Minnesota storyteller, playwright and actor Kevin Kling says his storytelling is from personal experience. The stories use humor because Kling says humor is a solvent that helps us accept the difficulty of our lives. In our Voices of Minnesota interview, Kevin Kling talks about storytelling. Riding the 21A bus line between St. Paul and Minneapolis was the source for one of Kling's best known works. "Fear and Loving" is a new collection of Kling stories about growing up. He was recently on stage at the Jungle Theatre in Minneapolis playing one of the leads in "Waiting for Godot". Kling was born in Missouri and grew up in the Twin Cities suburbs of Brooklyn Center and Maple Grove. Minnesota Public Radio's John Rabe talked with Kling about his work.
This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
Transcripts
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SPEAKER 1: Tell me first, what was the genesis of Fear and Loathing?
SPEAKER 2: It's actually Fear and Loving.
SPEAKER 1: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER 2: [LAUGHS] But I can understand the error. The genesis of it was, started to tell stories about holiday events and things around the holidays, and it seemed like, as I was telling them, I was both surrounded by those feelings of how beautiful and exciting, and being around your family is and holidays, and also at the same time, the unknown fears and loathings, I guess I should say, of being of the holidays also.
And it takes place from being a kid, and a lot of it happens in places when you are a kid like the Wayback of an Impala station wagon, or at a card table while all the adults are on the big table, eating your dinner, a little bit lower in the pew at church. And so a lot of it takes place from, it's more of a chest high experience than a head high experience.
SPEAKER 1: Did you have a loathing, to any extent, of the holidays when you were a kid?
SPEAKER 2: No, I didn't. No. But, it has developed into that. [LAUGHS] Now, I'm mostly around the commercialism of the whole thing. And it can wear you down. And it's interesting, too, though, about being in a family. A family situation is so interesting because you leave your family, and you go out and you create who you think you are in the world.
And then you get back with your family, especially during the holidays, and you're immediately plugged into what you were when you were 10 years old. And the family isn't willing to let you be who you think you are, you're going to be who they think you are. So it's always interesting to get back into the family. And a lot of times, that's comforting. And a lot of times you want to say, no, no, I'm somebody different now.
SPEAKER 1: You want to do a bit?
SPEAKER 2: From Fear and Loving?
SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
SPEAKER 2: I'll do the Myers cats. This is more of an iffy one. Um, let me set this one up. We're sitting around the dinner table. The kids are out at the card table on the porch, and the older adults are in the living room, when my uncle Dale says that, it's time to say the prayer. So uncle Dale gets us all to bow our heads, and he starts in with grace.
And he starts talking about Jesus, and Jesus as our Savior, and how Jesus came down and saved us. And my palms started to sweat because I thought, being saved, don't you have to be in big trouble to be saved? I mean, don't drowning people need to be saved? And every year, Dale would bring up that we needed to be saved, we were in constant need of saving.
And this started to work on me as my head was bowed and we were in the midst of prayer. And it reminded me of the Myers cats. The Myers were going out of town, and John Klein, my friend, was hired to take care of their cats. These were two huge, lazy, hedonistic cats. They would lay around the house, never saw a move, but signs of destruction were everywhere.
The tables had their legs gnawed down to toothpicks. There was an acrid odor in one corner. And you'd look over at these cats and they were laying around like, I don't know. I don't know. It was like that when I was here too, yeah. So these big, lazy cats. And John Klein was hired to feed them while the Myers were out of town. So the Myers left town, and John and I were riding our bikes down the street, and I says, how's it going with the cats John? And he goes, oh my, the cats! I forgot all about the cats!
I go, it's OK, John. They can go a couple of days without food. No, no, he says. You don't understand. They've gone all week. They've gone a week without food. So we screamed over to the Myers house and we run inside the cats. Thank goodness were still alive. Thank goodness the toilet seat was open, so they had something to drink. And John walked in the house. They didn't see him as the one who forgot them. They saw John as the one who'd come back to save them.
Oh, he's here. He's here. And John fed them. And every time John came back to the Myers, as soon as those cats saw him, oh he's back! He's back! He's back! And I wondered if that happened with God. One day he was up in heaven and, oh my me. Earth! I forgot all about Earth. I better get down there. Oh geez, what if they're mad at me. I know, I'll send the kid. So he sent Jesus, and we all went crazy like the cats.
SPEAKER 1: So you had an interesting upbringing at home. You describe your home life as normal, seemed normal to you, but you say people's eyes start to get wide when you describe certain parts of it.
SPEAKER 2: Well, yeah. That's just like when anybody describes where they grew up. Just look at the people's faces around you when you describe, what went on in your house. What seems normal to you can a lot of times throw people for a loop. I mean, I remember the guy up in Rugby, North Dakota, and he'd talk about growing up and their dog had a place setting at the table. And so you'd look over and he'd say, yeah, yeah, a place setting at the table. He'd wait for the prayer like everybody else. But yeah, he set up there.
And you think about that and you go, well, God. And he'd look at you like, what? Didn't everybody's dog have a play setting? No, no. And you start telling stuff like that or, things that happen in your family, and I think a lot of times people get the whole wide eye even though the same thing happened in their family, especially around the holidays, all the wildness that goes on. I love that Chevy Chase movie with the holidays. Was that the vacation? [LAUGHS]
SPEAKER 1: Who was a big influence at home?
SPEAKER 2: My father was, and of course, and my mom were big influences on. My mom was more of an artistic person. She's a designer, clothes designer, and for a long time was a president of a garment factory up in Ashland, Wisconsin. And so artistically, I think I get a lot from her. And then my dad was just, he is a salesman. Warm-hearted, good man, could really tell a story, and shake your hand, look you in the eye, and never forget your name, that kind of guy. And so it's easy to look up to him. So I think I had very strong family influences. And storytelling was always very big in our family. My grandpa could really tell a good one.
SPEAKER 1: What would those stories be like, the ones from your dad, the ones from your grandpa?
SPEAKER 2: Just things that happened around. Things that happen around the farm. I remember both of my dad and my grandpa when they tell stories, and my grandfather on the other side, they'd laugh a lot when they told them. So you were immediately, it was infectious just because one thing that I learned was how much they got into the story. Really paid off on how much you'd end up getting into the story. They'd be laughing their heads off at something that happened to them.
SPEAKER 1: How did your dad's death affect you? He died when you were in your late 20s.
SPEAKER 2: Hopefully, I'm more compassionate because of it.
SPEAKER 1: Do you think you can write more then about the experience of death or mourning? You might write more accurately, more perceptively about it?
SPEAKER 2: I don't think so. I don't know. Sometimes, I look at 21A that I wrote before a lot of these things happened. One of the things that I'm enjoying about performing 21A is that almost all the characters are older than I am. And so as I get older and perform these characters, I'm starting to understand what I wrote when I was 27, that what I had written through observation, I'm able to perform now through knowing what that experience is like.
SPEAKER 1: Your stories are about everyday things, for the most part, and something goes maybe haywire, but in essence, they like just dig into it in every day thing and look at it from a bunch of different angles.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's where I'm drawn from, is a very personal experience. And so I find a lot of times that the more specific you are with a circumstance, the more universal it turns out to be in the telling. I just did Fear and Loving in Ohio, and the same exact thing happened. The people responded just like a Minnesota audience.
And it really caught me by surprise because that's another play that really hinges on Minnesota as, regional humor. Didn't even matter. They just jumped right aboard. And so I think the more specific a lot of times you are, the more universal it turns out it is, that I don't know happens anywhere else.