Community Building Workshop

Our workshops bring people together to share stories of our mutual human experience.

Portland Story Theater offers a 1.5 hour community building workshop called Storytelling Tool Kit for conferences, businesses, and private groups.

This is a dynamic, interactive experience for everyone. We outline the primary components of effective storytelling, and some tools for discovering and delivering a story in a compelling way. The skills we teach are experiential and not something that can be quantified statistically. We find that people who are open to sharing what matters to them and are willing to express that through their own personal story are transformed by the experience.

Participants will walk away with the tools to create cohesive stories using the power of spontaneity. People will learn how to tell stories improvisationally by tapping into their own real-life experiences. This workshop will give participants a strong understanding of the elements and structure of story. Visit our Community Building page to find out more.

PLEASE NOTE

Workshops for the general public are suspended until further notice. Be sure you are on our mailing list to receive all of the updates as they happen or return to this website for more details.

One Race: The Human Race

We believe that personal story breaks down barriers and reveals the commonality of the human experience. We believe that story is the glue that holds us together and sustains us as a community; that story awakens our consciousness and helps us recognize that we are one race: the human race. We believe that each personal narrative is sacred. We do not seek out celebrities to perform in our shows because we believe that everyone has a story to tell. No need to bring the focus on sensational, titillating or embarrassing stories. We encourage people to dig deep to discover the heartfelt humor and emotional truth of their stories.

Everyone has a story to tell.

Be heard. Honor your emotional truth. Discover your self through story. Discover your history.

Listening builds connection.

Be open. People are transformed by being heard. Listen openheartedly.

Story breaks down barriers.

Be vulnerable. Tell your story. Authentically. Honestly. Sincerely.

We are in a revolution.

Be a part of the change. Story illuminates the universal through the personal. Story awakens our consciousness. Story helps us recognize that we are one race: the human race.

Believe. Act. Transform.

Thank you for being a part of Portland Story Theater’s vision to advance, inspire and expand our community narrative, one story at a time – and in doing so, preserve and promote the ancient art of storytelling in a way that enriches modern life, allowing and encouraging people to be vulnerable and present in ways that are crucial to the full expression of our humanity.

May The Narrative Be With You!®

Audio CDs

Portland Story Theater is offering these epic stories of great adventure, perseverance, and courage, created and told by Lawrence Howard and recorded before a live audience. Click here to purchase.

• Nansen of The North
• Shackleton’s Antarctic Nightmare
• Polar Opposites
• The Essex

Each is a double CD ($20 USD) and the pricing includes shipping within the continental United States. Please email us for additional pricing if you are wanting to ship outside of mainland USA.

With this story Lawrence Howard takes the Armchair Adventure north, to Norway and Greenland and the New Siberian Islands, to Svarlbard and Spitzbergen and Franz Joseph Land. This story goes all the way back to the 1890’s, to the father of polar travel: the one and only Fridtjof Nansen. 2+ hours Buy now.

The true, epic tale of Ernest Shackleton and the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914. Their valiant ship, The Endurance, was trapped in the pack ice and crushed; Shackleton and his 28 men survived on the ice for over a year and endured incredible hardships. 3+ hours Buy now.

This is a story of heroic and tragic events in Antarctica when Scott and his companions fought their way to the Pole only to find that Amundsen had beaten him by five weeks. Crushed, utterly exhausted, and short on food and fuel, Scott and his team froze and starved to death, just 11 miles from a huge cache of provisions and supplies. 2+ hours Buy now.

The Essex is the true story of a Nantucket whaling ship that was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1820, leaving 20 men in three small boats with very little food or water. This is the true story that became the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Meticulously researched and historically accurate. 3+ hours Buy now.

For more information, please visit Lawrence Howard’s Armchair Adventure page.