Fall Theater and Dance | Chicago Reader: I coined the term "live lit" over lunch with Keith Ecker in 2011. We were at Kopi Café in Andersonville, discussing a fix for the minor problem we shared: that the existing term "storytelling," emphasizing as it did both "narrative" and "speech," did not encompass what we were both attempting with the shows we'd founded. My show, Write Club, monthly at the Hideout, and his, Essay Fiesta, monthly at the Book Cellar, both emphasized writing at least as much as delivery, and featured essays, not stories.
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For niche performance types I had never considered the idea that there was no glass ceiling for the sole reason that no one had ever found a way to continue past the current "level." The majority of common jobs have a structure that lends itself to a linear upwards "promotion" system but with recently established arts that simply isn't possible. It's not a typical office job that comes with a promotion or a theatrical technician that does an internship to get a job to later become the designer. There is no clear and defined upwards (or downwards) path. There simply is what is and isn't what hasn't been made. It's a strange and uncommon predicament to find yourself in but it also has a sort of beauty to its circuitous path. Because there is no hierarchy to struggle through and prove yourself for, as Belknap expresses at the end of his piece, all you need to do to get in is ask. For most performance types, ballet, for example, there is a natural progression that must start from a typical age. With live-lit, whenever you decide that it's something you want to try you can. This openness of form can be both refreshingly non-structured and frustratingly hard to advance in.
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