STORYTELLERS NIGHT 1ST OPEN MIC
Storytelling vs. Standup
The storytelling event for Friday, March 21st is going to be an open mic around the topic of getting a break when you need it or giving a break to somebody when it seems right. The previous events have been with booked performers from Hamilton and Toronto, while the 21st event is welcoming all performers whether they’re seasoned or not.
This is a good thing; there are far more open mics for standup than storytelling in general and learning the rhythms of a story is a different discipline than the set-up, punchline structure of standup (and yes, they’re closely related, but the devil’s in the details). The objective is to tell a story in five minutes (give or take), and it has to hit the beginning-middle-end markers of a narrative.
That is not a long time, but it’s enough to get your ideas across when you go into the event with a set idea. For the record, I’m intending to perform one of three stories if time allows: a dog attack, or a car accident, or an ill-advised recorded phone call. I will figure out which one suits the mood of the evening based on the other performances.
And full disclosure – I have never hosted an open-mic, so I am admittedly making up some rules as I go, based on the CFTA input and on events I have seen in the past. Brian Finch of Dare! Storytelling was always a smooth host who could stitch together the space between a serious or a funny story on the handful of open mics he hosted, I’m going to riff on his model.
The open mic structure gives the audience (and the performers) a chance to see performers deliver polished or raw material, both of which are worth exploring. As a performers, you can hit five minutes and decide whether it is worth expanding or (just maybe) it is perfect as-is.
It is not a pressure cooker exactly, but it is a challenge to keep material together when you are on a clock. I have told people that a 10-minute or longer story is like a hot cup of coffee, the 5-minute version is like a shot of espresso. In a perfect world, I would be doing a short debrief after the stories to notice a few details that did not quite fold into the 5-minute structure, finding out why the performers wanted to share the narrative, how the events affected them, and why they wanted to share it. You can convey (and learn) a lot from a short story, so let us see what comes out on Friday, March 21st. See you there…?
Michael John Derbecker is a writer and occasional performer. He has a background in film and theatre and has been active in the Toronto and Hamilton storytelling communities for over a decade.
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