On Monday September 15th, I got to experience
something new in Richmond. ..i.e. For the first time.
This is kind of a big deal to me.
After residing here for 29 years, there’s not too many things I haven’t at least said “Why the hell not” to and checked out yet.
I think the opening line on their website sums it up
nicely: “Secretly Ya’ll is a
storytelling organization that encourages people to tell true stories in front
of an audience and is committed to bringing people together through the art of
storytelling.” Any questions? So this is basically a never-ending storytelling
series with a different theme each week where people tell their TRUE stories
(main criteria) within a 5-7 minute time frame.
Originally based in Charlottesville, Secretly Ya’ll moved to Richmond in
September 2010 and now events take place every month at Balliceaux. Anyone can participate, you just have to contact
them before hand and tell them about your story.
Each event has a $5 cover at every show, but instead of
going to their own organization, Secretly Ya’ll donates the all the profits
from the fee to a charity or project of their choosing (usually relevant to the
theme of that week; for example, since
this theme was “The River”, proceeds went to the James River Association).
My friend and I got there early to try to make sure we got a
table. They open the “doors” around
6:45, so a crowd had already gathered with the same intentions and by the time
we got back there, all the tables and booths were gone. We were lucky though bc my friend and her
girlfriend managed to snag a back booth and invited us to join.
I talked to some people before the show while I was waiting
at the front bar to get an amazing gin specialty cocktail. One person I talked to was going to be on
stage later. He told me he’d seen a show before and kinda knew what to expect,
but he was still nervous. Another person
shared how frustrated they were about there being a $5 cover bc (apparently) there
used to be no cover in Charlottesville and the whole event was free. The third person was a guy who was there for
the first time and looking forward to the show, and ended up ordering the last
of the specialty cocktail that I came to the front bar just to order (eh, not
really – I still got one somehow). Later,
that guy ended up stealing the show in a way.
But I’ll discuss that later.
The stories included tails of adventure, adrenaline,
bravery, and even death. The first two
storytellers coincidentally both showed up with oars as props. Then some were about psychological and
emotional topics, like one girl’s epiphany that her mother was a lesbian. Still another was about a guy and his friend
observing a woman having sex with a tree …yes, straight up dendrophilia…these
stories were all over the place. Yet the
story still managed to be entertaining with somewhat of a remaining level of
dignity, and told quite well! And what’s
awesome is the guy who told that story was the one standing out at the bar
before the show telling me how nervous he was.
During intermission he came over to say hi again, and I eagerly shared
my pun of, “Good story – I didn’t see that one coming.” HEH, get it? Any question he had as to whether or not I
was judging him over his story quickly went out the door.
There was a brief intermission after all the storytellers
who had signed up ahead of time were done.
For the 2nd half of the show, audience members could throw
their names into a hat and, if drawn at random, could get up on stage and tell
their own story.
These were not as eloquently formed, but some of them still
had really valid, eloquently worded points to get across (and by this point I
was tipsy so I was feeling especially empathetic with the people preaching the
value of the river, and its simplicity and peacefulness and relevance). But there was one storyteller who stole the
show at this point. This is when my
friend from the bar got called up to share his story entitled “My First Time at
a Strip Club”. Now keep in mind, the
theme of the night was “The River”, and this guy had sat through the entire
first half of the show listening to river stories. No one’s quite sure where the wires got
crossed, but he went on to ramble (though in his defense, it was a well worded
and often excellently delivered ramble).
There were people designated to time the story tellers, and when their
time would be close to over, they would ring a bell. I assume there was one bell as a “1 minute
remaining” warning, and the 2nd bell would be when time was up….this
guy got through 3 bells and still somehow never even arrived at the damn strip
club in his story. Everyone was so
confused. So this man either missed the
mark, or was doing some sort of psychological social experiment involving a
crowd? Lol idk.
All-in-all, this really was an entertaining, fun and almost
fulfilling experience. It’s fun to sit
around with your friends telling stories, right? Well these are friends you didn’t know you
had/haven’t met yet, sharing stories of experiences you may never see for yourself
or hear about. And it’s always
interesting to hear things from different perspectives. It’s a really cool way (IMO) for the
community to come together and get a little bit closer. And I feel like in this day and age, that’s
never a bad thing.
Check out their next event at Balliceaux on December 1st
with the theme of “Plot Twist”. Doors
open at 7:00 pm (but the front part of Balliceaux will still be open before
that) and stories start at 7:30 pm. If
you have a story you’d like to tell, contact them via their email secretlyall@gmail.com.
And if you can’t wait until then (and if you’re a lover of
food), check out an event that Secretly Ya’ll is involved with- the Fire, Flourand Fork Festival on November 1st.
It’s going to be four days of eating food, talking about food, and
demonstrations on how to cook food J Get the idea?
