Tricia Rose Burt was born to tell stories. It just took her a long time to figure it out.
The Hancock resident was always good at drawing attention to herself, even though she was taught at a young age to never do so.
When she was a young girl, maybe 8 to 10 years old, she drew this piece of art inviting people to her play. And 50 years later, Burt is still trying to get people to come see her on stage performances.
But these days, Burt isn’t putting on plays, but rather telling stories. First person narratives to be more exact, drawing from her life to entertain, inspire and change others.
“People don’t only want to be entertained, they want to be moved,” Burt said. “You can really teach people. The power of story is just immeasurable.”
Growing up, Burt always thought she was supposed to follow a certain path in life.
She was raised to succeed in business, find a husband, have children and be a good Southern girl. For a while she tried it. She went to Vanderbilt University, entered the business world and got married.
But once she reached her 30s, Burt realized something that changed the rest of her life forever: she was in the wrong life.
She came to this conclusion while attending an art class at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. At the time, she felt it was just her job that she was unhappy with. So she signed up for a six-week class in something completely foreign that what she was used to. Turns out, her job in public relations and consulting was just part of it.
By the end of that six-week course, Burt decided it was time to take a break from her marriage and at the urging of her instructors, she applied to be a full-time student. Art school was both uncomfortable and terrifying because it didn’t allow her to be in control. But that was exactly the push she needed to make the changes that deep down she knew she had to.
“I created a life that I did not want anymore,” she said.
Attending art school led Burt to a class in Ireland. She was no good at watercolor painting, but the chance to head off to a foreign country and do something else that made her feel uncomfortable, while getting away from life as she knew it, was exactly the next step to take.
One evening in Inishbofin, a small island off the coast of Ireland, Burt was standing on a wall watching an amazing sunset. Burt remembers that because of a pair of ill-advised shoes for what she was doing, she was having a bit of a hard time getting off the wall. That’s when a complete stranger offered her a hand. At the time she didn’t know it, but that hand belonged to her future husband, Eric Masterson.
It was purely by chance that the Florida native at a crossroads in her life and the Ireland native met that night.
“There were so many things at play for us to meet at that particular moment in time,” Burt said.
After returning to the states, Burt had a pull to head back to Ireland. It wasn’t because of Masterson, although now Burt likes to think of their meeting as “a story loop that was not closed.”
In a week’s time, she quit her job, sold her car, cashed out her retirement, left her apartment, divorced her husband and moved to Ireland.
“It was pretty impressive,” Burt said.
The two stayed in touch and while they lived hours away from each other on opposite sides of the country, Burt in Clifden and Masterson in Dublin, they continued to see each other every six weeks. The relationship grew and when her father died suddenly in November 1997, Masterson came back to the U.S. for the funeral. It was then that Masterson asked her to marry him and less than a year later they were married and moved to New Hampshire a year after that.
“I always say that God took my father on a Saturday and gave me Eric on a Sunday,” Burt said.
While Burt lived in Boston for a time, her only trips to New Hampshire included to purchase a computer to avoid sales tax and an adventure on Mount Monadnock, which she never made it to the top. And she still has never reached the summit of the most climbed mountain in North America.
“It’s actually a claim to fame now,” Burt said.
The move to the Granite State came at the urging of a perfect stranger that Masterson met while birdwatching in Ireland. Burt remembers saying “nobody actually lives in New Hampshire. It’s just a state.”
Sure enough though, after a trip to see the area and visit David Baum and Terry Reeves, who have been dear friends for more than 20 years, Burt knew it was a place she and Masterson could live.
For the first 10 years, she was in New Hampshire, Burt focused on her art while working jobs that actually brought in an income – including as a typist at the Monadnock Ledger, transcribing letters to the editor and bowling scores.
“I don’t know if I’d be the artist and storyteller I am if I didn’t move here,” she said.
Then the economy went down hill in 2008 and no one was buying art or enlisting the services of a consultant. During an artist residency in Provincetown, when her days of creating art were done, Burt started writing at night. She didn’t really have a plan but knew she wanted to create a performance.
That was the beginning of her one-woman show, “How to Draw a Nekkid Man”, where Burt shares her life changing decision to go to art school. The following year, when back in Provincetown for another residency, Burt began formulating her notes into something she could actually perform. She practiced it all the time, but never in front of anyone, only to the dashboard of her car.
“One day, my husband looked at me and said you have to do your one-woman show,” Burt said. “But a story takes a lot of thought. They’re crafted, they take time.”
She enlisted the help of a few locals in the performing world – Kathy Manfre, Dan Hurlin, Gus Kaikkonen and Kraig Swartz – and during an art opening at the Redmond Bennett Gallery in Dublin, instead of giving the typical artist talk about her work, Burt performed the show. And that was the beginning of yet another new path to take.
“The community here was incredibly helpful,” Burt said. “There are so many that I’m indebted to.”
At the urging of Sy Montgomery and Howard Mansfield, Burt took to the stage at The Bitter End in New York City in December of 2010 for a Moth StorySLAM. She used a part from her one-woman show for the night’s theme Progress and “it was a complete and total blast,” she said.
The story was put on air by the Moth and she was asked to tell a longer version at a members show that following spring, and before she knew it, her story had a quarter million downloads.
“It had its own particular life,” Burt said.
While that was almost a decade ago, Burt still gets correspondence from those who have been inspired by her story. One woman said she listens to it every six months and that it helped change her life. And that’s the kind of impact Burt could have only dreamed of when she started out as a storyteller.
“None of us know the impact that a story can have on someone,” Burt said. “So as a storyteller, I take that role, or job for lack of a better work, very seriously.”
She’s performed on The Moth MainStage numerous times, including inaugural shows in Dublin, Ireland and Nashville, Tennessee, and had three stories featured on The Moth Radio Hour: “How to Draw a Nekkid Man”, “The Tricia Ball”, and “How to Act Like a Lady”.
“There’s a craft to storytelling,” Burt said. “And there’s just this change, this transformation.”
These days, Burt wears many different hats. She works on staff for MothWorks, where she hosts workshops and private events for big companies in the art of storytelling and is a contractor for StoryBrand, based out of Nashville.
“It’s an amazing honor and privilege to be able to help people share their stories and bring them into the world,” Burt said.
Burt also hosts her own workshops as well, working with individuals to see the power of storytelling. Later this month, she is launching her own set of online workshops on May 21 on her website (www.triciaroseburt.com) that have been created out of the coronavirus pandemic. Burt has been stuck at home for almost two months and since a lot of what she does involves traveling and groups of people, she was looking for another avenue to get her message out. So she figured why not do what she does best in the only way things can be done right now.
Burt is currently working on a memoir, although she has realized that “what I do on stage is much harder to do on a page.” There’s another one-woman show in the works, but has put it on the back burner for now.
In the falls, she MCs the Black Fly Story Hour and is now involved in the Library Home Companion endeavor by the Peterborough Library.
While Burt has worked tirelessly at her craft as a storyteller, she believes everyone has the ability to tell an impactful story. They just need to take that same risk she did getting on The Bitter End stage almost 10 years ago.
0 Response to "Monadnock Profiles: The art of telling an impactful story - Monadnock Ledger Transcript"
Post a Comment