Short Stories for the Longest Night
I’ve recently started hosting a storytelling night at Comedy Republic in Bourke St. Street, Melbourne. In its earlier iteration, the show was hosted by dear mate Cal Wilson, so it’s an honour to carry on her mantle. It’s on the 4th Monday of the night and each show sees three guests, as well as myself, tell a story on a theme. As Monday’s show was adjacent to the Winter Solstice, the motif was ‘The Longest Night’.
Georgia Love smashed it out of Central Park with her tale of a lost & found phone in New York; Nikki Britton had us hanging off every word of her hilarious, but suspenseful dog rescue mission and finally, Noah Szto took us through the high, lows, laughs & doubts of his first night as a junior doctor in ER. Earlier, I delivered a rollercoaster extract from my one man show Double Feature, based on my mum's 1946 diary.
To whet the thematic whistle for the audience, I also read some ‘Short Stories for the Longest Night’.
The fire crackled & the clouds scudded across the full moon outside. I gazed across to where she sat with her feet tucked under a cushion in her penguin onesie. Her lips curled, eyes twinkled and dimples flexed as she regaled in intricate detail, every moment of her life changing experience as a member of the Youth Parliament in Canberra when she was in Year 11. As she sipped her Prosecco from her One Direction coffee mug, I finally yielded to the view that we had very little in common.
The offer of a free lift to Sydney was too good to pass up. However, as we passed the Kalkallo Hotel and sped up to 110k’s, I began to realise this guy wasn’t playing Nickelback ironically.
His snoring made sleep impossible, but as evidenced by the bloody mess that was my other cellmate’s face, waking him again was not an option.
‘Oh really?!’ I replied with a half smile, scanning the party for exits. ‘You’ve just done the Camino!’
It was the end of the first day of our work retreat. My colleagues had ghosted, leaving me alone with our new boss. He opened up his Strava app and started showing me his PB stats and most often used route maps, then ordered another round.
Roz’s choice to sing Pink Floyd’s rock opera, ‘The Wall’, in its entirety, changed the course of the Karaoke night.
I thought it’d be fun entering a 24 trivia night with ‘Exquiz Me’, my usual pub quiz team, until I found out that Passive Aggressive Steve had moved back from Singapore.
Glizmark-Ee’s three eyes blinked away the tears as the last light faded behind the Tor of Fulgard. He climbed into his HibPod, and followed the procedures to enable hibernation mode. When the Sorax again rose above the Lake of Dun, he would be shaken from his torpor. By then, 1007 gittorbs would have passed. ‘See you tomorrow Heffzorj-Ee’, he said with as much joy as he could muster, but she was already in stasis.
Charles Dicken’s ‘Nicholas Nickelby’ runs for eight and half hours. Just why the drama group at Dunsmuir Correctional Facility had opted to perform it in its entirety, was lost to me, but as the newly appointed Well Being Co-Ordinator, I had to do my time.
Despite a concerted team effort to conceal its whereabouts at the family reunion, Uncle Frank had found his theremin.
‘Stranger Than Fiction’ will be back at Comedy Republic on Monday, July 28th with the theme of 'Third Time's the Charm'
