Month: April 2015
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Narcissism?
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I’m afraid it must be addressed. Elephant in the room, you know… …the feeling that all this personal, first-person, “me, myself, and I”-ness of story slams is, well, at its root narcissistic. And that’s not generally considered a good thing. It is a suspicion, sometimes an accusation, among some storytellers/folks…
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MythOff
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I am beyond delighted to welcome Csenge Zalka as Guest Blogger today! She is a Co-Host for the A-Z Challenge, a storyteller, scholar, teacher, blogger…and the MythOff USA Representative. So when she found out I planned to address “MythOff” for my M post (for my Daily Blogging Challenge theme of…
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Limits, Time Limits
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Story slams impose a pretty strict limit on the length of stories told. [Theme for this A-Z April Daily Blogging Challenge: “Story Slams & Traditional Storytelling – Bridging the Distance”] Five minutes seems to be typical (as does an additional grace period of a half-minute or a minute). But the…
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Kindness – So Glad THAT Was the Response
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Another short story: The first story slam I went to in October, “Truth Be Told – The Boulder Story Slam,” was an eye-opening experience. The venue was a back room with a small stage at a restaurant, Shine. The place was packed. Servers squeezed through the rows and tables to…
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Judging at Story Slams
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Being a judge I’m pretty sure I’ll never volunteer to be a judge at a story slam. I’m happy to leave that part of the game to someone else! Therefore it’s an act of the imagination to answer the question sometimes put to me: “How do they figure the scores?!”
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I Wuz Robbed! – A Story
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Let me tell you a story… November 21, 2014 – It was my first Moth story slam. The Moth! The storied, premier story slam event! I’d heard tell of it for a long time. Every now and then I’d caught “The Moth Radio Hour” on my public radio station. And…
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Heritage
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Heritage: Something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor: legacy, inheritance; tradition Oh-so-very-much could be written on this, but for today just a brief consideration of a very large difference between traditional storytelling and story slam storytelling – and while I’ve so far written more about process and form, this…
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Game
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[Theme for this A-Z April Daily Blogging Challenge: “Story Slams & Traditional Storytelling – Bridging the Distance”] How does it feel to tell a story at a slam…knowing you’re being scored?! I got home from my first Moth Story Slam last November close to midnight, still pumped and excited after the…
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Festivals & Conferences of Storytelling (but of Story Slams?)
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[Top photograph is from the 2012 Beyond the Border Wales International Storytelling Festival, showing just one of the dozen concert venues throughout the St. Donats Castle grounds. I had the delight of performing shows there that year. WONDERFUL storytelling festival!] Think about it… Two or more solid days – no…
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Emcee – Makes all the difference!
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…And never more so than in a story slam… Reams could be written about the role and skill of emceeing. (And yes, “emcee” is a real word, having evolved from “MC,” short for “Master/Mistress of Ceremonies”). When it comes to storytelling events, I have witnessed fine storytellers who…are less gifted,…