Brave Space on Storytelling
Storytelling is as old as humanity itself—older even than theater. Tens of thousands of years ago, stories were one of our primary ways of passing on knowledge. And even now, in a world where information is available at lightning speed, stories remain essential. We spoke to a few of the Storytellers, who answered questions about their how's, where's and why's.
Where does the power of a story lie?
Honest, raw emotion. It's the first-hand account of a person's lived experience — their view on a world that is either so close to yours that their emotion becomes your own, or so far from your experience that it's like visiting a strange new world. The power of storytelling is that you get to see the world through a new lens.
Does a story always have to be urgent, or can it be found in a small, simple detail?
Urgent for whom? Sometimes a cheesy love story is what you need to feel complete. Sometimes, in a world on the edge of war, restriction and confusion, a simple story of friendship, family or love is actually more urgent. We host Brave Space nights for our community to come together and share, heal and reflect. The stories that resonate the most are those that make you realise you are not alone in your experience — that there are others out there who are just like you. This is not urgent, but it is reassuring.
Where do you find the stories you tell?
When we find storytellers for our programme, we try to find a collection of diverse voices — people who don't always look like us or sound like us. We do this with intention. We want to jump from the neurodivergent Dutch comedian's brain to the cat-owning lesbian, to the trans man's experience of the gym, to the Indian migrant's story of coming out, to the Chinese woman's first bisexual love triangle. We sometimes even programme straight folx, just to shock our room — to hear a perspective that we don't live. We seek the kaleidoscope of experiences.
Joseph Kearney/Backlash Media performs Brave Space: Trans Day Of Visibility Edition on Tuesday the 31st of March.
Brave Space: Trans Day Of Visibility Edition
Joseph Kearney/Backlash Media