![Comedian Gilli Apter will host Story + Party: True Dating Stories this week. Picture: Supplied Comedian Gilli Apter will host Story + Party: True Dating Stories this week. Picture: Supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/RXMuw2JbrrS7ELSxSY9rkR/e58cec87-77c5-4499-acd9-14a8e2f511d4.jpg/r0_0_4267_2399_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
There's something about bad date stories that people find fascinating.
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Single people, know this. It's hard to hang out with a friend group filled with couples without being interrogated on your love life.
It's not always fun when you're the only singleton sharing the misadventures. But! When you're in a room full of strangers all willing to dish their greatest date failures, well that's a party. A Story Party, to be exact.
Story + Party: True Dating Stories heads to The Street on Wednesday, bringing with it the chance to hear woeful tales to remind you that your dating life could be worse. And if you're already someone's permanent plus one? Well it can make you thankful that your dating days are over.
![Story + Party last time it came to The Street. Picture: Supplied Story + Party last time it came to The Street. Picture: Supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/hU74HdTxzzWB78D7znDAb9/af085889-e8df-413a-a6ec-48df1aa8bb9c.JPG/r0_569_5569_3712_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Hosted by South African comedian Gilli Apter, with special guest and fellow comic Tats Nkonzo, the night will see the duo tell their own dating stories, before opening it up to the crowd to see just how bad it can be looking for that special someone in the capital.
But don't worry, it's not about the doom and gloom. Apter describes it as a comedy show with a dating theme. I mean, if you don't laugh, you cry, right?
"The stories are so varied," she says.
"Some are hilarious, some are disgusting. Some are real and honest, some are outrageous, some are so strange. So it reflects the full spectrum when it comes to not just dating but being in relationships, being in love, being married, being single, being a parent - anything that's related to this mystifying experience that we call dating, love and romance."
![Comedian Gilli Apter will host Story + Party: True Dating Stories this week. Picture: Supplied Comedian Gilli Apter will host Story + Party: True Dating Stories this week. Picture: Supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/hU74HdTxzzWB78D7znDAb9/648f996e-1bf5-4b19-96c7-7b85684fb2f1.jpg/r0_898_4267_3312_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The Story Party experience has played to sold-out audiences in more than 65 countries - because, if there is one thing that is universal, it's the dating struggle.
But that doesn't mean that the audience stories are necessarily the same. Since heading out on the road with Story Party, Apter has found that not all audiences are created equal when it comes to bad date stories.
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"It's such a fun subject to discuss with people from all over the world and to hear about it from the different perspectives," Apter says.
"Because everywhere you go, people have different cultural relationships to the subject. They relate to it differently based on where they're from. Some people are very conservative. Some people are very explicit. Some people are uptight, but in fact, they're quite explicit.
"So you can have a crowd that doesn't laugh at the explicit jokes, but then we read their stories out, and they're wild. So you just don't know what you're going to get."
When it comes to Australian audiences, Apter says we're more explicit than elsewhere in the world. So far the tour has brought out stories that the comedian says sound more like the beginning of a bad adult film than real life.
But the story that has stayed with Apter so far is one with a woman who made up an unusual excuse to leave a less than stellar date.
"She wanted to get out of the date, so she said she had to go home to feed the baby. But there was no baby," she says.
Story + Party: True Dating Stories is at The Street on Wednesday, from 7.30pm. Tickets from $40 from thestreet.org.au.
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