An Evening of Improvised Stories
- Ruth Halpern
- Robert Pina
- Tim Ereneta
- Shaun Landry
- Kurt Bodden
Music
Pete Madsen, guitar
About the Performers
Kurt Bodden has improvised with Scratch Theatre, in the company at BATS Improv, in the feature film Suckerfish, at Groundlings in Los Angeles, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He’s also a touring standup comic and an MC for live events. Currently he’s working on a solo show about the drawbacks of being a Harvard alumnus.
Shaun Landry is an actor and improviser who is Artistic Director of Oui Be Negroes, Founder of The San Francisco Improv Alliance and Producer of the San Francisco Improv Festival. She was a part of Second City Chicago and can be seen in the movie Read You Like A Book with Danny Glover and Karen Black.
Tim Ereneta‘s varied performing career includes a stint as a singing dinosaur at Lawrence Hall of Science and originating roles in new works by MacArthur fellow Mary Zimmerman. For 10 years he was in the mainstage company of San Francisco’s BATS Improv troupe, making up stories spontaneously. Currently developing a repertoire of traditional tales to tell to adults, Tim is the recipient of the National Storytelling Network’s J.J. Reneaux Emerging Artist Award for 2006, given to an outstanding performer in the early stages of a storytelling career.
Ruth Halpern performs and teaches storytelling and writing workshops for all ages in schools, libraries, storytelling festivals, and river rafts. The LA Times calls her “a spellbinding master storyteller” and her recording, She Set Out to Seek Her Fortune-Tales of Adventures Heroines, was voted one of the top 25 children’s recordings of the past 25 years by the Parents’ Choice Foundation.
Robert Pina was born in Texas and raised in Dos Palos, California. Robert discovered his passion for live performance at Stockton Civic Theatre. He later moved to San Francisco where he studied at the Jean Shelton Actor’s Lab with Jean Shelton, Christian Phillips and Keith Phillips. Robert has previously been seen in several Bay Area venues including Actors Theatre of San Francisco and the Marsh. Robert received the 2006 Theatre Bay Area CA$H grant award.