Inspired by the public radio program "This American Life" and a nonprofit storytelling organization "The Moth," the Brown Storytellers brought art of storytelling to campus for the first time this past weekend with their "story slam."
The slam took place in a Kassar House Fox Auditorium for a full house of enthusiastic audience members. The set up was simple but elegant — a chalkboard decorated with a smattering of key words and an illustration of a beef cut diagram adorned the front of the room.
At 8:10 p.m. on Friday, Eli Bosworth '12.5 kicked off the two-day event with a story describing a high school community service trip to Costa Rica. Bosworth kept the audience in stitches describing his attempt to become the "alpha dog" of the trip despite competition from Rashad, "a guy with tattoos on his arms that wouldn't even fit on my torso," Bosworth said.
"We want to blend the conversational tone and the everyday-ness of our stories and formalize them into a performative, literary art," said Jonathan Topaz '12, creator of the Brown Storytellers.
Bosworth's humorous tale proved an excellent opener to the following night of laughter. The storytellers — including David Jacobs '14, Lily Goodspeed '13, Aaron Jacobs '12 and Sophie Friedman '12 — infused seemingly simple stories with a graceful complexity and good natured humor. What made the stories worth listening to — and remembering — was the way each storyteller introduced moments of meaningful reflection to balance out the night's humorous tone.
Topaz, a member of The Herald's editorial page board, said he started the club with the goal of helping students bring polish to their casual storytelling — calling it perhaps, "the oldest art form in the world." Topaz himself most deftly balanced humor and depth, in a story about the last weekend he spent taking a cycling class with his now-ex girlfriend
Steve Carmody '12 entertained with his lyrical style. In a story about his experience as a butcher, Cormody posed the question of the exact moment an animal becomes meat.
"I'm glad that this exists," said Marguerite Preston '11. "This way of telling stories is a form of socializing that isn't as common."
"I wasn't expecting how great that was," Russell Huang '12 said after the performance. "I can't wait to hear more from them."
A second story slam is planned for Senior Week in May.
Four Stars: An innovative concept, combined with well-executed performances.
