Building Community through Live Storytelling
This blog post is generously provided in kind by Delight Ejiaka. The Double Down blog is also supported by Nevada Humanities’ donors.
By Delight Ejiaka
Cast of Hair-itage: Untangled Stories. Image courtesy of Delight Ejiaka.
Telling stories is one of the oldest art forms in our civilization. Humans tell stories to show each other how to be, what was, and things to come. Live storytelling, especially in literary circles, is in formative years. The culture and community are growing. It brings together two of my favorite things: writing a good, entertaining, or emotional story, and performance. It is a powerful thing to bring a community together to bond over the things that bring us together. As a writer of short stories and essays, live storytelling has become another medium to bring these stories to life aside from traditional publishing.
The City of Las Vegas has been hosting a successful Story Slam the last couple of years that brings the community together. The current iteration of the event has a workshop component that Dayvid Figler hosts to help storytellers prepare for the performance. The latest slam was held on June 7 at 7:00 pm at the Charleston Heights Arts Center titled Hair-itage: Untangled Stories.
“Humans tell stories to show each other how to be, what was, and things to come.”
The attendees were a variety of people from all backgrounds and age groups. Some of them born and raised in Vegas, others recent or veteran transplants, but all united by a love for the city. The selected storytellers talked about hair loss, family, grief, illness, and career shifts. The stories showed how hair marked important periods of life and opened doors of opportunity for many people who felt rejected in other spheres of life. It was an electric experience with five amazing storytellers: Rica (A.0), Bob Dancer, Delight Ejiaka, Samara Gibson, and Donna Fox, and special guest appearance from a singer-song writer, Danica Ruiz, who sang an original song about how loving her curly hair helped her love herself.
Our storytelling communities and platforms are important to protect now more than ever, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence. I am excited to see you at the next Story Slam on August 23 titled: No Ragrets.
Delight Chinenye Ejiaka is an author and visual artist whose works investigates melodramatic women, female hysteria and consciousness in the marketplace. Her goal is to capture and celebrate the complex beauty of humanity through words and photographs.
She has received a Macdowell Fellowship, an Aspen Words Fellowship and won the 2024 Tracy Kennard Emerging Writer Award. She was a finalist for the Wasnode Fiction Prize, Ray Ventre Non-fiction prize, Frontier Global Poetry Prize, Disquiet Literature Prize. Her works have appeared in Isele Magazine, Rumpus Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Desert Companion, World Literature Today, and Tint Journal.