Have a Great Story to Share? I'm Listening

If there’s one thing we can learn from the explosion of social media, it’s that we absolutely adore telling our stories. It’s a fundamental human act that connects us to each other. And the bigger the audience, it seems, the better. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr—they all provide us with an outlet for sharing experiences beyond our own circle of friends and family.

But how often are we presented with an occasion to share with and connect to a broader audience in the three-dimensional world?

Westporter Ina Chadwick has been creating these opportunities for Fairfield County residents through her popular Awake After Dark storytelling series, which most recently ran at the Westport Arts Center. This summer, Chadwick is taking the show on the road. On July 13, six storytellers will gather at the carriage house of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist (and Staples graduate) Matt Davies and his wife Lucy Ackemann Davies. And we’re all invited.

Having enjoyed Chadwick’s storytelling events in the past, I was curious to know what brought the cartoonist and the writer together. It’s an interesting story, which Chadwick and Davies were kind enough to share with me.

I spoke with the duo at the Davies’ home in Wilton, where we sat on a sunny patio overlooking the carriage house and park-like grounds, soon to be the site of a lively evening. A light breeze carried the scent of fresh mint.

Once Davies was convinced we were not too warm, and he’d set us all up with beverages—including lemon slices for Chadwick’s iced tea and my Diet Coke, a thoughtful detail he attributed to his wife—we settled in for a chat.

“Ina is really good at creating networks and bringing the right people together,” Davies explained. “It stands to reason that she designed this event, which is all about people’s stories.”

Davies would know about Chadwick’s networking abilities. After seeing his portfolio at a holiday party hosted by Abe and Elsa Nad, mutual family friends, Chadwick became one of Davies’ earliest advocates. At the time, he was newly out of art school, and Chadwick was editor of Gannett Media’s Fairpress, a weekly paper covering several Fairfield County towns, including Westport.

“The cartoons told me a whole story,” Chadwick said. And they were “slightly irreverent and ballsy,” so she brought him onto her staff. 

“Ina was the first person who made me believe that I could carve out a career and not just dream about it,” Davies said.

The two would meet once a week to discuss “what made us foam at the mouth,” Chadwick explained. “And Matt would take my rant somewhere.” Her op-ed pieces and Davies’ cartoons ran side-by-side in the paper for two years. But then Gannett closed their Connecticut weeklies, and the media company’s editor told Chadwick that they didn’t have room for an editorial cartoonist.

“If you don’t keep Matt Davies, it’ll be the biggest mistake of your life,” she recalled telling the editor. When he asked why, she replied, “Because he’s going to win you a Pulitzer some day.”

Gannett took Chadwick’s advice and kept Matt Davies on their staff until November 2010. Over the years, he collected press awards for his work, including the Robert F. Kennedy journalism award in 2001. Then came the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 that proved Chadwick’s words prophetic.

She had left Gannett years before, and the two kept in sporadic contact. A chance encounter at a party hosted on the Davies’ property for the Nads—who had first brought Chadwick and Davies together—convinced Chadwick that the carriage house would provide an ideal setting for a summer picnic and storytelling gathering.

On July 13, almost 20 years after first meeting and working together, Davies and Chadwick will team up again to host Awake After Dark. Six storytellers, including Davies himself, will speak to the season-appropriate theme “Some Like it Hot.” Three will be invited from the audience to share impromptu three-minute stories. The program runs from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and the $20 ticket price includes food and drinks.

Social media can be endlessly diverting but also—as any writer, compulsive Facebooker, or media theorist may tell you—ironically isolating. Chadwick conceived of her event as a way to stave off that isolation by bringing people together socially to do what comes naturally—share their stories.

“When I worked in newspaper management, I loved the way the teams interacted in the morning story meetings,” Chadwick said by email. “Producing and directing storytelling programs is the same process as putting a newspaper together—a little scarier because it’s live and you can’t proofread one more time before it goes to press.”

Incidentally, this is what makes it so exciting. I hope to see you there!

For more information or to purchase tickets, contact Ina Chadwick at ina@mousemuse.com or call (203) 247-3346.