Mike Cohen at the Cambridge Story Slam from Darlene Dobkowski on Vimeo.

2/5/10

A Story Slam, a unique twist to a typical poetry slam, found new stomping grounds in Cambridge at The Enormous Room Sunday night. This event was organized by MassMouth, a community of storytellers throughout Massachusetts. They have held four of these friendly competitions in Boston since August, 2009.

Media Credit: Darlene Dobkowski Winner Amelia Kimball

The winning storyteller was Amelia Kimball from Cambridge with an average score of 8.9. She told a story about two families coming together at her sister's wedding. She mentioned how she has never performed something like this before. The second-place winner was Ilene Fischer, who told the story of a shiva for one of her parents.

Adriane Spunt, a director and theater coach at Brookline Adult and Community Education, has judged a competition like this before. She finds that doing this is a learning experience.

"It really trains me to look," said Spunt, this story slam's supreme judge. "I look for whether it comes from the heart and are they self-expressive. We're all storytellers."

Writer Runal Metha of Cambridge came to the story slam with two friends and also noticed the benefits to this kind of event. "It teaches me what keeps us drawn to a good story," Metha said.

At a story slam, storytellers compete by telling their best original story relating to a certain theme. This slam's theme was "It's Relative," in which people can tell stories about their families. The bar was filled to capacity at 80 people and 10 storytellers competed and shared part of their lives. Will Luera, the artistic director of ImprovBoston, and Doria Hughes, a local storyteller, hosted the show and even shared their own stories when judges were tallying scores.

Media Credit: Darlene Dobkowski Hosts Will Luera and Doria Hughes

The rules were quite simple. The storyteller had five minutes and a one-minute grace period to finish up their story. If the story was any shorter, the slam contestant would have points deducted. No folk fairytales, notes or props were allowed. Each storyteller was judged on the story's construction, relation to the theme and how well it followed the time constraints. The top two storytellers are awarded a $50 gift card for The Enormous Room, a t-shirt and a chance to compete at the Big Mouth Off in April.

The stories discussed things such as Jewish traditions, a bedbug problem at a Waltham apartment, coming out to their parents and even an impossible mission to complete a Christmas Irish pub crawl in New York City.

This event was organized by Norah Dooley, a storyteller, children's author and co-founder of MassMouth, which started a year and a half ago. She had once lived in Cambridge for 27 years and felt that it was a good place to hold a story slam.

"It's a culturally-rich community and has tons of students and people who are interested in spoken word," Dooley said.

She felt that with something like a story slam, people can come together to do what they do best.

"We know that storytelling is the natural format or 'meta-language' of the human brain," Dooley said. "Everyone organizes their lives in narratives. We tell stories about everything and stories are everywhere."

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