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Courtesy of Threads-STL
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In our oversharing culture, where people are so quick to populate the interwebs with what they just ate for lunch or how they can’t wait to go on their next vacation (#TBT, anyone?) there’s nothing like hearing a good, full, beginning-to-end story. As a photographer, Carol Lara knows the importance of visual storytelling, but got her love for spoken word from her dad. “My dad is an amazing storyteller, and he’s an immigrant—he comes from Peru. So growing up, I constantly heard stories from back home and his immigrant story is filled with trials and triumphs,” she says. Last fall, buoyed by being a longtime podcast listener while working at her day job, she decided to create her own open storytelling event, Threads STL.
Every month, Lara assembles a group of storytellers to share their own personal moments with the audience, in the hopes of being both entertaining and inspiring. As she prepares to host this month’s event at The Demo on April 19, Lara shared how the program has grown and resonated, and how shared experiences beat social media any day of the week. This month’s event is the first where a $5 minimum donation is being requested, with proceeds benefiting the Grand Center Arts Academy.
How did it start?
I had been listening to stories and things for a long time, and I listen to them all day long, but I decided to go ahead and have a party of my own at my house...I just wanted to invite a few friends over. It quickly snowballed into something bigger.
Before I knew it, somebody had contacted me about a venue space in The Grove, which is The Demo. I went ahead rented it out, and I opened it up a little bit bigger [and shared it] on Facebook. My first night was a "test night," just with my friends, and I had about 25 people show up. I reached out to people to ask them if they would tell a story, and so I had about 10 to 12 people tell a story. And I got amazing responses back from it. I had one lady tell me—she brought along her 18 year old son, and basically he didn’t want to go at first. But when they left he couldn’t stop thanking her for taking him, and he said that he wants to be better in his life, so that when he gets older, that he can have good stories to tell. That really moved me. I really felt the responsibility to keep this going, and I just knew that it was doing something to people’s minds and to their hearts and everything.
How do you decide who gets to tell their story?
All month long, I am reaching out to people and seeing if they’re willing to tell a story. Some people are reaching out to me, but I’m trying to promote it as much as possible so that people can gain interest and people can contact me, but I can’t live for that. So I contact people, and ask them if they’d be willing to tell a story. It’s really open. There’s no theme right now, really. I let them know they can tell any kind of story, it just has to be a true story about personal experience, and it can be funny, sad, scary, inspiring. The only rules are that there’s no preaching, politically or religiously. We’ll also have people there, while they’re there if they feel inspired to tell a story, they can let us know while they’re there.
Is there a story in particular you’ve heard that resonated with?
We had a woman about maybe 35 years old, and she got up and she told this story about when she was 13 years old, and when she got pregnant. She came from a dysfunctional family, basically, and she kind of fell into the path that a lot of kids fall on whenever they’re in those kind of situations, in a dysfunctional family. As she got older, she started changing her life around, and now her child is going to college. She’s made something of herself...her daughter didn’t end up going [down] that path. It was very hard for her to tell that story, but in the end, she said that she felt so healed and that she needed that. She’s been needing to do that for all her life. That to me is amazing—when somebody can use that platform to gain healing for their own life.
How has this changed you personally?
I’m kind of an introverted person - I don’t really initiate a lot of conversations with people. I sit in the back, kind of observe. Now that I’ve organized this, I’m the one onstage presenting this entire thing. Every time I get up there, I just feel like I grow as a person, every time. It just builds self-confidence, and I think it’s been the same for the storytellers as well. A couple of them have told stories a couple of different times. I think that it’s just made me grow as a person and makes me come out my shell a lot more than I would have before. It’s a challenge—I’m challenging myself to do that. It’s building self confidence for me.
What would you tell someone about this even who has never been?
The Humans of St. Louis—you know how they do the photography and then they post the stories there? It’s people like that—because it’s just people from every walk of life, you know —getting up onstage and just telling a real, normal story. It’s doesn’t have to be anything completely profound or inspirational or anything like that, it’s just regular stories. My whole mission is just to connect the St. Louis community together—one story at a time. I want it to encourage human connection.
It’s a very supportive crowd. Everyone feels supported by the audience that’s watching them. You can actually get from behind your computer screen and have some human connection with people. Interact and make a new friend. I always see people making new friends at these events, and I think that’s important nowadays.
