Phoenix residents from all walks of life are taking the stage at Chatterbox, a newly-established grassroots storytelling community in downtown.
Chatterbox is an improv community with the goal of capturing life in downtown Phoenix and giving locals of all ages a place to share their stories. It held its grand opening on Nov. 2 and takes place every week on Wednesday evenings.
“It’s more important than ever to create a space with empathy and compassion through the act of storytelling,” said Jessie Balli, who spearheaded the show’s development and is the host of the event. “Everyone has a voice.”
Storytellers share their narratives surrounding weekly themes that are determined each month. Previous themes have included “Around the World,” “The Whole Truth,” “Moving On” and “Six Degrees of Separation.”
Balli and Dan Hull, the co-producers of Chatterbox, aim to make the topics vague and open-ended because they “don’t want people to feel confined by the themes.”
Chatterbox has monthly donation drives that give back to the local or global community. Guests are encouraged to bring donations to make a difference in their surrounding community. This month, they collected food items for St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, just in time for the holiday season.
Balli and Hull are no strangers to the storytelling community. The pair has been experimenting with open mic storytelling for six years. Chatterbox is hosted in addition to the Storyline Collective, another open mic community in Phoenix.
For the introduction of Chatterbox, the duo shifted from Lawn Gnome Publishing to Grand Central Coffee Company, near the corner of McKinley Street and Central Avenue. They chose this new location to make the event more open to student attendance.
However, a change of scenery is not the only quality that sets Chatterbox apart from its neighboring improv communities.
“Unlike other improv groups, (Chatterbox) is not a show that is made for performers,” Balli said. “The biggest difference our show has is that it’s attainable, even for people who have never performed at all.”
Balli described Grand Central Coffee Company as a private patio that has a “more secluded and intimate” environment for storytellers to perform in a comfortable space.
But a performing space is nothing without an audience, and Hull said he has spent five years building his up.
Many storytellers and audience members became aware of the Chatterbox series through a connection to Hull or Balli.
“People come and go. They’ll fall off for a little bit,” Hull said. “For me, that’s ebb and flow and the beauty of the whole thing. There are always new or old faces in the crowd.”
Chatterbox hopes to make its mark on downtown, and some residents say the future is looking bright.
“Downtown is such a diverse place,” said Mea Valli Doherty, a sophomore at Arizona State University’s downtown campus. “Having a place like Chatterbox where’s it’s an open forum for creativity and diversity will foster and add diversity to the community.”
Chatterbox hosts open mic nights every Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. on the back patio of Grand Central Coffee Company.
Contact the reporter at shenne@asu.edu.
