Grown-up Storytime with Bootown.org

t's a simple concept. Adults read stories to adults late at night. What kind of stories? Salacious? Scary? Stupid? All of the above. They do it at Rudyards on Waugh in Houston, Texas. Beer (and more beer) and a bar replaces the childhood milk and cookies and a bed, but that doesn't displace the anticipatory awe. The quality of the stories run the gammet. Some are tight, well-crafted vignets. Some are didactic fables. Some are babbling remembrances. Some are incoherent streams of either un- or sub- consciousness. Some aren't even that.

The way it works is that bootown gathers stories and then they assign them to other "members" (read anyone who's willing) to read them. They solicit the stories from anyone at grown-up story time (for the next reading), on their website, and probably at every wedding, funeral, or bond hearing that they attend. Who's ever in charge assigns the stories to members. According to the rules, once a member accepts a story, the member owns it. S/he can read it straight, take whatever poetic license they want, or throw it out all together and give a spontaneous performance. "Auteurs" aren't identified, and this anonymity contributes to the casual vibe.

What makes the evening worth the $5 and the commute is the readers. When the stories work, when they've got a tight, well-structured narrative, the readers do them justice. They inhabit the narrators. They make them their own. Usually, their editorial instincts are dead on. When the stories fail, the readers let them fail. Sometimes that involves reading the stories straight and allowing the narrative's silliness to infect the audience on its own. Sometimes, they aid and abett the audience by editorializing as they read, pointing out glaring syntactical snafus, errors in editorial judgment, and pseudo-poetic dysfunction. If the story dies, they let it die. However, as they lay it to rest, they manage to salvage a laugh or two out of it.

Check them out at http://www.bootown.org/.