(In Part 1 of this series, Edward James Olmos talked about how growing up in a diverse neighborhood affected the rest of his life. In Part 2, he talks about the value of discipline. This final installment has him telling the tale of how he became a better storyteller.)
Edward James Olmos became a better storyteller in his early 20s.
He was in a play in a small theater when a teacher approached him and asked him to talk to a group of Latino students.
At first, Olmos demurred, suggesting they get someone more successful.
He told the teacher: “I’m just learning what I’m doing right here. And I’m not even good at it,” he says.
However, the teacher was insistent, saying they preferred someone “in the struggle,” at which point Olmos relented.
Standing up in front of a group of students who weren’t much younger than he was at the time was tough. None of them, aside from the teacher, asked him any questions.
After that humbling experience, another teacher at that school asked him to speak to another group of students. Olmos wanted to say no because it was “so uncomfortable” and outside of his organic sense of understanding what he was doing.
“Even though it was a performance in some ways, it was more about talking about myself,” he says.
In the end, though, Olmos did. This time, he told the teacher not to ask him any questions. If the kids don’t want to talk to him, they’ll have to look at him just standing before them.
“This time, I took over,” he says. “I made it my domain. And I said, ‘Hey, everybody, listen; I know you don’t want to hear it from me, but you can either listen to me for a while or go back to listen to your teacher. The choice is yours.”
Even though it was a performance in some ways, it was more about talking about myself.
Olmos began talking about his youth.
The students “all started to tune in,” he says. “The time went by quickly, and it worked, and they got up and they were very happy, and they left. And I felt good about myself.”
What came next, though, was even more significant. Those two meetings directly affected how Olmos felt when he went back on an actual stage.
When “I performed that night, I felt something when I was on stage that I’d never felt before,” he says. “All of a sudden, I said, ‘You know what? I feel good today.’ I said, ‘Man, it has to be what I was doing before I got on’” stage.
OLMOS AND HIS ‘SENSE OF TRUTH’
He says sharing experiences gave him “a sense of truth that I now had that I could use on my stage and my performances.”
As a result, Olmos was willing to talk to any group about anything “as long as I could exercise my truths,” he says. “When I went to touch my craft in my art form, I would bring that reality.”
In the coming years, he did 150 annual speaking engagements, sometimes two or three per day.
Olmos would speak at grammar schools, junior high schools, colleges, conventions, prisons and juvenile halls. He hoped to motivate his listeners to understand that, even though he was struggling and his craft wasn’t easy, he was doing something he loved and was improving.
“I highly recommend that you try this because it really does satisfy you and make you everything you can be,” he says.
Olmos is a committed storyteller.
“I tell everybody: ‘Become a storyteller,’” he says. “Tell your story, whether it be as a librarian, or whether it be as an engineer, or whether it be as a chemist, or as a rocket scientist, or as an actor or a sports person, tell your story.
“Tell your stories, and keep on telling your stories,” he continues.
Doing so motivates other people to understand themselves, he adds.
