Peabody Award-winning producer and director Lea Thau is speaking next month in at The Power of Storytelling (October 17-18) about how to find and tell a great story. Here’s a preview Q&A with her about telling live stories on stage, what makes a good storyteller and how can companies benefit from this skill.

Why is storytelling important to you?

I grew up thinking I’d become an academic. That’s what my parents were. In grad school I studied comparative literature – very theory-oriented, sterile, and far removed from actual stories. Afterwards I worked at the U.N. and was confronted daily with amazing stories, staggering stats, curious facts from around the world, but the stories got lost in the big machine – policies flourished, stories not so much – and it was a lonely life amidst lofty ideals in the midtown high rise.

Then I went to help build The Moth, a simple gathering of storytellers and listeners once a month in New York City. But the interest was enormous, and I discovered that stories can satisfy a primal, human need for connection – mine and that of many others.
Good storytelling has a unique ability to celebrate, at once, the diversity and the commonality of human experience: It shows us that the world is vast and diverse – full of paths we have never walked – yet it has the power to bring us together across cultural, social, and geographical divides.

What do you think makes a good storyteller?

For live storytelling, the ability to be present with the audience is the single most important factor. This does not require professonal training, it requires courage. Stepping out on stage in front of a live audience, without notes or podium or powerpoint to hide behind, often to share something very personal, is terrifying – ask anyone who’s tried it. If the storyteller shrinks in the face of this challenge and shuts out the audience – delivers the story without connectting –the story dies, almost completely, and no amount of editorial finess or inherent drama can save it. On the flip side, a story with structrual flaws or average content can soar if the storyteller is vulnerable, open, present.
In stories produced for radio, there is less pressure on the storyteller, but the fundementals remain the same: can the storyteller speak openly, honestly, without reserve or misguided attempts to make things seem better, prettier, less gritty than they truthfully are?
In all forms of storytelling, the greatest challenge for a director/producer is to help the storytellers get past their own blind spots. We all have a tendency to think we know what the story is and what it all meant and where it’s emotional truth lies. Often we don’t. A good storyteller is someone who is willing to walk the emotional minefield, question his own blind spots and tell the truth without protecting himself or others from the sometimes ugly reality.

You taught storytelling to big organizations such as Google, Nike, Time, Inc. and many others. Why do companies need storytelling?

Good storytelling = good communication. It’s the ability to connect with an audience, get their attention and keep it, bring them into your process, and make something real for them; it’s a way to make them see for themselves, rather than take your word for it, and whether you’re talking to your staff, your board, your clients or your consumers, this is an important skill to have.

4. You lived in Denmark and Paris before moving to the US. Do you think there are differences between the way Europeans and Americans tell or listen to stories?

It’s been 19 years since I lived in Europe, and I think a lot has changed there, so I’m not sure I can speak to this effectively. When I started at the Moth, I remember thinking that this kind of storytelling would never fly in Denmark, or anywhere in Europe, probably. To a European mindset at the time, telling such personal stories on stage was suspect in several ways, I think: revealing your personal struggles to strangers seemed a distinctly American form of exhbitionism, and standing up in any forum to talk about yourself seemed, well, in bad taste.

But I think this is changing in Europe. We (Europeans) are becoming more open and perhaps more narcissitisic, too; more likely to admit that we want the spotlight and to grab it, less judgmental of people who do, and more on board with the idea of sharing intimate details with strangers — for better or for worse. I suspect reality TV has had something to do with this change, but I’m not sure I have my finger on the pulse as to just how far Europe has moved in this direction.

About Lea Thau and The Power of Storytelling

Lea is a Peabody Award-winning producer and director. She is the creator and host of the radio show Strangers, and she formerly served as the Executive & Creative Director of the storytelling organization The Moth from 2000 to 2010. Lea created the enormously popular Moth Podcast, as well as The Moth Radio Hour, carried on more than 300 stations in the U.S.

Lea is one of the 11 amazing journalists and storytellers coming to Bucharest for the fourth edition of The Power of Storytelling, taking place on October 17-18. The only in-depth narrative journalism conference in Eastern Europe brings together international Award-winning journalists, as well as business and marketing specialists, to show the potential of stories to connect people, to heal wounds, to move to action, and to drive change.

More information can be found on the conference website and on our Facebook page.