Tell It On Tuesday

Kate Brubeck, no relation to Dave, is an editor, coach, and writing consultant with a stealth singing practice, with a range including classical music, traditional Irish music, show tunes, jazz standards, folk, Americana, country, and the odd original. 

Geoff Van Lienden has been playing the guitar professionally since the 60’s. More recently he has been playing jazz as well as celtic/fusion music with Colm O’Riain. He has studied with teachers as diverse as rock guitarist Joe Satriani and jazz guitarist Brian Pardoe. 

Brittany A. Kamerschen is creative writer known for her poetry and prose within live performance. She has B.A. degree in Creative Writing from S.F.S.U. She has performed in Bay Area musical theater. She is currently in the process of publishing her first book. 

Claire Castell found Stagebridge storytelling classes in 2017, just after retiring, and has since performed her stories around the Bay Area. She likes to tell personal true stories, but she did a deep dive into the diaspora of Loup Garou tales from Acadia area of Canada to Louisiana, and collected 19 folktales of the monster.

Barbara Brady performs as a singer a cappella jazz with The Merlot Notes, a 10-woman ensemble based in Silicon Valley. She spent many years as a professional cathedral chorister and soloist in Cincinnati, OH, where she also produced and performed cabaret and performance art, drawing on an even earlier obsession with modern dance.

L. Abdul-Kenyatta is a bona-fide Renaissance man. He is a regular contributor to the NPR show Snap Judgment, and he is currently working on his one-person show (Everything I ever needed to know I learned) Back in the Day.  On February 13th he will appear at Stage Werx Theater in the show Big Shot Storyteller.

Melinda Ginne, Ph.D grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where her family migrated after several decades in Boyle Heights, the Jewish-Latino ghetto of East Los Angeles. Taco stands were kosher and the shul was across the street from the Catholic church. Her family celebrated religious holidays as Jews, but personal holidays such as birthdays, weddings, and funerals all had a Latin flavor.  

Andrew Potter began his performing career as a music director for children’s theatre. He morphed his career into an award winning, internationally acclaimed juggling act who got their start as buskers in San Francisco in the 1980’s. He has since retired from juggling, and settled into all things musical, as it is his first love, and is much more sustainable.

Janet Thornburg has written and performed seven solo shows. Her fiction has been widely published in literary journals, and Rhubarb Pie, a collection of her short stories, was published in 2005.

Jane Gire, originally from Michigan, studied theater at the U of M, moved to Chicago to “make it big” in comedy—where she was side-tracked by her involvement in Greenpeace and falling in love—and ended up in San Francisco in the early 90’s. She has recently come back to performance after a (I know this is really cliche) a trip to the Black Rock Desert to Burning Man, where she re-committed herself to some promises she made to herself. 

Bill Zarchy worked all over the globe during his 40 years as a cinematographer, as captured in his memoir, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil. Now he writes novels, shoots photos, and tells stories. He is a graduate of the EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland. 

Tracy Vernon is an award winning public school teacher in the East Bay. She enjoys sharing her stories from the classroom and beyond, including how her childhood experiences influence and guide her as a teacher.

Mullerette, with a sound of its own, crafts atmospheric grooves that follow the interplay of a Wurlitzer 200’s vintage keyboard and a haunting female vocal. The band’s velvety sonic texture—with hints of folk, jazz and pop—stems from a long-standing collaboration between award-winning singer-songwriter Lupe Muller and keyboardist/producer Joey Muller.

Pearl Louise is called Miss Pearl by most folks, and you can call her that too. Originally from Louisiana, she now stays in this overpriced but gorgeous Bay Area… such is life. Enjoy it, she does.

Liz Nichols got lost in the Folklore & Mythology section of the public library at age ten and hasn’t found her way out yet! She brings her teaching and cross-cultural background to storytelling for all ages. Liz is part of SF’s Asian Art Museum Storytellers group, and the former Director of Storytelling Programs at Stagebridge. She’s also a Master Trainer in TimeSlips Creative Storytelling for people with memory loss. www.liznichols.net

Candace Y. Johnson, praised by Opera News for her vocal clarity and expressive interpretation, has concertized widely, including guest appearances at Carnegie Hall and The Manhattan Center. In 2018, Candace premiered her musical biography, VOX in a BOX, to explore themes of identity, belonging, and race, and ultimately to share how she found her authentic voice. Presently, she teaches singing at UC Berkeley, where she incorporates her research on the works of African-American composers. cjsings.com

This is the first episode of Hannah Taylor’s newest solo performance piece.  In this work-in-progress, Hannah meets Natalia, a nurse practitioner, just after sunset at an Ocean Beach birthday party and they conspire. Teaming up with Rebecca Fisher and advisors, Planet DoReMi, has a little song dilly dilly, Tibetan Tingsha Bells and Hannah’s newest story.

Stories

• Wynd Kaufmyn, The Betrayal That is Not Divorce
• Ashley Jaye, Channel BPD
• Abe Bernstein, Too Old To Feel This Young
• Marie O’Donnell, Hide the Booze, the Family’s Comin’ Over

Music

 Mimi Heft & Joe Christiano, Guitar and Vocals

Wynd Kaufmyn, a Jewish girl from Detroit, moved to the Bay Area in 1979 to do the graduate work at UC Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering. Since then she has become (in this order) a Christian, a mother, faculty at City College of San Francisco, a wife, a non-violent activist, an anti-Zionist, a divorcee, Vice President of her union local. She wants to be an artist when she grows up.

Ashley Jaye is a Social Media Marketer by day, solo performer and actress by night. She hilariously highlights the complex racial, sexual, societal, and cultural intersections of mental illness for Black Women through original works including Dee Pearson is (more than) a Bully and A Spike Lee Joint. theashleyjaye.com

Abe Bernstein is an actor, improviser, solo performer, and storyteller. His most recent stage roles were as Mortimer in The Fantasticks, Herr Schultz in Cabaret, Stevenson in Fahrenheit 451, and Man in Here We Go. For ten years he was in Stagebridge’s Playback Theatre Troupe.

Marie O’Donnell originally hails from Detroit, Michigan and has lived in San Francisco for the past 9 years, performing at various Bay Area theatres.  Prior to that, she performed in comedy shows in L.A. and was a regular performer on “Late Night With David Letterman” in NY.  She also went to school with Madonna, who would barely talk to her, but they were in separate departments, so it’s very understandable.

Stories

• Bertha Reilly, Early Days
• Enzo Lombard, Louisiana Fairytales
• Sarah Elovich, I’m All Yin
• Toni Weingarten, To Tell or Not to Tell

Music

Adrian West (vocals, guitar, violin, live looping), Kevin Goldberg (bass, vocals)
Original Acoustic Rock

Adrian West writes and performs music that sounds like a collaboration between Paul Simon, Talkingheads and Dave Matthews. Tonight’s performance will be an intimate duo show, but the full Adrian West Band is a lively four-piece that includes alto sax and drums, and they play all over the Bay Area. Their music, videos and upcoming shows are all at www.adrianwest.com,

Bertha Reilly grew up in Ireland where people told stories about everything and she believed them all! She came to the U.S. in 1966 and slowly sorted the difference between truth and story. When she retired, she joined Stagebridge—almost 20 years ago. While she enjoyed just being a listener for years, she’s slowly grown into her own story.

Enzo Lombard’s aunt and uncle ran Baltimore’s first gay bar, Pepper Hill (named after their two Great Danes), the site of a police raid in 1955 which inspired police conduct laws still on the books to this day. Louisiana Fairytales was initially written as a sequel to his off-Broadway award-winning play, Love, Humiliation & Karaoke (directed by two-time Emmy winner W. Kamau Bell). Enzo and his husband currently live in San Francisco and New Orleans.

Sarah Elovich is a solo performer living in Oakland, CA. She’s delighted to return to Tell It On Tuesdays in preparation for her second full-hour show, in which she explores and reinterprets Torah stories. 

Toni Weingarten spent 19 years in Los Angeles writing for TV news, magazine shows, documentaries and for interactive media, and print articles and essays. These days she’s happiest delivering her words in person to real live people.

Stories

• Janet Thornburg, Tales of Great Ulysses
• Judith Dambowic, Welcome To The Cancer Cafe
• Sarah Matsui, Hello, Boar—You Must Be Hungry
• Melissa Hobbs, Who’s Split Pea Soup?

Music

Wiley McFarland duo, Laura Wiley (vocals and flute) and David McFarland (guitar) 

The Wiley McFarland Duo is Laura Wiley on flute and vocals and David McFarland on guitar. Laura and David play some contemporary jazz pieces, plus their own original compositions.

At age 58, Judith Dambowic received a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, with no clear and accepted treatment path, and a limited life expectancy.  She unexpectedly began writing and performing as part of a class to help her manage the ‘new normal’. This serious yet often funny piece demonstrates her transition from provider to patient and what lessons this role reversal may have for others.

Janet Thornburg has written and performed seven solo shows. Her fiction has been widely published in literary journals, and Rhubarb Pie, a collection of her short stories, was published in 2005.

Sarah Matsui is a Taiwanese and Japanese American writer who grew up in Honolulu and has since been based in Philadelphia, Oakland, and now San Francisco. Her work has been featured in NPR’s Code Switch, Jacobin magazine, and Rethinking School magazine’s “Our 2016 Picks for Books for Social Justice Teaching: Policy.”

Melissa Hobbs is an East Bay storyteller and poet who tells stories of women of excellence in history: Sacagawea, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, Gertrude Stein and Patricia Locke. She’s preparing a story about Táhirih, the first Persian woman to remove her veil, for a performance this October at Silk Road House. Her poetry books are: Under the Pomegranate Sun; and a chapbook, Athena’s Mined Gold.

Stories

• Ginger Parnes, Sausalito: Circa the 70’s
• Scott Cohen, Colorful Grandparents and Black & White Television
• Fred Johnson, Defining Success 
• Houston Robertson, The Story of a Nice White Lady

Music

Wiley McFarland duo: Laura Wiley (vocals and flute) and David McFarland (guitar)

Ginger Parnes was three years old when her two older brothers sent her on stage at a Saturday matinee talent show at the Tower Theater in Miami. She sang a song… and won!  Unlike many people, Ginger WOULD rather speak in public than die, so, she was thrilled when her name was drawn several times at The Moth. Better yet, this return to Tell it on Tuesday under the direction of Jeanne Haynes.

By day, Scott Cohen is a mild-mannered accountant in his mid-fifties. By night, he is still mild-mannered and in his fifties, but he is also a storyteller and comedian.  His current project is a nostalgic and funny one-person show about his grandparents. Tonight you’ll see an excerpt.

Fred Johnson is a jazz musician and a formally incarcerated person. He is committed to addressing the policies that continue to dehumanize prisoners, guided by harm-reduction principles.

Houston Robertson, is an 82 year old retired human resources professional. She brings her experience as a writer, motivational speaker, and award-winning clown to her solo work. She’s been called a “gutsy storyteller” and “an insanely expressive and inspiring spirit”—qualities that inhabit her memoir, Paper Chain Confessions. She offers “charming, irreverent, and amusing insights” in her confessional scolding of the nice white lady.

Stories

• Beth Holland, Proceed to the Root
• Victoria Podesta, The Designated Daughter
• Joanne Green, Home Is Where the Hurt Is: A Comedy
• Wayne Harris, Bugles, Blaspheme and The Baptist Church

Music

Stuart Rosh, Guitar and Vocals

Beth Holland is a longtime Bay Area radio announcer who you can hear on KQED as Beth “Huizenga.” Beth grew up in New Jersey and has followed her heart and the promise of a job all around this amazing planet: backpacking through Europe making lifelong radio nerd friends; spending 3 years broadcasting on Radio Bangkok in Thailand; and the last 25 years in the Bay Area. She is also the mother to two awesome daughters, and a yoga practitioner and teacher. 

Victoria Podesta first performed as a solo artist in the late ‘80’s, writing and performing Far to Go at Life on the Water and The Marsh theatres in San Francisco.  Had she known that title would be prophetic, she probably would have chosen another. Thirty years later, The Designated Daughter premiered at Three Cat Production’s 2017 SOLO Chicago Festival and had a sold-out Rising at The Marsh in 2018.

Joanne Green has performed On and Off-Broadway and been a member of the renowned LA-based improvisation troupe, The Groundlings. She is the Drama Director at The Laurel School in SF and loves that her life is filled with kids, comedy and creativity! This piece is dedicated to her daughter, Olivia.

Wayne Harris is an award winning solo performer, writer, educator, curriculum innovator and musician. A gifted artist with wide ranging interests, he has accumulated an impressive body of work over the years that includes 7 full length plays, presentations for schools, directing and designing for pageantry groups as well as various musical projects.

Stuart Rosh was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His music has been praised in numerous publications including Global Rhythm, Jazz.com, MSN.com, East Bay Express, Detroit Weekly, Cincinnati City Beat, and The Village Voice. With his band, The Geniuses, his first CD made the Top 40 of the Americana Music Association’s weekly chart for three weeks. He’s made four nationally distributed albums and can be heard on Spotify and other major streaming platforms. Stuart Rosh is also known as Stuart Rojstaczer. Under that more complicated name, he has been a geophysics professor at Duke University, a librettist (Fordlandia, an opera premiered at Fort Worth Opera Frontiers), a National Science Foundation Young Investigator (when he was young), a Geological Society of America Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer, and a Friends of American Writers and National Jewish Book Award winner for his novel, The Mathematician’s Shiva (Penguin). He lives with his wife of 40 years in the Bay Area.