WORDS
“Daddy Issues”
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Englert, 221 E. Washington
Admittance: $10-$20
By Isaac Hamlet
[email protected]
Stories can be found in anything. Everything from losing a pen to traveling abroad offers narrative potential, and each of us has moments such as this scattered across our lives.
Peter Aguero, who has made a career of storytelling, has set out to select six stories from his own life and weave them into a single performance.
At 8 p.m. Friday, the Englert Theater, 221 E. Washington St., will host Aguero as he performs his biographical show “Daddy Issues.”
“The show is a little over an hour,” Aguero said. “It’s a chronological telling of the relationship I’ve had with and without my father.”
In that time, he tells stories from different points in a 36-year stretch of his life to form an overarching narrative. Each takes place over the course of roughly a day and relays experiences he had growing up with his father in his life.
“It’s a different relationship I have with my father,” Aguero said. “He and I don’t talk anymore; he hasn’t seen the show and isn’t going to. It’s a history I’ve worked through. I’m not looking for the work on the stage to save my life, but it’s one way of working through it.”
Aguero was prompted to tell this story after having hosted “The Moth Radio Hour,” a storytelling show that airs on public radio. Hearing the stories of others, Aguero decided to see if he could combine six smaller experiences into a single story to explore how individual narratives could affect an overall truth.
“[‘Daddy Issues’] is about his struggles with his father,” said Jim O’Grady, a reporter for WNYC who has competed against Aguero in the Moth Slam storytelling competition. “One of the traps he could have fallen into was telling a story about a virtuous young man under the thumb of a despotic father, but he didn’t do that. It’s a story about a shifting relationship and how he copes with it. He could have told a story about good versus bad, but he doesn’t, and it’s a lot more interesting because of that.”
Starting with five stories, Aguero’s selection changed as he retold his experiences and explored other possibilities.
“The more you tell a story, the more your brain accesses the truth of the story,” he said. “Sometimes, I’d be telling a story and would remember it in a different way than I had six months earlier. Truth is a finicky thing; you can’t confuse [it] with fact. Memories bloom and blossom the more you remember them.”
“Daddy Issues” has found its way to Iowa City in large part because of the efforts of Aguere’s friend David Gould, a University of Iowa adjunct lecturer and a visiting scholar at the Oberrmann Center.
“Peter and I have been friends for more than two years,” Gould said. “I met Peter when I was working in Las Vegas, and he was making monthly trips to the city to conduct storytelling workshops.
This year, Gould is teaching a class called Life Design, which explores career options outside the usual and has had speakers who have been everything from Cirque du Soleil musicians to CEOs.
“Students often view college as a means to an end — earn a degree to get a job,” Gould said. “But shouldn’t it be more? Life Design was built to help examine how interests and talents can be interwoven to achieve a more productive, fulfilling, and meaningful life.”
Originally, Gould had planned to ask Aguero to come in as a guest speaker for his class, but upon further thought, he wondered how he could bring Aguero to the larger Iowa City community.
He brought the idea of a full show to Englert Executive Director Andre Perry and Teresa Mangum, the director of the Obbermann Center, and managed to get a venue and a portion of funding.
“[Aguero] didn’t have a ‘Leave It to Beaver’ childhood, and his stories often reflect these jagged edges,” Gould said. “But they are never without a heartbeat … and a soul.”
Those who have encountered and worked with Aguero speak avidly about the presence he presents both physically and through his skillful storytelling.
“A good story has something up for grabs, something two or more people are after,” O’Grady said. “A good story makes the audience wait, sitting in suspense. It isn’t false, and it isn’t contrived. By the end, you could be thinking, ‘Holy God. I never thought that could happen.’ But at the same time, it’s plausible. [Aguero] does all those things effortlessly.”
Ophira Eisenberg, a comedian and the host of NPR’s “Ask Me Another,” met Aguero roughly six years ago, when she was hosting Moth Story Slams. After their initial encounter, they continued to see each other at storytelling events and became friends.
“One of the things I love particularly about watching and listening to [him] is — as a big guy, he’s quite intimidating,” Eisenberg said. “Yet, his stories are full of heart, vulnerability, introspection. He really lets you into his emotions and even admits how small he feels inside at times.”
In his first story, Aguero is 5 years old; in his last, he is 36. His pursuit, in part, is to give a voice to the younger versions of him that grew up without such a voice.
Aguero isn’t trying to teach a lesson or dole out wisdom. He opens himself up on stage to share an experience and hopes that his audience will connect with it.
“Looking at the difficult parts of life are important,” Aguero said. “It’s important not to shove it in a closet or hide them away. It’s important to look back from a safe distance, and I believe I’m doing that. It’s not the role of storytelling to teach a lesson. I want [the audience members] to recognize a moment of fear, or anger, or joy in their own lives.”
After having been performed in New York and going through different tellings and iterations, “Daddy Issues” is in its finished form. The show Aguero presents on stage represents the final truth he worked to uncover.
“I think [Aguero] is speaking to an issue and a story that is very common among young men, but rarely heard. It is very funny and also very emotional,” Eisenberg said. “And he’s finally crafted the arcs of the different stories so they flow with each other. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen him do — a total accomplishment, and you leave the theater very satisfied, like you’ve just enjoyed a very satisfying meal that you’ll remember and reflect on for a long while.”