Telling a life story

There was a moment at a theatre in Melbourne recently when a guild of learner writers stood triumphantly after delivering a powerful exhibit of work.
This is the gift of In Our Own Words. The yearly production of stories, poems, songs and photographs about life on the margins of Australia's cities offers friends of the Big Issue an opportunity to share their brand of wisdom with the wider public.
What these writers do then, what they did so beautifully in this collection, is to find the small telling incident at the center of their pain, or joy or humiliation or disappointment, the center of their soul. This is what journalism does not do, and why in an age of slick media casting people as well as events, a simple telling of stories is worth paying some attention to.
It's a long way from lonely streets on stage as performers took time to get comfy with the sudden rush of attention. Their stories were powerful and as you may expect were told in an straightforward manner as the content was so close to the bone. Even acts of irreverence were spiked by hidden tensions.
Not that deeper issues of marginalisation, of the privacy of loss and of loneliness quarantined strong gales of laughter for many of the witty remarks.
The impact more than anything else was the work of the narratives. By putting things together, by making connections, the writers linked their lives into other cycles.
In the audience there were journalists and writers who eek out a living from the power of the pen. One of those who was there for each of the readings was Arnold Zable. The Melbourne writer celebrated for his themes of identity and of memory could be spotted in the front row each night encouraging the amateur writers who he had been mentoring for weeks before the production.
After the show the award winning author went around casually greeting people and patting the backs of troupe members on a countless number of occasions.
What had been the equivalent look of a free fall off a rocky cliff for the performers was transformed into a gentle landing by an abundance of applause. For the audience it was all a bit of story telling fun. The pressure of the stage they briskly swept aside by waves of giggles and by the power of group participation. Later a young homeless writer joked with friends that the stage is a lot like the street only a tad scarier .
In Our Own Words is on in Sydney next month. Arnold Zable is the award-winning author of Jewels and Ashes, The Fig Tree, Café Scheherazade and Scraps Of Heaven.