Flip The Script With Listening

Crista Cowan 0:00

How many times have you sat across the table from someone you love? Maybe a grown child or a grandchild or a sibling who sees the world completely differently than you do and felt this giant gulf between you. In those moments, our first instinct is usually to explain ourselves, to defend what we love, or to desperately help them understand where we're coming from. But what happens if we flip the script completely? What if instead of asking them to see us, we look them in the eye and say, I want to see you. Tell me your story. My guest today is Playwright and Brigham Young University Theater Professor Shelly Graham. Together with her co-creator Alexandra Mackenzie Johns and their students, Shelly spent years conducting more than a hundred deeply vulnerable interviews, exploring what happens when people step away from faith and what brings them back. They poured those real words into a breathtaking stage production called All the Beautiful Things. What Shelly discovered about the sacred power of listening could change how you approach every conversation with your family. Enjoy my conversation with Shelly Graham.

A Childhood Built On Stories

Crista Cowan 1:22

Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family. Welcome to Stories That Live In Us. Shelly, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to get to know you better. Yes, I'm glad to be here too. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your upbringing. Were you raised in a storytelling home? Actually, I was.

Shelley Graham 1:53

My family moved around a lot, but my parents are my dad's from the middle of America and my mom's from the West Coast, and we ended up in South Carolina. Um, but I grew up with a mom who wanted nothing in life more than to be a mom. Oh goodness, hold on. I'm gonna cry. Shoot. Nobody cries alone in my project. Okay, oh wonderful. My dad used to make up stories for us when we were little, bedtime stories. It was me and my sister, and then four boys came along. So my sister and I were pretty tight. And my dad always made up stories about I my name is Shelly, and her name is Lindsay. And my dad made up stories about Shel D. Gabaldi and Lindsay Bazinzi. Haven't said that in a long time. Um, and he used to always, well, and Amelia Bedilla sometimes made it into our stories, if you know those books. Yes. And so it was like so exciting that my dad would tell us these stories where we were incorporated with one of our favorite book characters. And then my mom is just an amazing natural storyteller and songmaker-upper, if that's a thing. That's fine. Um, and so all of her stories that she would tell us um also had made-up songs, and also our lives were like we lived in a musical that was of made-up songs. Well, that sounds magical. Right? I think so too. My children, I have carried on the trend tradition, not even on purpose, but it just sort of happened. And uh all my kids are like, oh, mom singing another silly song again. But that it's a it's a good generational. I think her mom did that too. My grandma did it as well. So it just sort of tracks.

Crista Cowan 3:35

I love that. So you grew up in South Carolina, but your parents were not from there. So you didn't grow up around grandparents or cousins, or no, no, I didn't.

Shelley Graham 3:45

We were um my mom's the oldest, um, and my dad is the oldest, and their families, and and we are kind of like the oldest cousins. We moved away. Um, everybody else was out here and mostly in the Southwest, Middle America. Um, and so it was kind of us learning. It was very exciting when grandma and grandpa came to visit, or cousins came to visit because it was like a chance to reconnect, reconnect with family. Yeah, I love that. Um, and so did you know all four of your grandparents? I did, yes. My um mom's parents came often when I was young, and we um they were they felt like young grandparents. And do you know when you're a kid ages relative? But I remember thinking they were just kind of like an another set of fun parents, and they would play games with us, and they were night owls, they would stay up late, and so especially in my like younger teen years, I loved hanging out with my grandparents and playing. Um, we played Baldurdash. Do you know that game? Um, so it's a little bit of a storytelling game, I guess, making up definitions for words. In fact, we played that game. We thought we invented that game, we just played it with a dictionary. And when it was your turn, you went through the dictionary and you found a word that you thought nobody knew, and then you all wrote definitions for it. And anyway, that was really fun. Um, and uh my dad's parents, my dad's dad had a heart attack when I was um younger and he passed away. Um, but my um dad's mom came um to visit us often, and um, they both, my grandpa was kind of a self-made man kind of guy, and he built himself a log cabin in the Ozarks, and um, so we did like to tell stories about uh Grandpa T and the cool um he had a moped, he had some some cool things that we just didn't have access to, right? Where we were living. And so there were dragonflies and a lake, and he drove a boat, and he was a hunter and fisher, and built a log cabin and fixed cars, and you know, just that kind of guy. So we we talked about him a lot, though he didn't really get to spend as much time with us.

Crista Cowan 6:02

Yeah, wow. It sounds like you grew up with a lot of creativity, both in the people that you were surrounded with and also the environment that they created for you. Yeah, I would say yes, that's right. That's amazing.

Finding A Life In Theater

Crista Cowan 6:14

So, how then did that lead you into a career in storytelling?

Shelley Graham 6:20

Well, okay, let me say this. I I don't know, I I didn't realize I was a storyteller, but I was telling stories my my whole life. Um when I was really little, like kindergarten and first grade, we actually hadn't moved to the South yet. We lived in Ohio. And I remember um we so we were it was cold in the winter in Ohio. And I remember being out on the playground with my friends, um, and we were so cold. And uh we just wanted to go inside, but recess wasn't over yet, and so we were playing around. And some for some reason I got the idea that I could tell us a story about building a fire and camping out and being warm and that we would feel warmer. I I was a very imaginative child, and there was like, I thought I could maybe be a little bit magic. There is magic in stories. Yes, and so um, so I that's maybe one of the first memories that I have of being a storyteller was me and my friends, kindergarten, first grade, and and my friends would gather around and I would tell us a story about being warm, and and like it worked. We were warm, we thought we were warm. Um, so I would say I'm sure that my family culture uh influenced whatever magic powers I thought I had um when I was younger, and then um and then I got involved in the theater um in um elementary school, junior high, high school, that kind of performing. Um and I did storytelling competitions, all these things I'm remembering that I'd forgotten about. I remember I told the three Billy Goats Gruff story at a storytelling competition and won a little prize. Um so little little seeds of success, maybe like I actually magicked my friends into the warmth and and won a prize for the Billy Goats Gruff. I think there are little things like that along the way that kind of encouraged me to want to tell stories and be creative.

Crista Cowan 8:38

So you can look back and see those little touch points. Yes. But like what was your intention going into education and career?

Shelley Graham 8:46

Yeah, okay, well, so I've had a lot of intentions. Haven't we all? I I like to do a lot of things. I I really do. Uh and I was just telling the story to my students um in class yesterday, so it's fresh on my mind. But when I was in high school, um I I love English and literature and grammar. I'm a grammar nerd. And my sophomore year in high school, uh, my teacher, Mrs. Dunker, gave us a grammar pretest. And I took the grammar pretest, and it was quite lengthy, but I got a hundred percent. Which then she was like, Okay, you shouldn't have to do grammar for the whole rest of this year. And I was like, Okay. Um, and so she said, you can do an eye search paper. It's like a research paper, but you get to do it all about who you want to be. And I was like, okay. So I decided I wanted to write children's stories. And um, so I spent that whole semester when the rest of the class was like doing their work. And let me let me be honest, I love diagramming sentences. So there's part of me nerds. Uh nerds, nerds. So there's part of me that was like, oh, I kind of wish I was over there diagramming that sentence. Um but also I got to read all about some of my favorite children's book authors. And um somehow this teacher, you know, teachers are amazing. They influence our lives, right? And Miss Dunker arranged for me to be able to attend this like conference of children's book writers. Um, because I just love telling children's stories, right? And I felt like maybe I had a little bit of magic. And maybe your dad helped influence that and maybe my dad helped influence that. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, so but then I also really loved the French language. I also really loved theater, and I also really loved teaching. And so these are all kinds of things that are percolating. So, so into college, my plan was to double major, which was kind of like a secret triple major, because I was gonna double major in French teaching and theater teaching and do all the education stuff so that I could do French and theater and teaching. Um, and then I then I student taught and I was like, whoo, high school's a lot, right?

Crista Cowan 11:18

Oh, I when I grew up, I wanted to be a seminary teacher. I mean, I did my student teaching at Highland Junior High, and I was like, I do not want to be a seminary teacher. Right, right.

Shelley Graham 11:26

It was wonderful. And also I was like, these are these are good, good kids who are taking like all of my emotional energy to care for. So then I got a couple of more degrees and decided to teach college instead. And I love it, and I still get to teach theater, which means that I'm always doing and I love teaching. And I would say like storytelling is maybe one of the core practices of my teaching. I love to tell stories that teach.

Crista Cowan 11:57

I love that. And I think those are the kinds of stories that that students remember and that they connect with, and then the point sticks with them long after because you can tell somebody something, but if you wrap it up in a story, right, it becomes part of them. I hope so. I hope that's the case. Well, I think it is. As both a student and a teacher, that's been my experience. And it's also one of the reasons I'm so passionate about storytelling. Story has such a key role in how we understand the world around us, it has such a key role in how we connect to the people around us. Yeah. And that to me is the power of storytelling in families in particular. So to hear that you grew up in that environment, I love that. But to hear that you're putting that out into the world through your students, that's incredible. Yeah. That is really too. So talk to me about this latest story in your life.

Building A Verbatim Faith Project

Shelley Graham 12:49

Yes. Okay. So this project, at first, we just called it the Return to Faith project. It didn't have a name because we were working with a researcher in the Department of Communications at BYU. So I teach at BYU in the theater department. Um and so Dr. Jessica Zercher, she reached out to the theater department faculty and she said, I've done a little bit of research, some really fabulous research actually, on why people who may have left faith or struggled with doubt and left an organized religious practice may have chosen to return in the end. And she found that there was a lot of research on why people leave faith, but actually not a lot of research on why people might return or why might people come back. And um, Jessica's amazing, and she has a little bit of a theater background herself, which is why she reached out. She was like, she published this really fabulous article in um, I think pastoral psychology is the name of the journal. And it got a lot of traction. But she was like, these stories kind of die in academia, and I want them to live a little bit more. So eventually she connected to myself and Alexandra Mackenzie Jones, who is my co-writer. And Alexandra actually also directs uh this production in its final form. So when she reached out to us, uh, it was Alex actually who first said, Have you heard of verbatim theater? And uh Jessica said, Well, no, but I'm I'm interested in it. And so Alex and I I haven't heard of verbatim theater. So it's amazing. Okay, yes. Okay, great. I love explaining verbatim theater. So verbatim theater, there's lots of names for it. Verbatim theater, documentary theater, theater of real life. Um, but the word verbatim, I think, best encapsulates what it is that you do, and that is where you take direct words from people either from interviews or newspaper articles, uh, court records, um news programs, that kind of thing, first-person accounts, first-person stories. And you uh through careful and ethical and creative editing, um weave those stories or or tell one story using almost completely just the words. So, like the play about Matthew Shepard. Yes, the Laramie Project. Tectonic Theater Company is one of the founding um companies in the United States for verbatim theater. Um there, it's quite uh, it's I would say it's more popular in the UK as a as a style, verbatim theater. I'm going a little bit into professor mode. I don't mean to for not making me play ballboard ash with that word. So, yeah, so Jessica hadn't heard of verbatim theater before, and Alex and I were eager to teach um students how verbatim theater works. And so we taught one class uh where we invited students to come. And at first we started with just the work that Jessica had done. Um, she had transcripts of all of her um interviews that she and her students had collected. And then we felt like collecting interviews for the kind of research that Jessica was doing gave us lots of great information. And also the interviews could have been mined for narrative if we had known that they were going onto the stage. And as part of our work in those classes with our students, we wanted to teach them oral history skills, right? Yeah. And how to conduct a verbatim interview, how to look for story within um that kind of context. And so we um demoed. I did a couple of interviews uh for our students to watch as I interviewed people and learned how to ask the questions that uh gently and ethically encourage us to explore a little bit deeper and acknowledging that the things that we were asking people to talk about were very difficult. Yeah, super personal. And required a lot of vulnerability and openness, honesty, authenticity. Um, and that can be a scary thing to approach, right? Especially with someone you you don't know very well. So we started with people that we knew. The students uh thought about who in their circles of influence might be someone who had struggled with faith, who maybe had left church or left organized religion and then found a way back. And then we took those interviews, and man, it is hard work. Oh I thought these are just people we love who have been so generous and vulnerable. And sometimes our interviews were four hours long, sometimes shorter, sometimes 30, 45 minutes, but sometimes quite lengthy. And so by the end of that first class, that was like fall semester, two years ago, I think. Um, we probably had 75 or so interviews, and then we decided we just weren't done. So we taught the class again. Uh, a few students stayed with us, but then we got a new group of students. We did more um interviews. We crafted. So each time we taught the class, the class ended with a version of a script. And we did a public staged reading of that script and got feedback from our audiences, um, which was incredibly helpful to have the audiences say, like, wow, this was amazing, but I can't do two and a half hours of this. You're like, yes, okay, okay, we know we need to cut.

How To Interview With Care

Crista Cowan 18:38

Okay, so I want to talk about the production and kind of the evolution of that. But before we do, there's a couple of things I'm super curious about. Okay, yeah. Because I think um so many of us, like, we're not we're not staging productions, but we do want to get the stories from our families. Oh, yeah. And so that oral history piece is really important. And when you sit down with a grandmother or an aunt or a cousin to hear their stories, especially because it's somebody you know, and I suspect your students encountered this as well. How do you not insert yourself in trying to connect with them into their story? Yes.

Shelley Graham 19:15

Well, that I want to push back just a little bit and say that it's it's a very sterile interview if you don't insert yourself just a bit, right? So it's about finding that balance because uh well, maybe it's a little less difficult when there are people who know you and love you already, right? We could say that that starts in that place. When you're interviewing someone, and I would say, even like grandparents and great grandparents who are maybe not your best friend, maybe you're really lucky and your grandparents are your best friends. Um, if you're not so lucky, there there can be a little bit of an age gap, a little bit of a difference there. And so there is a certain amount of sharing of yourself that is important in that interview exchange. Um but that sharing of yourself can look like uh enrapt attention. Um you know, loving, we talk a lot about active listening, which I'm sure everybody knows, right? That those nods and smiles and um verbal acknowledgments uh of uh the beauty of what someone is sharing with you uh are so important in terms of being able to get that um that personal nature, uh the vulnerable nature. But also just um you've been a great example of this so far. Asking tiny follow-up questions helps us remember things we just the process of talking, yeah, right? Yeah um brings things to mind that you I haven't talked about Amelia Bedilia in forever. And here she came. Yeah. Um, and so the process of talking and of asking those questions that are part of that engaged listening. So when you said yes and I love it, and nods and things like that, then you can also ask, tell me more. That's so fascinating and pull in some of those um memories and forgotten details that maybe uh wouldn't have come on just a tell me about yourself, right? Yeah, not that anyone would do that, but sometimes we get a little nervous and we don't know what to say. And I think it's important to give ourselves the um permission to engage just a little bit in those stories.

Crista Cowan 21:43

Well, and then there's this added layer. Like if I ask you, you know, tell me about bedtime stories with your dad growing up, that feels a little less heavy than asking you a question about tell me about your faith crisis and like your relationship with God.

Shelley Graham 21:58

Yes. Now, for some of these, We had the um fortune of having like a pre-selection questionnaire for many of them. So many of these people had self-selected and they knew when we were jumping in that that's what where we were headed. But you still have um uh that soft start um that I think is really important. So rather than jumping right into the most difficult things, let's just talk a little bit about um growing up. Or sometimes we started with just tell me about your um connection with God um and some of the things that help you feel connected to God because we knew we were gonna come back there in the end.

Belonging Across Faith Traditions

Crista Cowan 22:38

Um so Brigham Young University is uh sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So you're teaching students who I suspect are predominantly LDS. Yes, but but you got connections to people from all faiths through this project.

Shelley Graham 22:53

Yes, we did. What is amazing is that it doesn't take too long to realize that your sphere of influence might be a little bit larger than um you think. Uh and I think we were lucky enough that this is a story, that this is a question that I think a lot of people across faiths are wrestling with. Um in a time of, I don't know if we can say religion is having a third grade awakening. Uh, but there is some interest in religion again and talking about religion again in the arts in ways that uh weren't available to us or certainly seemed to ostracize professionals and academics 10, 15 years ago. And there's a softening there, which is really nice. Um, but I also feel like just moving towards conversations that are inclusive, it we're in a time when people are willing to be inclusive, where inclusivity and welcoming and belonging are taking center stage in terms of mental health and social health and emotional relationships. And so approaching these questions of faith and doubt and return as questions of belonging, of where do you fit? Where do you see your community? Who is your family in your community now? Uh allowed us to reach out. And um, and I got to do one really fabulous interview with um a Jewish woman, and we had the most amazing conversation, and so many of the things that she spoke resonated with me from her orthodox Jewish position and my devout LDS position. And I thought, oh, we just have this incredible when we sit down, there is an incredible harmony that we often forget to acknowledge. And in a time in our world when we need to acknowledge harmonies, when we're so divided and we need to find ways to come together, telling each other stories is a wonderful way to do that.

Crista Cowan 25:09

Yeah. Yes, because the the stories help us find the commonalities and the commonalities help us connect. And that's so people need that.

Shelley Graham 25:18

Yes, absolutely. And they need to feel seen. And I think uh having a personal interview with someone having a conversation, like let's sit down, let's go have a drink and talk. And uh that kind of knowing someone on a personal level can erase barriers that uh maybe artificially that are placed there artificially, or perhaps in a socially constructed way, those barriers don't need to be there, and we can discover how easy it is to dismantle them in just a short conversation.

Crista Cowan 25:52

Yeah. And it's interesting too, because as you're talking, I'm thinking so often we sit down in conversations wanting to be seen, wanting to share our story. But what you've done in this situation is flip the script because you're sitting down saying, I want to see you and I want to hear your story. And if we would do more of that, I think as we see other people, we feel seen.

Shelley Graham 26:13

Yeah. For both Alex and I, my co-writer and I, the process of listening was integral. So we we were teaching, I've mentioned like teaching our students kind of active and engaged listening. But there's also this level of listening for understanding and connection, deep listening that allows for someone to feel seen and heard and allows us this sacred opportunity to be a witness to someone's incredible, vulnerable spiritual sharing.

What Brings People Back

Crista Cowan 26:54

So in this production, like the whole concept was people not just leaving faith, but also coming back to faith. But across all these different faith traditions, is there some common thread that brings people back to their faith?

Shelley Graham 27:07

I'm so glad, so glad you asked, because the return is the part that we want to focus on, right? We know that all of us have hard things that we experience, but the return, the coming back, is where the joy and the hope is found. What's interesting, and and in fact, if you read some of Jessica's research, you can see she kind of found some categories of the kinds of things that bring people back to faith. Overall, the thing that we have seen across faith traditions, our Muslim friends, our Jewish friends, our Baptist and Catholic and LDS friends, that the thing that brings us back to faith is a rediscovery or a reconnection to God's love. When you can feel God's love for you, when you seek that connection, He reaches out, he comes. We talk about uh often in rehearsal and in the dedication of the script, um, the words of Elder Patrick Kieran, that God is in relentless pursuit of you. One of the things that we have seen all of our characters, all of these people that we interviewed experience is that feeling of God reaching out to them. And one of our characters um talks about letting go of anger and how opening up that channel to God, his love just flows through him like a river and it washes away all the hurt. And I just think what's so beautiful about this is the recognition that across these faith traditions we have a loving God who wants us to be happy and close to him and will reach through the deepest and the darkest and the most difficult of times to give you paths back, multiple paths, multiple ways back. Ultimately, I feel like this um is a story of hope. This is the kind of um the kind of story that people who have struggled themselves, people with loved ones who struggle and friends who struggle can see that there is hope for absolutely every one of us to find that reconnection to the love of God.

Crista Cowan 29:57

I love that idea of God being in relentless pursuit of us because you know, everybody is seeking connection, seeking connection with each other, but to know that that connection with Him is always, always there.

Shelley Graham 30:10

Yeah, we and that reminds me of a story of another one of our uh characters. I I hope I'm not giving away too much of the play here in this conversation, but we just have this beautiful moment with another one of our characters who, after some really hard times, rediscovered her connection to God and the love that he had for her. And it's actually where it's actually the moment where we found the title of the play. It was really hard for Alex and I to title this play. We wanted to find something meaningful. And there's just this beautiful moment where a woman shares, as she was driving home one day, she just looked around her and saw the world, saw God's creations and found that reconnection to God's love. And she says, when she found that connection, she just suddenly felt connected not only to God, but to people and butterflies and all the beautiful things. And when we read that line, we thought that's what this play is. This is a play about all the beautiful things.

Crista Cowan 31:20

That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Thanks.

Shaping The Play With Music

Crista Cowan 31:24

Um, so tell me about the production, like how it's all come together and what you hope for for next.

Shelley Graham 31:31

Well, after we had, I think, three staged readings where Alex and I were just writing and processing, and our students were giving us feedback and our audiences were giving us feedback. We felt like, well, we knew we needed to cut it to a 90-minute show. That the things that we were dealing with were deeper and heavier and asking a little bit of investment emotionally from our audiences. And so we needed to keep it um uh on the shorter side of traditional theater and also look for moments of lightness and joy and a little bit of comedy, even. And so we had spent a fair amount of time just structuring, restructuring, building our living rooms and desks and tables were covered in like literally, we were cutting interviews, cutting the script, pieces of paper, rearranging what how does it read if we move this here and what if we moved that here and and interweaving stories. So it was a like a physical visceral process of cutting in a way that maybe not um cutting a script doesn't always feel like. Uh, but now we um over the summer we cast the show, and in August we started rehearsing, and we have been amazed over and over again at the serendipitous coming together of this specific group of people. This cast is incredible. And so we started, and there's there's quite a bit of music in this. Well, I I explained how my mom sang songs, right? There's something equally powerful about music in helping us tell stories. And so we got this cast. We weren't auditioning singers, but we got a cast that is incredibly talented when it comes to music. And one of our students, uh, Isabel Ownby, she is our student who was with us from the very first class all the way through to this performance. She is an incredibly talented composer, pianist, musician, and so she has helped us weave music throughout the piece as well. So now we have this cast that's come together and we're telling these stories and we're singing songs that are intricately connected to the original stories. Most of them are songs that in their interviews, the um people mentioned music as uh a way for them to return to faith. Wow. And so we've really enjoyed those songs. Uh and the show just opened this weekend, this past weekend. And I don't even know if I can describe how amazing it is to see the work that we have done come together and to be in a house full of people who just felt all the things we've been feeling. I mean, I'm amazed that every week for six weeks of rehearsal, every night I'm bawling. I know these stories so well. I know what's gonna happen. And yet they are so deeply moving because they are true. There's something so powerful about stories that are true. Yeah. It's why telling our own stories feels so important because we have to share. One of the characters in the play says, in order to be an instrument in the hands of God, we have to learn to sing. And what song isn't a story? Tell your stories. And we have just seen the way that telling these stories with an audience. I mean, on Friday, we we had a standing ovation that just wouldn't stop. Holy moly, what a great experience that is to just feel the joy and connection. Now that we've been listening to one another and listening to these stories, we now get to watch an audience listen to our telling and then listen to the audience respond. The sounds of sniffles and giggles and oh, and you know, like that investment, their active listening is a gift to us in our storytelling for sure. That's amazing. How many characters are represented? So we have 11 people in the cast. We're telling the stories of uh uh 13 characters, I believe. Um, and what are the different faith traditions? So we have a Muslim couple, a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic woman, a born-again woman, an evangelical man, uh one non-denominational woman, and then some uh LDS. I think we're about half LDS, half non-LDS in the storytelling.

Crista Cowan 36:31

Okay. And the interplay between those characters, what does that look like? Well, it's it's kind of wonderful.

Shelley Graham 36:41

We had early on in our script, in the writing process, we wanted to get as many stories as possible into this script. And so we started weaving stories together, kind of telling stories simultaneously, if that makes sense. So this is how this is our invented language. If one person sharing their story is a monologue, two people might share the same story in a scene, or two people might share monologues that are cut and woven together in what we're calling a dualogue. We have two dualogues where we feel like the story that one person is telling and the story another person is telling, when told in this interwoven way, um reflect deeply on one another. So we have a Jewish rabbi who's middle-aged and a younger American military man and their stories, and and you wouldn't think that he's the military fellows, LDS, um, you wouldn't think that those stories talk to one another, right? But as they are woven together, the things that the rabbi, the strugglings that the rabbi has with um the sacred and and with uh ways that uh a loving God would let his children suffer, right? That's the struggling that our rabbi has. And then we see the suffering that this young military man went through, and suddenly they're heightened because we see them kind of simultaneously happening. BYU has been wonderful, and our theater department um has been wonderful in giving Alex and I the latitude to explore this text for so long, to allow us to teach and then have these stage readings and get audience feedback. It's been essential in the ability of this script to move forward to a place where it is now, which I think I hope is a very successful piece.

Crista Cowan 38:45

Yeah. Well, it sounds like it, and I'm excited to come see it. I can't wait. Um, I've got some friends in town this week, and so I'm hoping they'll come with me. Yes, I hope they will. Enjoy that.

Keeping Family Stories Alive

Crista Cowan 38:56

Um, the the focus of so much of my life is wrapped up in the storytelling of our ancestors. And sometimes we have those grandparents or great-grandparents and access to them to do those interviews and ask those questions, and sometimes we don't. And so that concept of like figuring out ways to weave those stories together and to tell them in a way that resonates with an audience. Like when the audience is your children or your grandchildren, and you want to continue to pass those stories on, if you had any advice for those of us just trying to keep the stories in our families alive, what would that be?

Shelley Graham 39:30

Well, I have to tell you something. One of our actresses in the performance was one of our students in the class. She interviewed her own great-grandmother. And now she gets to play her own great-grandmother on stage. And it's amazing. I'm just gonna sit here and cry. Don't mind me. Me too. It's incredible. Um, and the the person that her great-grandmother is it's amazing. She's a transition character. Yes, she is still living, and she came to the show on Friday. She flew out from New Hampshire. And in the show, her name is Grammy Abbey. Many of these characters have asked us to use pseudonyms. In the show, her name is Grammy Abbey. And we all love the character of Grammy Abby. So on the night that she came, we acknowledged her in the audience. And so that we got a standing ovation for the show. Then everyone sits down, then one of our characters says, and we'd like to acknowledge that we have a very special figure in the audience tonight, and it's our Grammy Abby here. And she got a standing ovation because these are people who've done amazing things, right? And have been so vulnerable and generous in sharing their stories, and that we got to honor her. So, so my advice is be brave and find those people that you can find. I I have a I've been doing some family history lately, and I need to figure out how this, how this works. My dad tells a story that he remembers his great-grandmother, so my great-great-grandmother. I'm gonna mess up the story because I don't have all the details right, but somehow she was a Polish Ukrainian woman who moved to the United States who was a Jewish Mennonite convert to the LDS church. That's a lot happening in West. And he says he remembers that she didn't speak English very well. So she spoke Polish and Yiddish and English, and she had all of these religious, and I'm like, I have to know her. I need to know more about her. Um, and so doing this, right? And and because I'm also a playwright, because I also like to write stories, uh there's a story there, right? And I've got to dig deeper, I've got to find that out. Uh, and I've been a little busy. But so my advice to others and to myself is make that time to find those people whose stories she was just a woman, right? She just that was her life. But man, I want to know more about her life. I want to play her on stage. I want to find out who she was. And my commitment to myself once this show is over is to find her story and learn just a little bit more about her, if I can.

Crista Cowan 42:35

I love that. And what I'm hearing in both your words and your mannerism is that curiosity is an important part of storytelling. And we have to nurture, I think, that curiosity within ourselves. Find the character that captures your imagination and dive headfirst into it.

Shelley Graham 42:51

Yes, I was always the kid who was asking why, but why, but why, right? I think that curiosity is it makes me who I am. And you're right, it's an important part of storytelling for sure.

One Word One Story Ocean

Crista Cowan 43:03

Oh, Shelly, thank you so much for being here. Well, before I let you go, we have a little tradition here on the show. Right. Yay. One word, one story. And it's not Folder Dash, but we'll see what happens. Okay, great. Okay. Oh, this is good. So today's word is ocean. And I would love to know if you have a story or a memory about ocean.

Shelley Graham 43:27

My mom's parents, who I told you about my grandparents that I thought were kind of young and fun, they came to the beach with us because I grew up in South Carolina. We uh would go to the beach every year for a family reunion. My grandparents would come down. Sometimes my cousins would come down, and we would all go to the ocean together. Do you have a favorite beach in South Carolina? Uh we would go to North Carolina, actually. There was a there's a beach in North Carolina called Topsail Island that was our favorite. Um, it's where we, my brother got sick on rock candy. Like, there's just so many memories there. But one year we went to the beach and the waves were huge, and we'd all been out riding the waves all day long. And uh we looked around and we were like, where's grandpa? And pretty soon we realized we couldn't find grandpa. And so we split up and the adults went walking, and down the beach, they found a crowd gathered around someone, and it was my grandfather who had been out on a boogie board and um had started to drown. He was rescued by three people. And um then a nurse happened to be there at the shore where they brought him in. She started resuscitation efforts and took care of him, and we got ambulance, and he ended up in the hospital, but she looked around and she said, Where are those three people who helped you in from the ocean? And nobody remembered seeing them. Um, and nobody could reconnect. The police wanted to maybe talk to them and find out. And so, of course, our family story is that it was three angels, perhaps three Nephi angels, um, who helped my grandpa in from the shore. And the rest of that week at the beach, my grandpa was in the hospital and it was really tricky. And he ended up coming home. They lived in New Mexico, but he ended up, he and my grandma ended up coming home and setting up a little hospital room in our house where my grandma and grandpa stayed for a while while he recovered from this really scary incident. And so uh oftentimes we talk about that time. Grandpa was rescued by three angels from drowning.

Crista Cowan 46:01

Wow. That is quite the connection to the ocean. I know. Sorry, maybe not what you were looking for, but family lore. Yeah, absolutely. And it seems like it's a story that gets told and retold often. Yes, yeah. Well, so my ocean story is a little bit simpler. I grew up in California and then we moved to Oregon when I was in high school. And so the beach was always a part of my growing up. But um, my brother, my youngest brother moved here, and he and his wife have five boys, and they've lived here in Utah, and those sweet boys, bless their hearts, like hadn't seen the ocean. Oh and so uh this is these are my six nephews and the world's only niece here. Um, and I had a tradition with them as the world's greatest aunt that when they turned five, I was gonna take them to Disneyland, just me and them. Oh, and we were gonna go to Disneyland one day, and we were gonna go to the beach another day, and then back to Disneyland. You are the world's greatest friends. And my one of my favorite joys in life was introducing those kids to the ocean. And but here's the interesting thing, because they're they're all so different. Like kids just come different, like yes, same family, same stories, same environment, totally different personalities. And so it was just so it was joyful for me to introduce them to the ocean, but it was also such a joy to watch how their personalities just came out in that environment. Like one of them just would sit and stare in awe and just like take it all in. And another one just wanted to run up and down sand dunes screaming, and he ripped off his shirt and the joy was this like bursting out of his little body, right? Like he could not handle it. Um, another one like would have dove headfirst into the water with zero clue how to swim if I had not like like so just like the just the simple pleasure of the beach, which again is something I grew up with and was such a part of my everyday life, to introduce them to that is just like I think back even now about like each one of them and that experience. So much fun. That's a treasure, right? Yeah. Well, that is today's one word one

Share Your Ocean Story

Crista Cowan 48:03

story. If you have some uncataloged memory or story about ocean, I would love to hear it. Leave it here in the comments on YouTube, or if you're listening on a podcast app, share it. Share it on your Instagram or your Facebook. Tag me. I'd love to read it. But more importantly than that, share the stories with your families. Well, Shall I thank you again so much. I'm so excited to see this production. Tell us the name of it.

Shelley Graham 48:30

Yes, the name is All the Beautiful Things. Okay. It's running at the Studio Theater at BYU. It runs until October 30th. Oh, so just another little while. Just another week. So yeah, this week and then next week. And then do you hope it goes somewhere else? Oh, yes. Alex and I have dreams of all the places it could go. And also we need to take a breath. It'd be nice to take a breath. But uh, we are looking at publication options, maybe ways that we can share it with others. Our our hope really is that other people want to share these stories too. So we hope it has a long, long life after this. Well, I hope it does too. I'm excited to see it. Thank you. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.