Do you like telling a good story? Or do you prefer listening to those who do?
Orlando Story Club is holding a live storytelling competition the evening of August 5. Only, it’s not actually a “club,” and the “competition” isn’t really serious. Sounds like a story in itself, doesn’t it?
Here’s how co-host and producer Danielle Ziss puts it: it’s a show open to everyone, not exclusive like “club” may sound, and the event’s emphasis is more on building community than winning a competition.
Each Orlando Story Club bimonthly show has a theme – this time it’s “salty.” Beyond the theme and a five-minute limit, Ziss stresses that what storytellers say and how they say it are entirely up to them.
“The show itself is not curated in any fashion, which means anyone who enters to tell a story – they may have prepared it on their own, or they may have just been walking down the street, saw the Orlando Story Club sign, and walked in and signed up,” said Ziss. “We typically take ten tellers per show, but it's a random draw through a top hat. So, if you want to tell a story, you drop your name in the hat, and then audience members pull out the names. They get roughly five minutes, and some of them will be prepared. We have professional storytellers. And some will be completely not-prepared, and to be honest, those are almost always the audience favorites.”
Ziss noted that previously unprepared stories often have a ring of authenticity that helps the audience connect to the storyteller.
“There’ a certain kind of emotion that comes through when you are not prepared at all, and you're just sharing something from your life,” she said. “And at the end of the day, that's what Orlando Story Club is. It's a community-building way of connecting to others through sharing your personal experiences.”
After all, said Ziss, sharing personal stories is a time-tested way for different people to relate. “We'll have someone come in that's 18 [years old], and we'll have someone come in that's 88, and the two of them will have a very similar story that bonds them.”
Often, those similar life experiences build lasting friendships between people who wouldn’t have met otherwise, added Ziss. “I know for me personally, generational relationships are extremely important, and some of my closest friends that are over the age of 70 or 80 actually came from Orlando Story Club, and without those relationships, I don't think I would be the human I am today. It helped me grow in ways that I wouldn't have understood had I only maintained friendships with people my age.”
Ziss and her co-host Bobby Wesley have been producing Orlando Story Club events for over a decade. They are both storytellers themselves. And Ziss said facilitating community-building through storytelling is an honor for them both.
“I think for all of time, the way humans have connected has been through personal storytelling,” she said. “No matter how far you go back or how far we end up going in the future, I think that will always be true.”
