Warren resident Keryn Nightingale first discovered her creative voice when she signed up to tell a story at Moth Night at Phantom theater many years ago and was a hit. Phantom Theater artistic director Tracy Martin encouraged her to write for audiences. She presented oral excerpts from her novel, and after a bout with breast cancer, wrote a solo show about it, which established her as a professional writer and performer.
Nightingale refers to her show as a “creativity memoir,” performed by my oldest cast (Barbie characters she played with as a child) arranged in miniature sets and delivered to the audience via 800-plus projected photographs. As the images flash by, Nightingale, in costume, takes on the role of narrator, holding the audience spellbound. “People do strange things to get through rough times,” she said. “Including me. And what they do makes me laugh. Those childhood memories lift me up, rather than sinking me.”
This year’s show, “What’s His Name” taps into what Nightingale says, “is about the difficulties, or symptoms, that arise when, as artists, we break our early commitments to the spinning wheel (metaphor for creativity). If this happens, the wheel can spin out of control, and what originally arrives as a gift from the gods can become a curse.” The title of the show refers to the helpful archetype in ancient stories who over centuries got creepier (and often evil), eventually making the female characters less and less powerful. Nightingale hopes with her writing to restore him back to his original nature, a force that has the ability to awaken something in women that feels lost. Though this show was crafted with all artists in mind, Nightingale dedicates it specifically to Edward Gorey.
Nightingale has an uncanny ability to produce humor out of chaotic, and sometimes devastating, situations that occur in adulthood. She said, “If we remember what gave us joy as a child — the way we played, the drawings we made, the songs we sung — we then have a clue about how to handle the “little earthquakes” of adult life.
Nightingale at 51 has made it to a place where art/writing/playing is her main commitment, but, she admits, “It took way too long to get here.” Her literary mainstay for her storytelling is Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” which she found life-changing when she was in her early 20s. (Estes was the first to put a feminist twist on many of the fairy tales created in medieval times.) Nightingale muses that it is traditionally harder for women to make their way out of their homes to find their place in the artistic arena.
“Art today has gotten so tied up with money and expectations. I don’t do this to make a living. I create to live a making — and if I don’t, the symptoms that arise are not pretty. I sometimes get sad when I think of all the Taylor Swifts stuck in coal mines, and the Basquiats at Shaw’s, having the wheel spinning backward, and not understanding what is happening to them,” Nightingale said.
“What’s His Name” runs Saturday, July 15, at 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online by going to www.phantomtheater.org.
