Solidarity in Storytelling: Open Mic Night

Join Living Hyphen for an evening of storytelling in solidarity for our shared liberation on Thursday, April 4 from 7-9 p.m. at The Theatre Centre.

Living Hyphen is a community made up of people from diasporas from all around the world, as well as Indigenous people from many nations. We sit with the entangled fact that all of our histories and our present-day realities are similarly bound up in colonization, imperialism, military occupations, and racist immigration policies in our homelands and right here on Turtle Island. Today we continue to see the violence and harm stemming from these systems of oppression. We have been watching that violence on full blast on our screens for the last five months to Palestinians in Gaza. While our mainstream media does not cover these stories in full, we know that this violence has also been unfolding and continues to unfold in Sudan, to Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, in Ukraine, to Uyghurs in China, and so many more places and people around the world.

We understand the interconnectedness of both our struggles and our liberation. Together, we speak truth to power. Join us for an evening of storytelling sharing stories of solidarity for our shared liberation!

We invite attendees to come prepared with a 5(ish) minute story to share with our community. We will randomly select storytellers to take the stage to speak their stories. Each randomly selected performer will be given an honorarium of $50. All levels of experience and works-in-progress are warmly welcomed!

We strive to cultivate a supportive space for courageous and tender storytelling and to bear witness to each other’s lived experiences in all their complexity.

While this is a free event, we are encouraging our attendees to consider donating to the Toronto Community Justice Fund to support community members who are facing legal and financial repercussions stemming from the criminalization of their Palestinian liberation and solidarity work. As writers, artists, and storytellers, we at Living Hyphen know how important it is to speak out against injustice and we affirm our right to do so.

More About Living Hyphen

Living Hyphen is a community and multimedia platform that explores the experience of living in between cultures as hyphenated Canadians – that is, anyone who calls “Canada” home and also has roots elsewhere. Our mission is to reshape the mainstream and turn up the volume on voices that all too often go unheard.

We publish a magazine and host a podcast featuring the voices of artists and writers all across Canada. Our stories have been adapted into a stage play with Canadian Stage as part of their Dream in High Park program. Most importantly, we deliver cultural programming by way of writing workshops and storytelling nights to encourage courageous and tender storytelling within our communities.

Learn more at www.livinghyphen.ca.