Slam is on summer holidays until September - stay cool, everyone!
Every last Friday of the month at Mercury Lounge Underground (aka Bar 56) 56 Byward Market
7pm, $7 cover charge for listeners (slam participants get in free)
Once Upon a Slam is Ottawa's new monthly story slam series! A story slam is much like a poetry slam, except for it festures narrative stories of all kinds. Each performer has 5 minutes to TELL a story (and we do mean tell, no reading). Judges are randomly selected from the audience to give a score to each story. Highest score of the night takes home all the marbles. Fairy tales, ghost stories, personal stories, whatever kind of story you like, as long as you tell it in your own words. There are 10 spots available, sign up starts at 7PM, show starts at 7:30PM.
Once Upon a Slam Features
In the winetr/early spring months 2011, OST presented Featured Storytellers after the Slam. Features were 1 hour long, and included a selection of exciting guests including professional slam poets, Eurpoean storytellers and of course our own local talent.
Here is a list of the guests in the past:
Brendan McLeod is a writer and performer based out of Vancouver. His first novel, The Convictions of Leonard McKinley, was longlisted for the 2008 Re:Lit Award for fiction. His first play, The Big Oops, recently premiered as part of his curatorship in residence at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and toured the country last summer. His music group The Fugitives was nominated for a 2007 Canadian Folk Music Award. As a poet and oral storyteller, he has performed over 400 shows in the past 5 years. He is a former Canadian SLAM poetry champion and World SLAM runner-up. He teaches spoken word at Langara College.
The Fruit Machine (and Similar Stories):
In the 1950’s, the RCMP set out to fire every homosexual in Canada’s civil service. In the process, they built a machine aimed at scientifically detecting homosexuality, which became known as ‘The Fruit Machine’. In his monologue of the same name, Brendan McLeod explores the absurd activities our nation has undertaken under the guise of protecting its families. Drawing on subjects as disparate as Facebook, the BC court system, adultery, Iron Maiden, and the invention of birth control, Brendan weaves parallels between one hundred years of Canadian history and his own neurotic existence. In firm disagreement with the words of William Lyon Mackenzie King, "Canadians in all their habits, are essentially a temperate people,” he explores the more extreme aspects of our nation - and himself - in a comedy about death, disease, and anxiety, which is ultimately a meditation on the natures of responsibility and fear.
Video link (this is a temp video, but should do for promo purposes for now. Official vids should be up on youtube by January 7):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6427189/facebook.mov
www.brendanmcleod.ca
Kim Kilpatrick has been a storyteller unofficially for all of her life, as she grew up in a family who liked to tell stories. Officially, Kim has been a storyteller for the past 10 years. She tells autobiographical stories in an entertaining and humorous manner to audiences of all ages, specializing in autobiographical tales which depict the trials, triumphs, and adventures of experiencing life as a person who is totally blind. She has performed on the NAC fourth stage every year since 2004, and has performed at storytelling festivals in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Saint Mary's. She is also an artist with MASC, bringing the art of storytelling into schools and facilities for seniors, and has performed in cafes, museums, libraries, pubs, parks, and many other venues. Having recently fallen in love with the story slam format, she has performed and placed at each session of Once Upon a Slam since its beginning in October, 2010.
Klyde Broox: Internationally respected dub poet Klyde Broox (a.k.a. Durm-I) has decades of performance experience in North America, Europe and the Caribbean. A consummate stage artist, he blends speech, song, dance and mime into a powerful package that is inspirational, entertaining and intellectually provocative. Born in Jamaica, in 1957, Klyde Broox left high school in 1976 for teaching and performing as a poet. In 1978, he won the Nathan Brissett poetry competition at Mico Teachers’ College, with the poem “Ode To The Bamboo.” By 1980, Clyde Brooks was a recognized regular on the burgeoning Jamaican poetry performance scene. Nine years later Klyde Broox (as Durm-I) had become one of Jamaica's most promising dub poets. He travelled to England and the United States to do readings, workshops and guest lectures. A self-published chapbook, "Poemstorm," was released in 1989 and launched in Swansea, Wales. Migrating to Canada in 1993, Klyde Broox established himself as an influential literary entity in the city of Hamilton. In 2004, he was nominated for a John C. Holland award for community service. Klyde Broox currently hosts PoeMagic, a popular performance-oriented open-mic series, in Hamilton, Ontario, where he lives with his family. 
Paola Balbi, Davide Bardi
"Sex and the city 1300 : erotic tales from the Middle ages in Italy!"
A selection of stories from the Decameron, delivered with a funny, modern and straight language, blended with music and madrigals. Sexy, deliriously funny, but also sometime touching and personal, “Sex and the city1300” is a patchwork of old erotic tales given to the audience with a contemporary and straight language.Paola and Davide with humour, enthusiasm and poetry the timeless story of “how life goes”...and also some of their own personal thoughts about it.