Story Days in Tampa Bay 2018

A Week-Long Bay Area Festival of Storytelling
October 1-6, 2018

Come face to face with great stories during Your Real Stories’ 5th Annual Story Days in Tampa Bay.
This year’s venues promise real life stories told, sung, danced, slammed,
talked about and enjoyed in exhibits, performances, and onscreen.

Peruse this year’s digital brochure below for more information, schedule, maps, and more!

Your Real Stories presents
the 5th Annual Story Days in Tampa Bay
October 1-6, 2018.

This popular six-day storytelling festival collaborates with St. Petersburg and Tampa area artists and arts organizations, theatres, libraries, universities, restaurants, and museums to present real life stories just the way you like them– told, performed on stage, danced, sung, seen in exhibits and documentaries and experienced in seminars for writers, producers and filmmakers. Each evening ends with receptions and after parties at local restaurants because there will be a lot to talk about.

In 2017, just two weeks after Hurricane Irma, we asked people to bring in their stories–the frightening ones, the sad ones, the funny ones. And they did. This year, supported by a grant from the Florida Humanities Council, we are presenting Irma & Maria: Hurricane Stories, One year later a theatrical performance based on interviews with Tampa Bay residents including two families who fled Puerto Rico. Local actors will perform the real life stories of these survivors. We also invite everybody to again bring their own hurricane stories and then, experience them as an immediate work of art. This event is free on October 2 at the Poynter Institute Barnes Pavilion, 801 Third Street South in St Petersburg.

Story Days in Tampa Bay is the signature production of Your Real Stories, creator of the series Decades of Day Work and St. Pete Stories. Your Real Stories also created and produced Out of the Shadows: the LGBTQ Homeless Youth project, which was awarded Creative Loafing’s 2017 “Best of the Bay” for “The Best Mix of Theatre, Storytelling and Activism.”

Major sponsors for Story Days in Tampa Bay 2018 include The Robin Phillips and Susan Green Family, Ted Jones, and The Hotchkiss Real Estate Group. Each year, Your Real Stories, a 501 (c) (3) tax exempt organization, produces some of the events for Story Days and then collaborates with partners around Tampa Bay to complete the rest of the six-day schedule. Current and former partners include the Tampa Bay Times, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Dali Museum, the St. Petersburg Library System, University of South Florida (USF) Tampa and USF St. Petersburg, The Studio@620, and The Florida Holocaust Museum, among others.

The Your Real Stories Gallery & Studio is located in the Warehouse Arts District Arts Exchange, 515 22nd Street South, St. Petersburg. The mission of Your Real Stories is to create a space for people to experience the compelling authentic stories of real people and to find the common threads that tie us together as human beings.

Click below for event information.

Story Days in Tampa Bay 2018