Tell It On Tuesday

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.

Stories

• Jeanne Lupton, Sunday Morning with Mary Ellen
• Claire Wahrhaftig, A Trip to Kovel
• Elaine Magree, PussyGrabberRevenge
• Ethan Davidson, Dragons in The Trees

Music

The Blues Daddies, music for listening and dancing:
Joel Kreisberg (bass and vocals), Joe Pratt (sax, keyboards, and vocals), Natsuhiro Maruyama (drums), Art Swislocki (guitars and vocals)

Jeanne Lupton writes memoir for page and stage, and is happy to be back at Tell it on Tuesday with this work.  She hosts a monthly reading series at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda and leads a weekly memoir writing group for seniors at her home, Strawberry Creek Lodge in Berkeley. 

Claire Wahrhaftig, a native San Franciscan, closed out her career in arts administration as the Executive Director of the SF Arts Commission. She continues her study of storytelling at Stagebridge where she completed the two-year EPIC program under Kirk Waller.

Elaine Magree has written, directed/collaborated or performed new work at The Marsh, The Magic Theatre, California Shakespeare Festival, Z Space, The Working Women’s Theatre Festival, Brava, The Exit Theatre, The People’s Theatre Festival, The National Women’s Theatre Festival and The Minneapolis, Winnipeg and Victoria Fringe Festivals. She taught theatre at Solano College, SF City College, East Bay Center for The Performing Arts and in homeless shelters, recovery centers, and the Sacramento county jail. This is her third solo piece. Sometimes a wave, sometimes a photon: you can’t be in two places at once, or can you?

Ethan Davidson is the child of two science fiction writers. At the age of 14, he was sent to Belize alone to look in on the family plantation. He remained there for a year. He has lived most of his life near or in San Francisco.

The Blues Daddies began in 1995 in Kensington as a Motown-Stax-Rock cover band. The “dads” had children in the same elementary school. Since then, the band has evolved in its sound and has become more agile and progressive. While still playing homage to music of the 1950’s and ‘60’s, more modern music is now part of the repertoire as well. The Blues Daddies are available for your listening and dancing pleasure.

Stories

• Gwen Carmen, 4215 Winrose Way
• Bill Zarchy, The Elevator in Rome
• Sarah Matsui, Hello, Boar– You Must Be Hungry
• Tony Cyprien, The Bus Ride

Music

Doris Moskowitz: early jazz standards 

Gwen Carmen is an activist, actress, educator and writer whose work has appeared in Essence, PLEXUS West Coast Women’s Press, and the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal during the ’80’s and ’90’s. She was editor/publisher of La Morena Women of Color bilingual newspaper, and she will appear in a showcase for new performers at The Marsh in May.

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 and tells stories. He is a graduate of the EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland. billzarchy.com

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, and Rethinking School‘s “Our 2016 Picks for Books for Social Justice Teaching: Policy.”

Tony Cyprien was born and raised in Watts, California. Seven years ago, he moved to Berkeley where he discovered improv. He proceeded to step out on stage, ultimately performing at a Moth GrandSlam, two Moth Mainstage events, and being broadcast on National Public Radio. He has also performed with Marin Shakespeare’s Returned Citizen’s Troupe, and at Monday Night Marsh, Tell It on Tuesday, Solo Sundays, and BATS Improv as an invited storyteller for The Gather.

Doris Moskowitz is the youngest daughter of Moe Moskowitz, the original owner of Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue. After graduating from Mills College, she began working with her dad, and now it is Doris who owns and operates Moe’s Books, keeping her father’s legacy alive. With a love of words, stories and old movies she sings and plays songs from before 1940.

Stories

• Lavonne Taft, Ticket to Ride
• Edwin Richards, Beyond the Safe House 
• Naomi Puro, Nathan My Grandfather; A Master of Chutzpah
• Fred Pitts, The California Missions and Race Tour – Part 1

Music

Kadie Kelly (piano) and Suzanne Yada (violin)

Stories

• David Kleinberg, He Wants to Run
• Karen Ripley, Memoirs of Resistance
• Jenn Biehn and Joan Lohman, 25 Years, 2 Dykes, 3 Weddings, and an Annulment
• Wayne Harris, Richard James, A Holiday Story  

Music

Andrew Potter, fingerstyle guitar

David Kleinberg was an editor and writer at the San Francisco Chronicle for 34 years, the last 14 as editor of the Sunday Datebook. He spent 10 years doing standup comedy (appearing with Robin Williams, Dana Carvey and Richard Lewis), and has been doing solo theater for 10 years. He had two runs at The Marsh, first with Hey, Hey, LBJ!, about his year as an army combat correspondent in Vietnam. His second show, Return to the Scene of the Crime, was about going back to Vietnam 50 years later to visit where his buddies died and trying to perform ‘LBJ’ under threat of arrest from the communist government. He is also a native of San Francisco, and has lived in The City all his life. davidkleinberg.weebly.com

Karen Ripley has traveled all over the USA and the Caribbean. She was featured in Logo’s Wisecrack, Season 2. Ripley wrote and performed her one-woman show, Oh No, There’s Men On The Land!, at the Marsh in Berkeley. Theater Eddy called it one of the top five for 2015. karenripley.com

Jenn Biehn and Joan Lohman developed and performed this side-by-side story for the EPIC storytelling program at Stagebridge this past spring. Jenn is a retired administrator/instructor at City College of SF and continues to teach a women’s leadership class each year. Joan is long time massage therapist and Rosen Method practitioner, specializing in body work for elders. Both are actively engaged at East Bay Meditation Center in downtown Oakland and Neighbors for Racial Justice in the Dimond.   

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 five full-length plays, presentations for schools, directing and designing for pageantry groups as well as various musical projects. He’s currently the Director of Marsh Youth Theater and a Resident Teaching Artist for StageBridge. wayneharris.net

Andrew Potter is a fingerstyle guitarist on 6 and 12 string guitars. He plays an eclectic mix of old jazz tunes, instrumentals, originals and covers. andrewpottermusic.com

Stories

• Julia Jackson, Man Enough to be a Girl
• Paul Sussman, The Wrong Kind of Pessimism
• Neshama Franklin, Anne Rosenbaum, Manager Extraordinaire
• Eva Schlesinger, The Mother Daughter Roller Coaster Adventure Ride

Music

Joshua Raoul Brody, With Or Without Friends: a sublime set of standards, sub-standards, originals and aboriginals.

Julia Jackson is a comedienne and solo artist. She has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and comedy clubs nationwide.  Her one-woman show, Children Are Forever: All Sales Are Final, won the Best Non-Fiction Show Award at the 2016 United Solo Festival in New York City.  

Paul Sussman developed his approach to melodrama and farce through years of work in financial management with Bay Area nonprofit organizations. He has written and performed a series of solo pieces through the eyes of road-ragers, insects, Anabaptists, cannibals, and others who persist in the search for meaning midst the puzzling evidence. 

Neshama Franklin tells every chance she can get, from around the campfire to Moth grand slams. This is her 10th TIOT performance. Check out more of her stories on her YouTube channel, her radio show on KWMR, and her book review blog from the Marin County Library where she works.

Eva Schlesinger’s writing has appeared in over sixty publications, including the Chicken Soup For The Soul anthology, Thanks To My Mom. She has featured at BATS Improv, Weekday Wanderlust, and Lip Service West. Eva is a two-time Moth StorySLAM winner, and has been a Grand SLAM contender on The Moth Stage, where she made the audience of 1,400 laugh nonstop.

Joshua Raoul Brody has been a regular at all the Marsh venues over its nearly 30-year history, collaborating with Merle Kessler, The Residents, A Karen Carpenter Xmas, Marga Gomez, Josh Kornbluth, Pulp Playhouse, and countless others, as well as doing his own work. He’s also done a bunch of other stuff. Drop him a line at mail@jraoul.org to be put on his mailing list, or just to say hi.

Stories

• Lisa Rothman, Trolls in Yoga Pants
• Joshua A. Hattam, The Fireman Song
• Jared Karol, There’s More to Life Than El Cajon
• Enid Hunkeler, Gone with the Windbag
• Kenny Yun, Get Over It!

Music

Laura Wiley (vocals and flute), Geoff van Lienden (guitar) and Bruce Barrett (bass)

Lisa Rothman’s show Date Night at Pet Emergency was extended three times at the Marsh in Berkeley and SF. In addition to raising children, Lisa’s other adventures include producing KPFA’s Morning Show when Andrea Lewis and Philip Maldari were the co-hosts, hosting a nationally distributed radio show at a food truck park, and ballroom dancing in China. She currently helps everyone, from construction workers to scientists, make better presentations and figure out next steps with important projects and their careers.

Joshua A. Hattam dropped out of school in the seventh grade to pursue a life of crime. He learned to write while serving over a decade behind bars. His writing has been featured in Out of the Gutter and Bareknuckles Pulp. He lives in San Francisco, with his fiancé, their two dogs, and cat. He is finishing his first book, a memoir, The Fireman Song.

By day Jared Karol is a leadership development coach and diversity & inclusion facilitator working at the intersection of purpose, storytelling, and belonging. By night, he is usually sleeping—unless he is playing music in a variety of local bands and venues, experiencing the urban serendipity of the Bay Area, or hanging out with his partner and nine-year-old twins.

Enid Hunkeler is a medical scientist. After 40 years at Kaiser Permanente, she retired last year, and began her encore career as a comedic writer. Enid was egged on by her mentor, one of the original leaders of Kaiser. Her colleagues blackmailed over the years into performing her satirical plays rejoiced. Raised in New York, Enid’s on-stage experience began and ended in the late 60’s when she was the highest paid go-go dancer in Boston. Enid likes to write about serious issues from a comedic viewpoint. As a new performer, like Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire), Enid relies on the kindness of strangers.

Kenny Yun is currently developing his fifth solo show. He is a coach, director, and solo performance teacher at The Marsh. Kenny has an English Literature degree from UC Berkeley. Kennyyun.com

Laura Wiley sings and plays flute in various Bay Area groups, such as Resonance Jazz Ensemble and the Laura Wiley Electrical Quartet.

Geoff Van Lienden has played guitar professionally since the 60’s. Early years included R & B cover bands, rock and roll groups and folk music with friends. More recently he plays jazz with various vocalists and instrumental groups, and celtic/fusion music with Colm O’Riain.

Stories

• Maria Grazia Affinito, “Mamma, leave my breasts alone!”
• Harriet Patterson, “Unfriending Texas”
• David Jacobson, “Dog’s Misery Swamp”
• Vivien Cook, “Heaven Custom Made”

Music

Bekah Barnett, the Urban Minstrel

Maria Grazia Affinito is a local equity actress. She has performed with various companies in the Bay Area and in several independent films. A sampling of her stage credits include Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (SF Shakespeare Festival), Ana in Displaced (Marin Theater Company), and Nancy in Gaslight (California Conservatory Theater). 

Harriet Patterson is a Bay-Area based writer, solo performer and nonprofit executive. Alongside her 20+ year career in health nonprofits, she has appeared on Bay Area stages at Solo Sundays, Monday Night Marsh and Tell It On Tuesday. Her first solo show, Sail On!, debuted at the Boulder International Fringe Festival in 2017. She will make her Bay Area debut with Sail On! in September 2018 at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. A native of Dallas, Texas, Harriet lives in the East Bay with her husband and cat where she enjoys breakfast tacos, photography, and spending time outdoors.

Like you, David Jacobson is home to 40 trillion bacteria that weigh as much as his brain, crucially affecting his health and mood. Microbes also play key roles in Dog’s Misery Swamp, his latest solo play directed by Mark Kenward and developed with Charlie Varon. In June, Swamp went to the London (Ontario) Fringe. In August, David and his microbiota perform at Edmonton Fringe. dogsmiseryswamp.com

Vivien Cook grew up in industrial England and emigrated to the US in her early twenties. She is a writer, poet and storyteller particularly intrigued by ancestry and history. She is also a high functioning if distracted grandma. This is her third visit to Tell it on Tuesday.

Bekah Barnett sings songs from the heart. Her pure and clear voice is perfectly complimented by the simple and melodic piano landscapes she composes. One of the bay area’s hidden gems, she has recorded two full length albums of original songs and is currently working on material for a third. Her live performances are always special events, sure to captivate and enthrall you.