Show, Don’t Tell
I recently took a storytelling workshop. One of the assignments was a personal story from a vivid moment in life: 400 words or less, in medias res, and “show, don’t tell.” I wrote about something tender, something I haven’t shared.
This corner of the site is where I write about things I’m experimenting with and learning, and this is two of them: storytelling, and grieving. I decided to put the piece here as a tribute, and as a way for me to remember my good friend.
Content warning: domestic violence, suicide.
I’m on stage, palms damp, holding my script. As I deliver each line, the papers wrinkle where my fingers meet them. My vision starts to tunnel, from the 15 or so acting students in front of me, to 8, then 5. I fight the tunneling, expanding the light. My voice sounds more shaky than I expect, the pitch a little higher. I’m halfway through my monologue, and I’m struggling to remember the next lines.
A few months earlier, I signed up for an acting class. The course culminated in a final performance – a monologue. In mine, I was the teacher, having a heart-to-heart with a troubled student. When my monologue ended, the student would pull out a gun from his backpack and shoot me.
I took the two pages of script with me everywhere. I’d practice while making lunch, during bathroom breaks.
One afternoon, I got an email from an old employer. I thought it had something to do with stocks. I clicked in. HR. They wanted me to know that someone I worked with had passed away, and linked to a news article. The husband appeared to have killed his wife and two kids, and committed suicide.
I got a text from an old colleague. He asked if I saw, and later sent a picture of me and Alice. We looked young, our faces a little timid, in front of the company logo. We were both wearing dresses, refusing to give in to the Silicon Valley uniform of t-shirts and flip-flops.
Alice and I used to go to coffee shops on weekend afternoons to study. Lunch together. We did a double date, her and her husband, me and my partner. At this Japanese fusion restaurant, the sashimi appetizer showed up at the table and we each barely got one bite.
I searched all the possible keywords. He shot her in the bathroom. That’s what I pieced together.
After that afternoon, I couldn’t practice my monologue script past the second line.
I took the next week off from the acting class.
Back on stage, I’m reading the papers to remember the next lines. After the last line is delivered, silence. The shot isn’t fired. Because the monologue stops before another character’s lines.
A long silence.
Then clapping.
Years later, it would occasionally come up in chatting with friends that I’d taken an acting class. And while I talked about how difficult it is to memorize scripts, and how I’m not a natural… I’d remember Alice.