass said. One of our greatest fears he said is that we are not who we think we are, that the world sees us differently, and not in a good way.
"When someone tells you a story on the radio, it always has a point," he said. "You go on to some bigger point at the end of the narrative."
"When telling a story, you periodically jump out of the story and give thoughts," Glass said. In this way, storytelling is like a good sermon; you tell a story and give explanations of what it means.
According to Glass, there are three things that make a good story. The first is universality - how well anyone can relate to it. The second is a sense of surprise. And the third is that you can "see" the story, that it becomes visual.
The stories told on "This American Life" are often punctuated with funny, surprising moments like the little girl who turned out to be a midget. Glass says that those surprised, amusing moments mixed among the serious ones are important, and it is these moments that regular broadcast journalism is seriously lacking.
"Those moments are reasserting that the world is someplace new, hopeful, surprising, and big," Glass said. "Broadcast journalism makes the world seem smaller, duller than it is."
Broadcast news distinctly separates the humorous from the serious for fear of not being taken seriously. This, Glass says, represents a failure of craft.
"The funny moments can be the most telling," he said.
One of the difficult things about storytelling is portraying the event as it happened, getting a "full-sized" experience. It's hard to get people to come across as fully life-sized. Glass does this by giving focus to the mundane details and letting people talk.
Glass spoke to the audience in the same manner he speaks to millions across America every week, as though he were speaking to each person individually.
Members of the audience who had never heard "This American Life" but were "dragged along by a friend or spouse" Glass referred to as his "focus group" - at the end of the show he called on their thoughts on his work.
"After tonight, how many people will never listen to the show?" he said.
After a moment, the silence was broken by a single clap, immediately drowned by laughter.
"This American Life" airs Fridays from 7 to 8 p.m. on 88.7 FM, WBFO. The "This American Life" TV series - inspired and created by the producers of the radio show - is set to premiere on the Showtime network on March 22.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
