Story Pirates

I'm not sure how I discovered last nights activity out in Westwood. I talked my friend Claire into joining me for Story Pirates. I was under the impression that it was a group of actors who put on skits to stories that kids have written, adding some adult humor.

I kind of had the right idea, but not exactly.

Story Pirates is an arts education organization that bring together teachers, actors and writers to work with kids. Story Pirates will travel to schools all across the country to host workshops that encourage kids to write and draw their own creative stories.

The writers and actors then take the kids stories and create full skits (often with song) inspired by what the child has created on paper. Story Pirates will then return to the schools to perform the skits for school assemblies.

The mission of the Story Pirates is “to celebrate the words and ideas of young people and to create confident, literate students equipped with a variety of tools for written, verbal, and artistic self-expression.”

Once a month Story Pirates host an adult night in LA (why i thought there were going to be some dirty jokes). Claire and I showed up to small room of about 50 people for the performance. The show began with a puppet show and was followed by 6 short skits all written by kids. The stories were about alien bats, a group of ninja sisters, a girl that loved bread (acted and told in spanish, since that was how it was written), to a boy named charlie that wanted to be a singer. Each skit was 5-10 minutes long.

The talent of each actor was impressive and often the simple skits were very humorous and creative. BUT I was surprised that not one skit had any adult humor and they did not mix it up/change any skit for the adult only night. Story Pirates uses this one night a month to promote the organization to the adult crowd exactly how they would present the show to a school of kids.

Check out more here on the website; Story Pirates