Leif Wallin to perform at 2015 Fringe Festival

His one-man play “Baby Lost; Family Found” is about adoption and searching for connections to his birth parents

Article and photos by JAN WILLMS

Longtime Nokomis resident Leif Wallin came to the Minnesota Fringe through a circuitous route. An avid bicyclist, he chose to move to the Nokomis neighborhood because of its proximity to the Minnehaha Pkwy. and the River Rd. He also took up handball.

“But I wore out my body with handball and had to have a hip replacement and had to quit playing,” he said. “Then I had a bike accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. So I needed to get a new hobby. For whatever reason, when I recovered, storytelling became my hobby. You don’t have to worry about smashing your head or wearing out your joints or anything like that.”

“Once I got back to normal,” Wallin continued “I started going to different places around town and telling stories.” He performed at the Moth, based on the NPR story-telling show, held monthly at the Amsterdam (6 W. 6th St., St. Paul). He has also told stories at Kieran’s Irish Pub (85 N. 6th St.) and Two Chairs Telling at the Bryant Lake Bowl (810 W. Lake St.).

Over the years, he was aware of the Fringe and wanted to attend, but with small children it was difficult. Eventually, he attended with his wife. “I thought someday I would like to put something together for the Fringe,” he noted.

Adopted as a baby, Wallin had not given a lot of thought to finding out more about his biological family. But once he had children, he decided that tracing his roots might be a good idea. And so for the past couple of years Wallin tried to find out more about his biological parents.

“I started getting connections to my birth family, and I told stories in little bits and pieces at storytelling events around town,” Wallin explained. “They went over well, and people asked me to tell them more. I thought I could put enough together for a Fringe performance.”

Wallin said he is not a comedian, but a lot of stories for the Fringe make people think a little bit or bring a tear to the eye. He said his play has touches of humor. “With almost any play it is nice to have a touch of humor,” he noted.

Wallin started investigating his circumstances thoroughly. “My whole search was off and on for a year, looking and finding and sometimes going down the wrong path,” he said. His exploration took him from Minot, the North Dakota town where he grew up, to Great Falls, MT.

“I like some of the small world connections I found between those two states,” he said. “There were some other connections as I searched for my potential birth father.”

The experience proved to be a positive one for Wallin. “Some people find out some very bad things, but for me it was nice and pleasant,” he said. “Maybe it helped because of the age I was when I started this search. Some do it when they are 15 or 16, wondering why they were let go. It has been positive for me.”

Loren Niemi, who is one of the first people Wallin met in the storytelling community, is serving as the director of his play. Niemi conducts the Two Chairs Telling group.

“He’s a great coach,” Wallin said. “You put the script together, and when we’re rehearsing, he might suggest that if that part of the story moved over here, it might be better. And he’s right. It’s really good to have another point of view.”

Photo right: Nokomis resident Lief Wallin will be performing at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. According to Wikipedia, Minnesota Fringe is the third-largest Fringe festival in North America.

Wallin has also added music to his production, calling on Wendy Smith, a longtime Longfellow resident who now lives in Northfield. “She plays in a group called the Zillionaires, who perform a lot in local shops,” he said.

“For stories with a message, it’s nice to break up with music,” Wallin explained. “I have the play broken into three parts: the search for my birth father, for my birth mother and then for some siblings.” He said Smith provides music between the three parts.

When creating his stories, Wallin said he usually gets on his bike and starts riding, coming up with a tale that has a beginning, middle and end.

“My big fear is that this is something that happened to me, but will it resonate with others? So I try to tell the story in a way that it becomes universal.”

Wallin said he practices from what’s in his head and later writes it down. “I go for a walk by Lake Hiawatha and go through it in my head,” he stated. “I now carry a notebook with me, so that after I have run it through my head I can write it down.”

Good stories, according to Wallin, draw people in. He said that the creators of the Moth, which started 15 years ago, came up with that name because they felt telling stories was like pulling a moth to the flame. Wallin added that listening to a story is completely different from reading it. When reading it, the gestures and tones of the storyteller are missing.

The most challenging part of preparing his story on adoption for the Fringe stage has been putting a big chunk of it together. “I go with the flow and then all of a sudden I have a little mind bump or mental freeze,” he explained. He said that if this happens onstage, he figures he can just pause, and the audience will assume he is thinking deeply.

“The main difference is that when I have been telling stories, they usually last five to seven minutes,” Wallin said. “The play is nearly an hour.” He said he also needs to make sure that other people can relate to what he is telling, and he has found that adoption is something that is relevant to many. “It also seems like more women are interested when I tell them about this. I think it goes back to that connection between mother and child.”

Wallin said this is the first time he has worked on a play, but it was a story that fell into his lap. “What am I going to do Aug. 10 when the Fringe is over?”

He said he expects to do some of his more casual storytelling and see what happens.

“I might try writing. Or maybe find another story that clicks and do a Fringe play.”

His one-man play, “Baby Lost; Family Found,” will run at the Huge Theater (3037 S. Lyndale Ave.) on July 30 at 5:30pm; Aug. 1 at 2:30pm; Aug. 3 at 7pm; Aug. 7 at 10pm and Aug. 8 at 8:30pm.