FOR STORYTELLERS
You don’t need to be a performer.
You just need a story you want to tell.
Stories we carry brings together personal stories around one shared theme, told in different languages and shaped by different lives and cultures.
You don’t need a finished text.
You don’t need stage experience.
And you don’t need to tell your story in English.
SEE THE CURRENT THEME ↓
ONE THEME, MANY STORIES
Each edition starts with a theme.
Childhood. Travel. Love. Adventure. A first time. A place we left behind.
The theme gives everyone the same starting point, but where the stories go from there may be completely different.
A childhood in Perth may have very little in common with one in Beirut, Paris, Shanghai or Buenos Aires.
Or perhaps more than we expect.
That is part of what we want to discover.
WHAT KIND OF STORY?
It doesn’t have to be extraordinary.
We’re not looking for the biggest adventure, the saddest memory or the most dramatic moment.
Sometimes the story is something very small.
A person.
A smell.
A mistake.
A journey.
A sentence someone once said.
A moment you still remember for reasons you can’t quite explain.
What matters is that it belongs to you.
You may already know exactly what you want to tell.
Or the theme may simply bring back a memory you haven’t thought about for years.
That is enough to begin.
THE LANGUAGE
Tell it in the language it belongs to.
Your story can be told in French, English, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, Portuguese, or another language entirely.
Sometimes a memory feels different when translated. Sometimes the words that belong to it are the ones we heard at home, from a grandparent, at school or in another country.
We want to make room for that.
We’ll work with you to create enough English context or support for everyone in the room to follow, without asking you to give up the language in which the story feels most alive.
We shape the story together in English.
You tell it in the language that belongs to it.
How it works
Start with the theme
Look at the theme of the upcoming edition and see what comes to mind.
You don’t need to decide immediately whether the story is “good enough”.
Tell us about it
Send us a few lines about the story you’re thinking of sharing.
It doesn’t need to be written, polished or finished.
We talk
We’ll arrange a short conversation to hear a little more, talk about the language you would like to use and see whether the story might fit an upcoming evening.
Not every story submitted will necessarily be programmed straight away.
We prepare
If your story is selected, there will be some preparation before the event.
We’ll look at the shape of the story, its length, how it will be told and what English support the audience may need.
You tell it
On the night, you tell the story in your own voice and in the language that feels right to you.
The aim is not to turn you into a performer.
It is to help the story arrive in the room.
STORY WORKSHOPS
Want more time to explore your story?
Our Living Room will also offer small-group storytelling workshops for people who would like more support finding, shaping or practising a personal story.
The workshops are held in English, but the story you work on does not have to be.
Together, we explore things like:
finding the heart of the story
structure and what to leave out
memory and detail
rhythm, silence and presence
telling rather than performing
The workshops are optional and paid separately.
✨ You do not need to attend a workshop to submit a story or to be selected for Ma plus belle histoire…
WORKSHOP DATES COMING SOON
CURRENT CALL FOR STORYTELLERS
Stories we carry
Think back to childhood.
Is there one moment you still carry with you?
A place. A person. A game. A fear. A family ritual. A holiday. A first taste of freedom. Something funny, tender, strange, painful or completely ordinary.
It doesn’t need to explain your childhood.
It only needs to be a story from it.
Stories may be told in any language.
Submissions now open