Storytellers Macon empowers community to share their perspective and wisdom

Do you have a story to tell?

Storytellers Macon believes you do and that your story is important not only to you but to the community as well.

The nonprofit Storytellers group is offering a free storytelling workshop on Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. at The Web, 1083 Washington Ave. It’s called Storytelling 101 and they say it’s for those stepping into storytelling for the first time and those wanting to hone their skills and grow, connect and inspire others.

“Essentially, storytelling is talking about your perspective and having others listen to it,” Koryn Young, Storytellers’ executive director, said. “It could be about something simple like going to the store or a deep trauma. Every single person, and I mean every person, has a story to tell even if they don’t think they do and even if don’t think the story they have is important.”

Young stresses the two sides of storytelling whether the story is big or small, funny or sad, new or old.

“There’s simply the telling of it,” she said. “There’s discovering it and the basics of how to tell it effectively. We help with that, but more importantly, we’re interested in you finding your voice and seeing what your story can be versus what you think it must be. The crux is finding your voice without us or anyone telling you what your story is. We’re here to help you find what you want to say versus demanding a particular structure or way of saying it. If you never tell a story on our stage, that doesn’t matter. If you only tell it to friends or just need to clarify it for yourself, that’s all important to us.”

Koryn said the other key side of storytelling is listening.

“We also get into how being a good listener is part of storytelling,” she said. “When somebody is talking or telling a story, our minds tend to immediately start thinking about what we want to say or what our story is. What we need to learn to do is listen. Listen to what the other person is saying without interruption to hear somebody else’s life experience, what their world is like is like.”

Young said this allows each person the important opportunity to express themselves and feel heard and gives listeners the opportunity to grow their understanding of others different from themselves and apply what they’ve learned to their own views and understanding of how we live together in a community.

“It gives you a better picture of the world and people around you,” she said. “That’s how we grow.”

But there is an entertainment factor to storytelling, too, as we relate and sympathize with poignant stories and laugh along with funny ones. People always have and always will love a good story.

While many factors are exhibited or lie beneath the surface of Sunday’s Storytelling 101 workshop, Koryn said attendees can rest assured the goal isn’t to tell a perfect story because there are no perfect stories. It’s a journey.

“If nothing else, we want to help people gain the courage to speak their truth,” she said. “We want people to know their story is important and make telling it less scary.”

The workshop presents information and numerous exercises. Young said individuals 16 years old and above can participate as much or as little in the exercises as they want so introverts and the painfully shy are welcome and won’t feel threatened.

Julia Morrison, the group’s fine arts director, leads the workshop and has a lot to say about it and Storytellers Macon’s monthly second Tuesday gatherings downtown at Grant’s Lounge. The next one is this Tuesday and the theme is “Taking Out the Trash.”

Such evenings begin with a social time at 6:30 p.m. preceding storytelling at 7 p.m. The program typically has a featured storyteller and otherwise is open-mic with anyone able to sign up ahead of time or at the event for a five-minute-limit slot as long as they last.

Those speaking are asked to stay close to the theme but there’s always flexibility based on personal interpretation.

For example, Morrison the idea behind “Taking Out the Trash” is sharing moments of clearing out the old to make room for something new, whether cleaning up a physical space, breaking free from toxic relationships, letting go of outdated beliefs or ditching bad habits. It’s the emotional, physical or metaphorical act of lightening your load and the humorous misadventures or deep revelations that might come from it.

Featured storyteller Tuesday is Moira Glennon.

The year’s monthly themes and other information are on the Storytellers Macon website and it’s worth noting that stories are uncensored apart from hate speech and such not being allowed. 

“One thing about the workshops in the last few years is that they’ve allowed us to go from looking inward to looking outward for our featured storytellers,” Morrison said. “At one time, we mainly drew from people we knew, of course, but the workshops have allowed a lot more people to come in and be on our radar.”

She said an example is Verda Colvin, an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

“She showed up interested in what we were doing,” Morrison said. “We would have never thought to ask her, thinking she’d be too busy and it would be too much of an ask for us to approach her. But she was eager and willing and, of course, had an amazing story. The workshops have allowed us to be more inclusive and bring stories to listeners from broader walks of life. Everyone is welcome, everyone has a story. Our whole mission is about passing the mic off so people feel heard one at a time. The Tuesday gatherings and workshops let us do that.”

Morrison said the process of coming up with themes and then seeing how they turn out can be arduous yet hilarious.

“We may think about them one way but they may evolve into something else when people bring their stories,” she said. “One theme was ‘Dog Days of Summer” and we imagined people would talk about summer — summer camp, summer romances and such — but every single person talked about their dog. What a great companion they were, the sadness of losing them or something dog-related. I loved it because it was obviously what people needed to say and what others needed to hear. Some take a theme literally, some metaphorically.”

Just so you know, for those who’ve been involved in Storytellers before, there’s also a storytelling mentors workshop Sunday at 6:30 p.m.

Though Sunday’s basic Storytelling 101 workshop is free, the group asks those wanting to attend to register. That can be done from links on Storytellers Macon’s social media pages and their website, storytellersmacon.org.

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at [email protected]. Find him on Instagram at michael_w_pannell.