Tell us a story: Sacramento storytelling takes stage with new live ‘In a Nutshell’ series
Sacramento comedian Keith Lowell Jensen’s new storytellers’ series debuting Friday starts with a simple premise: Humans need stories.
Funny and thought-provoking; intimate and bigger-than-life; but most, and best of all, stories well-told, by people who know their way around a good tale.
Jensen calls the series — which opens with a 7 p.m. show Friday, Jan. 31, at Sacramento’s The Sofia theater — “In a Nutshell.” If the title sounds like a summation, a wrapping up, think of it more as a jumping-off point.
Four or more storytellers take to the stage each night to tell (mostly) true stories, fed by a simple prompt and designed, Jensen says “to challenge the storytellers to dig deeper and engage audiences with their heads, hearts, and everything in between.”
The prompt for Friday’s show: “Breaking the Ice: Stories of unexpected introductions, cracking tough exteriors, or first steps into something daunting. “
Storytellers JP Frary, featured at StorySlam Oakland and in storytelling spaces including the Bay Area’s Redwood Nights; comedian Kiry Shabazz, who recently made his television debut on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”; comic and actress Kay DeMartini; and Oakland-based comedian and storyteller Beau Ryder Davis are on the opening night bill.
“People gathering together to tell stories. There’s something so primal about that,” said Jensen, the host and curator of the monthly series. The Sacramento stand-up comedian known for his storytelling approach has two specials under his belt. “We want to lean on the fact that this is something that humans have always done. We want to hear each others’ stories.”
Stories range from 15 to 20 minutes. With four storytellers, shows clock in at 90 minutes to two hours.
“I want the flexibility, the space to stretch,” Jensen said.
Shows set for February, March and April at the theater, 2700 Capitol Ave., carry themes of “Strange Bedfellows,” “Borrowed Time,” and “Double-Edged Sword.”
The concept by Jensen and show co-creators — book editor Amy Bee and author Aaron Carnes — began a year ago as a writers’ group, a space to share stories and offer support and encouragement for various projects.
Carnes said the series was conceived as an antidote to our isolated culture, siloed by social media, fragmented in our fraught climate along social and political lines.
Sharing stories with people is “a fundamental part of being human,” Carnes said. “Being in a room with somebody, it’s so much easier to see their humanity. It’s hard to do that online — it’s easier to think of people as the enemy.”
From the cave wall to the fireside, the bar, backyard barbecue and barber shop, the power of story is eternal. Jensen got the bug early on, on game days and those backyard barbecues where his father and friends, natural storytellers all, would hold court.
On those days, Jensen recalled, “the real highlight was the story circle.”
Good friends sharing stories. The storytelling series evolved the same way.
Their inspiration for the Sacramento series came in part from an invitation to perform a show at ”Redwood Nights”, a similar live storytelling series in the Bay Area from storyteller and comedian Don Reed.
They took that inspiration back to Sacramento, a city with its own vibrant storytelling community; three friends, who, their website touts, “want nothing more than to give humans laughter, insight, and the full spectrum of emotion from the absolute best live storytellers in the universe.”
“There is a significant storytelling community in Sacramento — there’s a want for it,” Carnes said. “We want to be the event that the community goes to for quality storytelling, for the storytelling community, and for people just looking for a good night out.”
For more information, visit the storytelling series’ website, inanutshellstorytelling.com, or The Sofia theater website.
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