Storytelling in Kiev

                February 7. I hosted Storytelling Night at a bar in Kiev. It was fabulous. It’s exactly the kind of thing I want to do. I started out welcoming everyone, and telling a short story about my day. Then I invited the guests to get into groups of three or four. It was Storytelling Night, right. So what should we do? Tell stories! In their groups, they would tell each other a 2-minute story, and then

move on to the next person. This gave everyone a chance to meet people, get to talking, and even to try out their potential story. This was a big hit.

                Then we got to the main event—the stories. I had been walking around the room, asking who was sure that wanted to tell a story. Of course there are a lot of people who come to Storytelling Night ripped and ready to tell a story. I wanted to have something to say when I introduce them, so I asked them when was the last time they had been really happy. The crowd was delightful as half of them said, “Right now.” My favorite was the guy who said that he had been happy that morning when his friend baked him a cake when it was HIS FRIEND’S birthday.

                We really had a great time. In addition to his story about traveling in Ukraine, a Korean man sang us a Korean song. An American guy told us how he was berated by a babushka on a train for failing (like a typical American), and a Ukrainian woman told how she had unwittingly hand cuffed herself to a bed post 2-minutes before she was supposed to perform her first gig as an entertainer for a children’s party in Turkey.

                I asked the crowd if they wanted to do it again. They cheered like hyenas. They said we should do it every two weeks. That would be February 21. The venue where we were, The Tiki Café was excellent but it was already booked on the 21st, so I called around to many places. I couldn’t find anything. So I arranged for a few weeks in the future and left it at that. Then, on Monday of this week, the events manager from one of the places I called, Urban Space, wrote me a message saying that she was interested in making an event. After a couple more emails, we had a place. Yes, it’s only three days away, but we will make it happen!

From February 7 Storytelling Night:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_zdxq_LWGHF9nvplvh5yo0Kwt9piehRo