By Augusta Statz
The art of raconteuring is coming to Savannah on Feb. 10 when The Unchained Tour is due to makes its second stop.
George Dawes Green, founder of The Moth, also founded The Unchained Tour, which is only on its second tour.
“The kind of storytelling we do is called raconteuring, and it’s just people telling very personal stories, the kind of stories you’d tell in a kitchen late at night, personal, true stories about themselves,” said Green.
So by putting 7 storytellers together on a bus, that’s exactly what he promoted. Now that bus is touring parts of Georgia and Florida with Savannah being one of its many stops.
While in Savannah, participants of The Unchained Tour will be collaborating with SCAD and Savannah State University students to host a StorySLAM. Four to six SCAD students and three Savannah State students will have a chance to have a nonfiction story of theirs be workshopped and turned into a 5 minute piece that they will perform in front of a panel of judges made up of raconteurs from The Unchained Tour.
“[The SLAM] is competitive. They’ll be judged on their stories — olympic style judging. The audience screams and really gets behind certain storytellers, so it’s kind of an amazing, raucous event,” said Green.
Lee Griffith, a professor of writing at SCAD, thinks that getting involved in a StorySLAM event can be beneficial for all writers.
“It helps [every storyteller] hone their craft, they get to work with professionals in the field on that,” he said. “It’s also a good networking opportunity if any of them ever want to tell stories on The Unchained Tour or on The Moth.”
Green has found that college-aged students are a good audience for this relatively new art form of raconteuring.
“The people who come to The Moth SLAMs in New York and L.A. and Detroit and Chicago and Ann Arbor, a lot of those SLAMers are college students,” he said. “I would love to start having SLAMs at other colleges.”
Green explained what makes for the best stories at one of these SLAMs.
“The stories that are most successful are the ones that reveal vulnerability,” he said. “It’s really exciting for other students to stand up and talk about their own human failing. It’s really moving and beautiful.”
IF YOU GO
StorySLAM:
When: Feb. 10 at 5 p.m.
Where: Muse Arts Warehouse
This event is free and open to the public.
The Unchained Tour:
When: Feb. 10 at 8 p.m.
Where: Savannah History Museum 303 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Editor’s note: The story was changed on Feb. 7 to reflect a change in the location of The Unchained Tour.
