WHAT MAKES 2nd STORY DIFFERENT?

As storytellers, we are so lucky—in Chicago and across the country—to have an abundance of storytelling organizations and opportunities. So what makes working with 2nd Story different?

One of 2nd Story’s core values is CRAFT. We deeply believe that well-crafted stories are more impactful, and this impact is critical to us. 2nd Story seeks to build a world driven by empathy, and what better way to foster connection than with a story that resonates deeply with artists and audiences alike? 

To this end, we are not an organization where you write a story and then show up to perform. Individuals who are selected to tell a story during our season are grouped together with 2-3 other storytellers (the group that they will be performing with) and a curator (who shepherds the writing process). You’ll spend 3-4 months together working on your stories with this small group, with plenty of writing time built in between meetings. At these story development meetings, each teller gets a chance to read through the draft of their story, talk through their ideas, and gather insights and questions from the other tellers and the curator. Therefore, even if a storyteller is coming in with an existing story, we’ll ask you to stay curious at these meetings. This is one of the ways that we put our value of CRAFT into practice - as artists, we are continually engaged in the process, listening for new directions to explore or scenes to flesh out, different ways we might make a story come alive and connect with a listener.  

As we get closer to the performance date, storytellers then work with a director to hone their performances. Depending on the show, we will often bring in sound designers or musicians to accompany your story as a final part of the process. 

What's a '2nd Story' Story?

We tell stories that are real. We shy away from the word “true”, as memory can be a tricky beast, and we use a lot of literary techniques to tell the best stories we can. Your story must be your story (and not something that happened to your sister or your friend), feature you as the main character, and must have Actually Happened. It’s okay to consolidate characters, or to play with timing or location, but the majority of the story must be something you can stand behind as truth. 2nd Story’s litmus test for this is based on a hypothetical interaction with an audience member. Because (for our in-person shows) our audience has access to our artists after their performance, storytellers frequently find themselves approached by an audience member who starts off with something like “Your story really spoke to me, because that happened to me, too!” and it is critical to 2nd Story’s work that the teller is able to engage with that other human about a real, shared experience.

PAY EQUITY

At 2nd Story, we believe that art is work and that artists should be appropriately compensated for that work. Our budget is a statement of our values, and our budget says, in explicit terms, that we value artists.

2nd Story compensates all of its artists. Storyteller stipends are based on an approximate number of hours at an hourly rate. For more details, please see our Pay Equity Policy.