Kind Stories in Concert
Date: Oct 1, 2023
Time: 7:00pm-8:30pm EST
(Open Mic Story Share and Reflection: last half hour)
Format: The story session opens with a concert of seasoned tellers and community tellers sharing stories with themes of kindness. During the second half of the gathering, audience members are invited to share a story, moment, or reflection about kindness that emerged for them as listeners.
ABOUT THE STORYTELLERS
Megan Wells is a national touring storyteller and in-demand historical impersonator. She is renowned for her lyrical language, character creation, and soulful
re-tellings of traditional material. Also a long-form teller, Megan has numerous full-length programs of world myth and classical literature. Megan has garnered three national awards as well as three regional awards in her hometown of Chicago. Megan is truly, madly, deeply, wildly, obsessively, indubitable, supercalifragilisticexpialidousiouly in love with the art and craft of storytelling. Her extensive repertoire and full-length bio can be found at: www.meganwells.com
Usha Venkatraman is a Mumbai based award winning storyteller, author, classical vocalist, puppeteer, and radio show host, who keeps the ancient art of oral tradition alive with stories that transform and inspire. A versatile teller with a wide repertoire of folk, traditional, literary, and beguiling mythical tales, Usha adapts her craft with puppetry, dance, and music to suit young and older audiences. She loves to bring different voices together, weaving threads of untold stories of women heroes stitching together forgotten folklore, fragments of myth, songs and music. Usha has been storytelling at national and international festivals, events and conferences in India, Singapore, Thailand, Sydney, Malaysia, Iran, UK, Canada and the United States. Usha curated Gaatha – Mumbai International Storytelling Festival 2023 and is the Festival Director. Visit https://ushavenkatraman.com/
PapaJoe: The traveling teller, PapaJoe, is the one of those characters you expect to find wandering through the pages of an old children’s picture book. And when you see him telling a tale, long beard wagging, the explosion of expressions, the range of voices, the depth of emotions; you’ll know some of the reasons he is so loved by his listeners. Over the decades, he’s pied pipered his way from Cow Head, Newfoundland to Tombstone, Arizona, told tales from the beaches of Barcelona to Moscow Mountain, Idaho and left footprints all over the internet. Whether he’s presenting an ancient folktale or sharing one of his many incredible experiences, one can’t help feeling a part of the story.
EMCEE
Carrie Sue Ayvar: Growing up surrounded by stories, Storyteller/Cuentista Carrie Sue Ayvar learned early on the power of the oral tradition and its capacity for healing, inspiration, education, and entertainment. An award-winning Storyteller, Chautauqua Scholar and a National Credentialed Teaching Artist she has been connecting people, languages, cultures, and curriculums in both English and Spanish, for over forty years. She believes, like her Grandpa Nat taught her, that “It is hard to hate someone whose story you know.”
Community tellers
Edjohnetta Miller is a quilt/fiber artist working with color, pattern, and textures of fabric. She enjoys the freedom, movement and power given to creating the sculpture of cloth. She finds combining the various colors, patterns and weaves of fabric very exciting. She makes each quilt simple, essential, and direct, wanting the viewers to be able to visually enter her quilts and walk through fields of color to the still, contemplative space within. Her work is like a spiritual journey that allows her to return to the dye table, sewing machine, quilting studiously day after day with renewed anticipation of what beauty will evolve. At times she is surprised with the results of a work that seems to have a life of its own. This reminds her of the truth that she is not in control of the process, but simply guides it. She wants her quilts to reflect her positive view of life as well as her love of fabric. For her, life is enriched with diverse experience and amazing opportunities that should be embraced and shared. https://edjohnetta.com/
Rain Warren, Ph.D.: Dr. Rain’s career as a facilitator, educator and trainer in peace-building, dialogue, and conflict mediation has spanned over twenty years and has taken her to over 100 countries around the world. Recently, she was honored with the Legacy International Humanitarian Award acknowledgement of having directly impacted the lives of over 34,000 youth, and the Josephine “Scout” Wollman Fuller award by psychologists for Social Responsibility, recognizing her outstanding contributions to the advancement of peace and social justice. Dr. Rain is currently developing a project called “Creating a World that Listens,” in which she take takes red chairs to public places and provides a peaceful space in which she simply listens to the issues and concerns of everyday people. Often she asks them to respond to the question, “What would you say if you knew the world would listen?” She has had profound conversations with all races and ages of people from 6 to 93 years age.
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