Introducing the 5-Minute Story Slam!

Story Slam at Bitters Pub
Wednesday July 28th, 2010, 7:30pm

What is The 5-Minute Story Slam? A Story Slam is a contest of words; imagine a poetry slam format meets Canadian Idol, with a storytelling twist. Story Slammers will sign up on the night to tell a 5-minute short story on the evening's theme and a lucky eight names will be drawn at random from a bag. A story slam is a challenge to the teller and a gift to the audience.

Each of the featured 5 minute stories is judged on how well it is told, how well it is constructed, and how well it honours the time limit and relates to the theme.

Don’t have the foggiest idea what the theme is? Read on!

Then tales were told of gun barrels bent to shoot around the cliff,
Of men thawed out and brought to life that had been frozen stiff,
Of bark pots carried off by flies, of pathways chopped through fog,
Of woodsman Bill who, barefoot, kicked the knots out of a twelve inch log.
- Ted Russell, The Smokeroom on The Kyle

We want the slam’s theme to fit the local environment, and for St. John’s, that means fog, and lots of it! The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland, the meeting place of the cold Labrador Current from the north and the much warmer Gulf Stream from the south. With storytellers from all over the world congregating in St. John’s this July, all that hot air is bound to see an increase in the misty stuff. We welcome stories related in any way to fog: foggy days, the mists of time, fog horns, fog banks, lost in the fog, living in a fog, condensation nuclei, various visibility hazards or drizzle, fo’ shizzle! We won't allow reading, so be prepared to TELL your story.

Judging and Scoring

Non-telling audience members may feel moved to join in on a judging team. We’ll have five judges randomly selected from the audience, who will then score each performance. Scoring is out of 10 to 1 decimal place. The judges score on content, performance and how it fits the theme. We will calculate and announce the score after each teller. It is out of 30 - the highest and lowest scores are thrown out. The highest score at the end wins!

What do you mean 5 minutes?

5 minutes means...5 minutes. There is a penalty for going over time. Our Señorita del Slam will deduct -0.5 for every 15 seconds over with a 15 second grace.

¿Quién es la Señorita del Slam?

Ruthanne Edward has been telling stories for over 10 years; as a heritage interpreter, tour guide and now as a freelance storyteller. She has also been involved in the slam poetry community in Canada for 4 years. She helps run Capital Slam in Ottawa and is on the organizing committee for the 2010 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, which includes the Canadian National Slam Championships, happening in Ottawa in October. We are delighted to have her host SC-CC’s first ever story slam competition!