Kentucky Gives a Shit! Unmasked Storytelling Event
Submit by August 31 to tell your story!
Scroll for info, submission & sign up for announcements below.
Kentucky laws have given us a bad rep, but we want people to know there are people here who give a shit!
Our state is more diverse than people realize. It’s election year, and first weekend of November, we will host a live video taping from a fancy red carpet live event !
12 Kentucky artists of all genders will perform or tell stories related to coming out, neurodivergence, medical choices related to the body, and gender identity.
We will energize and amplify their voices and discussions surrounding these topics with Kentucky and the world by featuring the performers and others in a festival-bound mini-documentary.
Six artists have been preselected. Six will be chosen from submissions! You can check out a similar event we produced last year for comedian Mandee McKelvey here: onemandeeshow.com.
Tell your story!
Storytellers will be paid for their 10 minute story performance at a large fancy red carpet event and be part of the mini-documentary we are creating.
Make your stories entertaining but stay vulnerable! We understand the courage and bravery this takes and want to celebrate that but also envelop you with support from a supportive, loving community and audience! Similar to our screenplay competition, we want to root for heroes, feel with dramas, laugh with you about neurodivergent reactions or trying to shop for size 15 heels. Get Creative!
Judging Criteria:
Judging Rubric:
Our panel of 6 preselected performers will rate all submissions and select the other 6 highest scoring performers based on the following criteria. We will select our performers by August 1, 2024.
Most aligned with story criteria: 50% (Failure to meet entry criteria will disqualify submissions.)
Story development and creativity: 25%
Vulnerability and honesty: 15%
Strength of submission performance or pitch: 10%
To Enter:
Deadline July 15, 2024 at 11:59 PM.
Step 1:
Create and upload a video to YouTube, Dropbox or Google Drive with viewing permissions that is 15 minutes or less and introduce yourself to us. Just tell us a little about you. Then, be sure to include at least 1 of the following:
- A video clip full or partial of a past storytelling event where you’ve performed if you have it.
- Tell us on camera less formally the story you would like to tell that you’ve performed before.
- Pitch us your story that isn’t written for stage yet but that you would write for the event.
We will be having checkpoints along the way for participants to hit deadlines and will have to replace participant if they aren’t met.
Never performed storytelling live before?
Not a problem. We will have Zoom meetups where we can provide each other coaching and feedback.
Made possible in part by a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
Meet our Production Team
Jessica Mathis
Executive Producer, Director
Jessica Lynn Mathis (AKA Divinity Rose) is a multi-award and grant winning comedy performer, screenwriter and producer/director.
Her experience in the entertainment industry ranges from performing for stage or screen with notables like Lisa Lampanelli, Nora Dunn, and Al Snow to producing for live shows, TV, commercial projects and web series in addition to working freelance crew on various projects for individual clients and networks like ESPN, Discovery, and ABC.
Her TV writing has placed her as a finalist for prestigious writing fellowships like Sundance Episodic Labs, Ron Howard’s Imagine Impact and as a semi-finalist for the Disney/ABC Writer’s Fellowship. Most recently, her screenplay It’s Christmas Carol! won top prize at WRPN Women’s International Festival of Film and is a finalist for Georgia Comedy Film Festival for Best Comedy Screenplay. As CEO and founder of She Dreams Content Development and Production, LLC, she develops female forward entertainment with strong female leads and themes related to identity and trauma recovery.
Madeleine Dee
Associate Produer
A classically trained performer, Madeleine Dee is an actor and screenwriter who has been cast in over 50 film projects. With her timeless looks, expressive eyes, and strong sense of humor, she thrives in period pieces and often plays clever rebels, offbeat mentors, leaders, and brave women who are just as complex as she is. Madeleine is represented by The Library Agency and has trained with The Margie Haber Studio, Diane Charles, Judy Kain, Scott Sedita, Danielle Eskinazi, and The BGB Studio. She completed Improv 101-401 with UCB.
You can find her lurking in dark corners of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple TV+, Showtime, and HBO. Her own projects, including “Law & Coffee Order”, “The Seasoned Cynic”, and “Finding Miss Collins”, can be found on her website MadeleineDee.com. Madeleine joins She Dreams as a producer for the second time after working on Mandee McKelvey’s CLAM.
Jessica Denson
Producer, Head of PR and Comms
Jessica Denson is a Murrow and two-time Emmy award-winning journalist who now works in communications and public relations and recently began her screenwriting journey.
Jessica currently leads comms and marketing for national nonprofit Connected Nation – where she works with federal and state leaders – often crafting their PR strategies. In addition, she guides the nonprofit’s national media relations, social media outreach, earned media success, strategic planning, and press release work among many other projects.
In her current role as Communications Director for Connected Nation, Jessica has won more than a dozen Tellys, Communicator, and PR News awards – including the 2023 Digital Communicator of the Year.
Although she’s new to the film industry, Jessica has made a living through her writing as first a journalist and then a PR and marketing professional. Simply put, her experience means she understands how to craft a strong story using video.
Rachel Allen
Associate Producer
Bio coming soon.