Hey, let’s talk music for a bit. I know a lot of people think of us primarily as a storytelling space. It’s even in our website description, where we call ourselves Mezrab — The House of Stories. However, when we started the Mezrab in 2004 music was as important, if not more important than our storytelling events.
Author: Sahand Sahebdivani
Amsterdam Storytelling Capital of the World
So, this blog has not been updated for exactly a year and a day. Now we can pretend that year didn’t happen. Which is nonsense of course. Because the whole reason the updates didn’t come was a result of us having our busiest year ever. Just looking at the storytelling we went from six days a month to eleven. Who would’ve thought when we started 14 years ago that Amsterdam could support a place having so many storytelling nights a month? By this summer we will expand the nights to fifteen. Add to the ones we do the ones that other people in Amsterdam organise (I’ll post a list soon), and I think slowly but surely we can call Amsterdam the Storytelling Capital of the World. Holy crap. Did I just type that out loud? I mean, it’s been in my head as a thought. But it’s not so unreasonable to write it:
We have a yearly festival that’s been running for over a decade.
We have a school that teaches students in storytelling, but there’s also a collaboration with the Amsterdam Academy for Theater and Dance to involve storytelling in the curriculum of the theater students.
Both of these attract visitors from outside the city, or even the country.
The direct result of speaking the thought out loud is the feeling of responsibility: if we are the storytelling capital of the world, what do we need to bring to this scene? One answer comes clearly to my mind:
Regular high level solo shows of accomplished national and international artists. All the regular nights that Amsterdam has are nights in which a social experience is the main draw. People come and meet, see a variety of tellers. None of these nights bring in an audience for a single production. So, now that we have made that first bold statement, here’s another one: We will make going to a high quality storytelling show popular in Amsterdam! A bold statement for sure. But who ever said the Mezrab is afraid of a challenge.
