In this dizzying era of alternative facts and fake news, spotting a lie when it’s masquerading as truth is an essential survival skill. It’s also the aim of one of the most inventive events on the Vancouver arts calendar: Story Story Lie, which makes a monthly game show out of telling tall tales.
Story Story Lie is the brainchild of Jo Dworschak, who was inspired to launch a monthly storytelling event in Vancouver after enjoying similar spoken-word events while travelling overseas.
Vancouver has plenty of storytelling events on the calendar, but Dworschak’s event comes with a competitive twist: performers share intimate, hilarious and embarrassing stories that seem too tall to be true – but only one of the stories actually is just that.
Only Dworschak and the assigned liar know who the liar is; the four other storytellers don’t know, nor does the audience. During the show, audience members are encouraged to inundate the storytellers with questions in an attempt to reveal the liar, and then text to their guesses to Dworschak.
The first audience member to correctly identify the liar wins (according to the press release) “respect, admiration, and an amazing prize,” and the winning storyteller is the one who tricked the most people.
“What they’re trying to do when they’re telling a true story is make it seem like it’s a lie,” says Dworschak. “If they’re telling a lie, they’re trying to make it seem like it’s a true story.”
Over the course of Story Story Lie’s first year, one liar told a seemingly mundane story about why he’d been late for work one day; another related an improbable but believable tale about hijacking an airplane. Dworschak told a story about the first lie she ever told: in kindergarten, when she’d claimed credit for an unsigned piece of art that wasn’t hers and her proud mother hung it up in their front hallway where it remained until Dworschak was in high school.
When Dworschak told this true story as part of Story Story Lie, “most people thought I was lying,” she chuckles.
All of the stories must be original, but that’s where similarities between the tall tales begin and end. After a year of running Story Story Lies, Dworschak (who both produces and hosts the monthly shows) says she still hasn’t identified a single thread that runs between all the winning stories.
Story Story Lie celebrates its one-year anniversary on Aug. 11 with an all-star show at the Fox Cabaret. Dworschak has invited back five of Story Story Lie’s trickiest storytellers: Mark Hughes (Comedy Shocker) Zain Meghji (Daily Hive), Suzy Rawsome (Comedy Basement) Burcu (Burcu’s Angels) and Nic Enright-Morin (Been around the Word).
This will be Story Story Lie’s final show at the Fox Cabaret; due to consistently sold-out crowds, Story Story Lie’s September show will take place at the Rio Theatre, which can accommodate at least 100 more audience members.
• Story Story Lie’s anniversary show takes place on Aug. 11 at the Fox Cabaret. Tickets $10-$12.
