Courage? Vulnerability? Active self-empowerment? The TELL brings individuals together in a community built on sharing personal experiences.
Originating in 2012, the unscripted storytelling event was one of many community gatherings that ended abruptly at the beginning of 2020 with the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, four years later, enthusiasts are looking at a reboot of this unique community experience.
“I was there at the very beginning,” Carol Kapaun Ratchenski, one of the early supporters of The TELL, said “My niece was in town from San Francisco and we were walking around the Street Fair and saw a sign. And we’re like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ We literally stumbled in and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m never missing this. This is the best live event in Fargo!’ I just kept going and inviting people to go with me.”
What Carol stumbled into was a monthly event structured around sharing stories that ran the gamut from humor to pathos and back again. Each month had a different theme and attendees wishing to share would put their names into a hat. Names would be drawn and the lucky few were given an opportunity to share about six minutes based on that month’s theme. Examples included record titles, like “99 Problems” and “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” The direction was simple. The story had to be both true and personal.
“I learned so much about people that you just wouldn’t from general conversation, some of them I had known for years,” said Co-organizer Stacy Nicolson, one of the new organizers.
Three judges from the community— including local writers and college professors—would select a winning story for the evening by secret ballot. At the end of a storytelling cycle, a TELL-Off would invite the monthly winners to share a final story to determine the overall winner for the year, who then received a small prize.
“Some people were kind of prepared with a story, with a little bit of an arc; beginning, middle, and end. But some would just come and throw their name in the hat,” Carol said. “For example, a good friend of mine would throw her name in the hat every time, without having even thought of a story. She was just like, ‘Well, if that’s the game we’re playing, I’m putting in.’”
While the event is clearly structured, the simple rule of sharing a true and personal story is credited with creating an organic-feeling community environment.
“It’s hard not to care about people when you are like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’ve been through all that.’ Or ‘I had no idea you were so funny. I had no idea you did that, as well,” Stacy said.
“It’s definitely community building,” Laurie Baker, another co-organizer said. “It’s the shared sense that we are all imperfect and wonderful.”
“We’ve all really missed that sense of community,” Laurie said. “Since 2020, we’ve talked about it, that somebody ought to do something. Something’s missing when you don’t have a storytelling event.”
