“What does it imply to be a storyteller in 2026?”
That was the massive query posed at Sundance’s Selection & Audible Cocktails & Conversations panel. Brent Lang, Selection‘s Govt Editor, led a dialogue that included Tony and Grammy award-winning actor, rapper, author and producer Daveed Diggs, comic and actress Iliza Shlesinger and Marshall Lewy, Audible’s head of regional content material in North America.
Whereas there’s not one easy reply, the panel offered eager perception into the fashionable panorama of storytelling. Diggs, as an illustration, spoke to the necessity for empathy and connection via storytelling, particularly as many individuals in society are going via a tough time.
“It’s a time of nice alternative, and in different methods it feels very heavy,” Diggs stated. “There’s loads of weight on the shoulders of storytellers proper now, as a result of there are such a lot of. I believe we’re at an empathy deficit, and that’s sort of our factor; it’s what we do. It looks like we’re wanted proper now. Typically when folks want me, I actually don’t present up. I get stressed. It’s a tense time to be a storyteller, but additionally, I believe, when you may get over your self and lean into it, it’s a extremely necessary time. It’s good to really feel wanted, despite the fact that I want it have been higher.”
Shlesinger was trustworthy in regards to the problem of being open and genuine as a storyteller.
“I believe we’re all so scared,” she stated. “For a very long time, no matter the way you lean politically, no matter baggage you’re carrying, no matter you characterize, there’s a concern that you simply’ll be judged, canceled, forged out. All people’s obtained their weight that they carry. I believe it takes loads of guts to be genuine and personal your story. Typically you’re like, ‘I don’t have one thing as traumatic, or I don’t have a household story like that, or I didn’t have this or that.’ To determine that you simply don’t matter and your story doesn’t matter as a result of it isn’t the identical as another person’s that could be lauded … maybe in the event you really feel that approach, you shouldn’t attempt. Artists are those that dare to attempt to have the balls to say, ‘My voice issues. My story is simply as legitimate.’”
Lewy mentioned the significance of specificity in storytelling and the way that may, in reality, make the expertise extra common.
“Being right here at Sundance and simply excited about what an unbelievable legacy this pageant has and the way it began and the way it’s a corrective to loads of issues which might be occurring … I believe for me, it’s the specificity of telling a narrative and the way the extra particular you might be, the extra common it turns into, no matter what it’s about,” Lewy says. “In 2026, after we’re struggling to attach and perceive one another, you go deep, you may have braveness, you inform your story, after which folks will relate. It doesn’t matter if it’s a couple of woman in Gaza midway world wide, or it’s the city you grew up in: That’s, to me, the facility of storytelling.”
Watch the whole dialog above.
