WASHINGTON POST

On a recent Tuesday evening at the Black Cat, poet Reuben Jackson was sipping a Diet Coke and fighting off nervousness. In a half- hour he would be standing before an audience telling a story about love. Jackson hadn't made any notes, but he said his tale will somehow involve listening to Frank Sinatra in his parents' basement. "I have a kernel of an idea and I take it from there," he said of his impromptu performance method.

Jackson, 43, is one of four performers in the sixth "Speak Easy," a monthly series sponsored by Washington Storytellers Theatre. This is his second go-round. "I'm an introvert who likes to talk a lot," he says.

"Love Lessons" was the evening's theme and performance artist Kristin Garrison, 32, took her turn onstage to confess her obsession with the polka, a dance usually reserved for people in their golden years. Her black boots and funky black top made her passion seem odd. But her hilarious, disjointed story explained it all. First, she lip- synced to "The Sound of Music." Then she moved on to how she stank at playing musical instruments (she hated to practice). Finally, she got around to a road trip where she and a friend stumbled onto a polka festival in a small Wisconsin town.

Transfixed by the matching outfits and deft dancers, the two women sat on the sidelines, listening to peppy accordion music and watching the couples go round and round. Then a couple asked Garrison and her friend to dance. It was the moment of truth. Although she giggled all the way around the tent's dance floor, Garrison was hooked. "The polka requires energy and effort and attention and a certain kind of joy," she told the crowd in a rare straight-faced moment.

She asked her dance partner how many lessons it took to master the polka, which seemed surprisingly complicated. She ended up learning simply by doing it, over and over and over. "This day had such an impact on me that a few years later I asked for an accordion for my birthday," says Garrison, who played a broken snippet of song for the audience on her instrument. "I will take lessons one day," she promised.

Garrison doesn't see herself as a traditional storyteller--Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," is her role model--but she likes the relaxed "Speak Easy" format. "Unlike theater, you are allowed to connect with the audience and talk right to them," she says. That can be good and bad, because she has no "idea if this is some bizarre issue that people are going to relate to." Luckily, that night at the Black Cat there were enough kindred polka spirits.

"Speak Easy" organizers hope that offbeat, funny performers like Garrison will lure younger, hipper audience members. "We're trying to stretch the definition of storytelling," says series artistic director Leslie Sapp, who invites professional storytellers to participate as well as other members of the arts community like Jackson.

Each session has a theme. Past evenings featured stories on "What Is a Man?" and "Stranger in a Strange Land." March's theme is "Perseverance: Or I think I can, I think I can."

"I'm really picky about themes," Sapp says. "It can't be corny, preachy or pointless."

The love lesson Laura Shipler Chico chose to share involved her grandmother Ba Noi, a woman full of imagination, spunk and fierce love for her first grandchild. Although the 27-year-old had never told a story in public before, she says she felt comfortable onstage: "I have a performer's streak in me and any opportunity to get up in front of people is appealing."

Her appearance at the Black Cat came about after she took a workshop with the Storytellers Theatre and met Sapp, who helped shape the tale and then invited her to perform. Shipler Chico practiced during her work commute to Baltimore. "I only got a few weird sidelong glances from other drivers," she says.

The event drew a mixed crowd, some of whom looked right at home in the gritty club and others who most likely had to ask directions. Shipler Chico's parents attended as well as Jackson's wife and friends of Sapp's, who also performed. But there were also two sophomores from the University of Maryland, who had heard about "Speak Easy" from their professor and an aspiring storyteller who planned to use the open-mike session as an audition for a spot in the next "Speak Easy." Then there was the woman smoking quietly in the corner who had spent an hour schlepping into D.C. from Forestville for the 8:30 show. The reason? "It's free," she said.

Aside from the price, Jackson thinks storytelling for adults has a place in today's fast-moving world. "There's still a need to take stock of events that happened to us," he says. And "there's a sense of kinship from hearing someone's else's experiences."

The next "Speak Easy" is March 21 at 8:30 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1831 14th St. NW. Call 301-891-1129.