Overview

Six Storytellers, connecting the community through the power true story. The theme for June 1 is "Mischief, Mistakes and/or Mishaps"

Story Room Aus

Story Room Aus presents another diverse and talented line-up of Storytellers. Join us for an eventful evening guaranteed to take you on a rollercoaster of emotion perhaps tears or laughter or even awe. This event is even better when you get together on a table with friends. So take the opportunity to come along and enjoy the energy and connection that Story Room offers. Come along and experience the new look, Henry’s Rooftop, The Steyne Hotel.

Six different people from all walks of life come together to share stories on what connects them. Each story is true. There is no fabrication in this event.

About The Night

Story Room Aus is an event presented on the first Tuesday of every month at the new look, Henry's Rooftop in Manly. A warm, safe and friendly environment to a chance to mingle with friends, make new friends, relax and be entertained by the eclectic and talented storytellers. The event creates a community where sharing real stories brings us together and helps us to feel connected. Enjoy drama, fun, laughter and have a chance to be a part of something different here on the Northern Beaches

Meet the Storytellers

Matt Hayes

Matt Hayes has been sailing since he was a child, amassed several Australian Championships in various classes and competed in many world championships in the soling class, finishing on the podium on many occasions. Matt represented Australia at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. He is a regular skipper in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race and has competed in the Admirals Cup and Kenwood Cup. Matt established his first sailing school when he was 19 and has dedicated his life to sharing the joys of sailing with thousands of customers. Matt established Sydney by Sail in March 1995 after winning the NSW Enterprise Workshop Award for Best Business Plan in 1994. Matt's dream is for as many people as possible to enjoy the pleasure of sailing on our world-famous Sydney Harbour. Matt is now managing Sydney By Sail and its sister company Performance Cruising Yachts, exclusive importer of the Slovenian Elan Yachts. Matt has recently completed a lifelong goal of his, circumnavigating the world on SV Influencer over 2 years from 2018 - 2020.

Lisa Gorman

Lisa Gorman is an accomplished actress and storyteller, having toured with Theatre in Education and productions on the Sydney fringe for many years as well as co-founding her own theatre company, taking live theatre to clubs throughout NSW. She has been a teacher of speech and drama for both primary and secondary schools and has run workshops on presentation and performance for the English and Drama Teachers’ Associations as well as in the corporate sector. In 2000, Lisa was awarded the Studio Medal for excellence in communication by the Australian Speech and Communication Association (ASCA). In 2005, she established ‘Storytelling off the Page’ and developed a unique program for schools, performing one-woman adaptations from the works of Shakespeare and various other authors on the syllabus: offering students a clearer understanding of the text. ‘Bringing stories and poetry to life is her passion: she has recited various works for the Henry Lawson Festival, NSW Storytelling Guild Ku-ring-gai Council and has appeared at the Giant Dwarf as part of Generation Women. For the past five years she has been touring aged care facilities, performing a series of lively interactive shows based on musical, stories and poetry. In 2018, Lisa devised a poetry therapy program, aimed at residents in aged care with cognitive decline, designed to stimulate memories and spark stories through conversation, giving them a voice and the confidence to share: resulting in wonderful poetry! During last year’s ‘hiatus’ Lisa utilized the time to put together two, One Woman Shows which she plans to take on the road in the not-too-distant future.

Luke Escombe

Luke Escombe is an ARIA-nominated songwriter, musician and comedian who loves using his creativity to get himself both into, and out of, trouble. He is the creator of "Chronic", a musical comedy show about living with chronic illness, and "The Vegetable Plot", a subversive children's band that makes fresh, funky music inspired by vegetables. Luke received his early musical education in London, where his father’s job in the rock and roll industry enabled him to see hundreds of legendary performances by artists like Freddie Mercury, Prince and Bruce Springsteen while he was just a boy. When he’s not channelling his inner Rockstar, Luke is an ambassador for several health charities, a member of the NSW Arts Advisory Panel and a teaching artist with the Sydney Opera House's Creative Leadership in Learning Program. He believes strongly that music and storytelling can play a transformative role in health, education, and society. Among his more obscure awards is the title of “Sydney’s Sexiest man voice”, which he won in a competition on a once-popular Sydney radio station.

Ashley Kalagian Blunt

Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of 'How to be Australian' and 'My Name is Revenge', which was shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards and the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. Her writing appears on Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, The Sydney Morning Herald and more. She co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health

Kiran Shah

Kiran loves adventures and she's had aplenty as she 's lived and worked in the United States, Sri Lanka and Japan before moving to Australia in 2008 from Singapore. Kiran is a With a background in social work and education, Kiran became a professional storyteller 23 years ago and hasn't looked back. She loves telling stories to anyone, anywhere. Her storytelling career has taken her to numerous conferences and festivals in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Iran and Singapore where she's performed and presented workshops. While she loves telling folktales, she enjoys telling personal stories from her Indian heritage with a dash of humour.

Wilf Deck

Wilf was born in New Zealand and went to school and University there, graduating as a Civil Engineer in 1956. School holidays were spent on his Grandpa’s farm at Umukuri.
His family being in the exclusive brethren, he endured a restricted life outside the brethren but benefitted from a warm loving family where his job was to milk the cow every morning.At age 24 he left the brethren, a painful business due to their ostracization of people leaving. He married and went to Vancouver then London where in 1963 he joined Ove Arup and Partners working on the Sydney Opera House Roof.

His career took him to 10 different countries, first as a Structural Engineer then after age 50 as a Planning Engineer, mostly on large projects including the New Parliament House in Canberra, the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong, and the High-Speed Rail in Taiwan.

After retirement he studied Counselling/Coaching at ACAP in Sydney. He joined the running boom in the late 70s and took up Triathlons when aged 50, doing his last World Champs event in 2016 aged 81.