Veteran storytellers as well as novices will share stories during Stand & Deliver: Open Mic Night on May 13 at Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest. The evening is produced and hosted by Lake Forest resident Anne Purky.
In addition to Purky, there will be four other well-known storytellers: Laura Hugg, Sonal Aggarwal, Jitesh Jaggi, and Archy Jamjun.
Jamjun began doing storytelling in 2014. “I always wanted to be a writer but I was struggling to get things published,” he related. “There was an open mic event that WNPR was doing at an art center in Pilsen. I read a piece I wrote.”
There were only a few people there but one of them was then the producer of the Chicago MOTH, a storytelling program across the country and overseas. The producer encouraged him to tell a story at a MOTH event.
“I ended up winning that night,” Jamjun reported. He decided, “This is something I should do.”
Next, he entered a competition called, Chicago’s Biggest Liar, and won that, too.
“After that, people started asking me to do storytelling gigs,” Jamjun said. And he kept winning honors — including twice winning the MOTH GrandSLAM Championship, competing in front of an audience of over 1,000 people.
His current activities include curating OUTspoken, a queer storytelling show; and helping produce Story Jam, in which a person tells a story and a band then plays a song they created earlier around that story.
Jamjun noted that he enjoys telling stories about his childhood with his parents, who are from Thailand. He hadn’t chosen his story for Stand & Deliver at press-time but was contemplating telling one about the time his sister caught him playing with her makeup.
Purky plans to present a timely story about finding a psychiatrist during the pandemic.
In addition to the experienced storytellers, four people who have never performed as storytellers before are invited to be part of the event. Sign-up will begin a half-hour before the 7:30 p.m. start time of the show. The first four people who sign up will perform.
To prepare, Purky advises novices to “craft a story with a beginning, middle and an end that is an event in their life. It doesn’t have to be a big event. It can be a small event in everyday life that resonates with the audience.”
The story should be five to seven minutes long.
Purky’s storytelling career started four or five years ago when she was encouraged by her writing teacher, Brigid Murphy, to perform at a storytelling event, Louder Than a Mom. “Then I started to hear about more and more shows,” she said. “It snowballed from there.”
She originally connected with Gorton when she created a show called Truth Be Told for the community center. “We got up to 225 people in the auditorium,” Purky related.
Purky created Stand & Deliver in 2019. “My goal was to include a standup portion of the storytelling so people who wanted a chance at telling a story could do it,” she said. “I did a show that was a couple of featured tellers that were pros and then I had an open mic.” She continues that pattern for the events.
When it comes to creating the Stand & Deliver programs, Purky said she most enjoys “the outreach. I like telling people about storytelling and how magical it is. I know how stories can transform lives.”
Stand & Deliver: Open Mic Night
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When: 7:30-9 p.m. May 13
Where: Gorton Community Center, 400 E. Illinois Road, Lake Forest
Tickets: $15; $10 students
Information: 847-234-6060; gortoncenter.org
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.