On Thursday nights, Rick Martin and the Rev. Gail Riina pull the chairs in the Noble Room of Hendricks Chapel into a circle, sometimes around a table.

Before long, a handful of people filter in. Someone stands up. He or she has a story to tell.

This is Story Slam, a weekly competition to tell the best theme-related story in five minutes. The event is the brainchild of Riina, chaplain of the Lutheran Campus Ministry, and Rick Martin, director of the university’s Sustainability Division. At the end of the night, the audience chooses two winners, who are awarded T-shirts.

Story Slam has a variety of purposes. One purpose, Riina said, is to inspire.

“People don’t tell stories unless they’re in love with something that they’re defending, that they cherish, that they’re afraid to lose,” Riina said.

The rules are simple: No heckling. Be respectful. The story must have a beginning, middle and end. Most importantly, make it personal.

At its heart, Story Slam celebrates storytelling and asks students to consider their connections to their world, be it to nature or each other, Riina said.

“With many issues, people are at loggerheads with each other because they come at them ideologically,” she said. “If you tell a story, you get past the rhetoric.”

Winners are chosen by vote, Riina said. She added that there is almost always a consensus.

“It’s usually obvious who the winners are,” she said.

The themes cover a broad range of topics, including community, fire and water. The last theme, for the final round on March 7, is resilience. A panel will judge the final round, Riina said.

Riina said the turnout has been small so far, about 10 students a week. She attributes the small number to the challenges of getting comfortable telling stories.

The idea for Story Slam came about after Riina and Martin met through a shared interest in green living a few years ago. After organizing a film festival together last semester, they began looking for a different kind of event.

“We wanted something that was less passive than sitting there and watching a documentary,” Martin said. “A lot of the documentaries had strong messages being pushed, but nobody really learns much from getting a point of view told to them.”

When a group of interfaith storytellers visited the campus last year for a university-hosted think tank, Riina and Martin found their inspiration.

The idea of being interfaith is an important aspect of Story Slam, Riina said. The organizers considered a “faith” category, with the theme open to interpretation, but decided their existing themes were already open to stories about faith.

While the emphasis on personal meaning deters some students, it encourages others to come forward, Riina said.

Martin said he recalled one storyteller who described dealing with an eye twitch in middle school. For a student in middle school, he said, an eye twitch is a “big deal.”

“I think many people have stories inside of them that need to be let out,” Riina said.

Riina recalled one student who shared how she and her high school classmates coped with the death of another student in their class.

The student came up to Riina at the end of the night, thanking her for having the event.

Said Riina: “The story had been inside of her for a long time.”

Published on February 20, 2013 at 11:19 pm

Contact Natsumi: najisaka@syr.edu