Intimate storytelling treat featuring performers and non performers
telling their own stories
True Stories Live is an intimate storytelling event with a simple premise, ordinary people tell their own anecdotal stories to a warm and friendly audience, relating to a different theme each time.
Heartwarming, revealing, funny, shocking or sad – True Stories Live will have your emotions leaping from one extreme to another as you are drawn into each storyteller’s world. For some it’s their first time ever on stage; others are used to performing, but what they have in common is that they are telling their own personal stories about their own experiences.
The theme for the Book Festival evening is ‘Lost & Found’ and as compere poet and scriptwriter Molly Naylor will introduce a selection of storytellers that could well include a smattering of Festival performers.
One audience member described the event as ‘like eavesdropping into people’s stories in the pub – and here I’m allowed to!’ A first time performer said ‘I was absolutely petrified before I went on but I feel amazing now, the audience was really receptive. I had so much fun… everybody should do it’.
On the afternoon of the event Molly will host a lively and fun storytelling workshop designed to help potential participants find and shape their anecdotal and personal story and give them the confidence to present it in public. Non-performers are actively welcomed!
True Stories Live is the brainchild of producer Lucy Farrant. She teamed up with Radio 4/Sky TV writer, poet and performer Molly Naylor as compere/host and to run workshops for those interested in taking part, helping with their confidence in public speaking and giving tips on how to make the stories interesting and fun.
Lucy said, ‘The idea came from an American
organisation called The Moth, which has been the subject of BBC Radio 4
programmes. We believed that British people have just as interesting stories to
tell as those over the Atlantic – and we’ve been proven right’.
Molly Naylor is a scriptwriter, poet and
performer. She is the co-writer and creator of Sky One sitcom After
Hours, wrote and performed the autobiographical show Whenever I Get
Blown Up I Think Of You, which toured internationally and was
adapted for BBC Radio 4 and recently directed
her first short film, Callback.
True Stories Live
20 August, 21:00 (90 mins) FREE unticketed. Edinburgh
International Book Festival, Spiegeltent Charlotte Square
Telling True Stories workshop:
20 August, 14.30 – 16.30 £15 (concessions £12), The Greenhouse 1, George St. EH2 4JN
0845 373 5888 www.edbookfest.co.uk
