Big prizes for short stories on Sunday
Published:Thursday | February 9, 2023 | 12:52 AMMichael Reckord/Gleaner Writer
Jamaica’s most lucrative storytelling competition climaxes on Sunday with huge wins for the top three contestants. For telling their true-life stories in only six minutes each, they will leave the stage with a combined total of $750,000.
Sponsored by Jamaican, US-based actress-playwright-producer Debra Ehrhardt and business partner Basil Kong, the competition, What’s Your Story, Jamaica?, has been running, with a minimum of publicity, for the past few months. First held last year, it will be annual, Ehrhardt told The Gleaner.
After surviving the eliminations, the final nine contestants will tell their stories at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts on Sunday starting at 4 p.m. The best story will earn the teller $375,000. The second-prize winner will get $225,000, and the third will get $150,000.
But the other finalists won’t leave empty-handed, Ehrhardt said in an interview just before the semi-finals were held at Drumblair last Sunday. They’ll also be receiving several thousand dollars in cash from the original $1 million in prize money.
Anyone can enter the competition, Ehrhardt said. All they need is a true story that can be told in six minutes or less. Fifteen people entered this year’s contest, which will be judged on the final day by both the audience and a selected panel.
Ehrhardt conceptualised the competition because she believes in people sharing their stories. The stories she heard as she was growing up in Jamaica profoundly influenced her and, in fact, caused her to start writing plays, she said.
Her latest play, Look What Fell Out De Mango Tree, is about a father and daughter relationship and how it affects the daughter’s life. “It’s about the importance of forgiveness and the power of vulnerability,” Ehrhardt said.
The five plays she has written and performed to date are all based on her life experiences. All but the latest one are one-woman shows. She performs in Look What Fell Out De Mango Tree with fellow Jamaican actor, the Juilliard School-trained Christopher Grossett.
It is now being presented as staged readings, one of which was mounted on January 13 for the benefit of the Norman Manley Foundation. It moved a few days later to Tryall, St James.
Ehrhardt said she hopes to have the world premiere in the autumn of this year in Jamaica, rather than in the US, where her other plays opened. Her previous plays are Jamaica Farewell, CockTales: Shame on Me! (both staged in Jamaica), Mango Mango and Invisible Chairs.
“I only write stories that are based on truth,” Ehrhardt told me. “I really believe that when we share our stories with each other, we feel less alone in the world and we can have more connections among our communities. Too many people keep things inside, which I don’t think is good for human beings; it’s okay to share. When we share we realise that all of us are going through the same things and we’re basically the same no matter where we come from.”
Getting very personal, she added, “When I was an adult, my father, who was addicted to alcohol and gambling, told me a story about his life that completely changed my ability to relate to men. I was able to understand who he was.”