Tell It On Tuesday

Stories

• Bruce Pachtman, “50 People Who Look Just Like Me”
• Liz Callahan, “No One Says This Thing I Know to be True On Being a Grandmother”
• Adrian West, “The Headless Hunter”
• Joan Chaplick, “The Reunion”

Music

Doris Moskowitz: Early Jazz Standards

Bruce Pachtman’s first show, don’t make me look too psychotic, was developed with Club Solo and directed by W. Kamau Bell. It ran in SF, Philadelphia and LA for a total of 300 performances. The scene Bruce performs on May 29 is included in his not-yet-completed (or titled) second show. It was co-written with Kamau. 

Liz Callahan is immensely grateful to her husband, children, stepchildren, and grandchildren who she hopes will never see this piece. And to her talented sister, Ellen Jay, who invited her to share the stage with her both literally and figuratively. And to Jeanne Haynes, her storytelling teacher, for her encouragement, enthusiasm and expert direction. She owes this award to all of them.

Adrian West moved to the Bay Area from Montreal in 1995 and lives in Oakland with his wife and two daughters. He is a singer-songwriter and musician who leads the Adrian West Band and performs often around the Bay Area. Recently he has been putting on a multimedia show, An Evening of Music & Science, in San Francisco and Berkeley, which weaves together his music, synchronized video, poetry and an exploration of abiogenesis, the study of how life began on Earth. adrianwest.com.

Joan Chaplick lives in San Francisco, works in Berkeley, grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Try to figure out those values and politics! Joan’s studied at the Marsh with David Ford, Charlie Varon and Ann Randolph for many years. She’ll be performing in the SF Fringe Festival in September 2018. 

Doris Moskowitz sings and plays songs from before 1940. With a love of words, stories and old movies she accompanies herself on the piano.

Stories

• Maryclare McCauley, Finding Balance
• Douglass Truth, ASK DEATH: Questions for Death, Herself
• Jean Ellisen, The Witch of Sheffield Village
• Daniel Rudman, Tri “G” Le and Mick Renne,  Ever Hear of Mario Savio?

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)

Each of us tells a story in our own unique way. Maryclare McCauley enjoys movement and acting out the dialogue between the characters, so it’s almost as if you are watching a play. Tonight you will see an excerpt from a new story she is developing called, Finding Balance. Some of us have had a rocky beginning in life, and those early imprints can cause all sorts of trouble, and some very unexpected delights.

Douglass Truth is a painter, writer, and performer. He lives in Nevada City, CA, and performs his show An Intimate Evening with Death, Herself as often as he can. He has worked as a designer and surveyor in Alaska, a chef, building dismantler, English teacher, a software salesman in Taiwan; he prefers making art. 

Jean Ellisen has been telling stories all her life, but telling stories on purpose for over 25 years, locally, nationally, and internationally. Her passion is helping others, young and old, find their own voice through storytelling.

Daniel Rudman has had plays performed in Berkeley, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Paris. He won the Bay Area Critics’ Circle award for Best New Play in 1981. Tri “G” Le is a Bay Area actor studying at UC Berkeley. He is interested in learning and sharing the untold stories of all backgrounds. Mick Renner has acted in Bay Area theatres for 45 years, including Berkeley Rep, Eureka Theatre, Berkeley Shakes, and solo performances in San Francisco and Boulder Fringe Festivals.

The Blues Daddies began in Kensington, California, in 1995, since the “dads” had children in the same elementary school. Beginning as a Motown-Stax-Rock cover band, 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

• Ruth Halpern, 1,001 Nights
• Howard Petrick, A Nickle a Rat
• Airial Clark, Chrysalis
• Ady Lady, Avon Walking

Music

Mimi Heft (vocals, guitar), with Dave Tilton (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Joshua Raoul Brody (vocals, piano, melodica), an eclectic mix of acoustic folk rock, blues, Americana, and jaz

Ruth Halpern has been weaving personal stories and traditional tales for many years. She teaches, writes, and performs around the Bay Area and the world.

Howard Petrick has performed in theater festivals throughout North America. A Nickle a Rat is an excerpt from Fight for 52¢, in which Petrick portrays the revolutionary labor leader Vincent Raymond Dunne, was one of the leaders of the 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers strikes. Petrick spent many hours talking with him about his life.

Airial Clark doesn’t give a fuck. No really, it’s her job. She’s a master storyteller, bad-ass business coach and women’s empowerment facilitator. 

Ady Lady is a performer and a writer whose work has been seen in venues around both the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Her two shows, Sara Jane Tried to Kill the President and From Piss to Bliss, were both developed with David Ford at the Marsh and received enthusiastically by audiences and critics alike. 

Mimi Heft lends her melodious voice to a wide range of music, from jazz and blues to a capella and folk rock, presenting a mix of originals and covers but making each her own deeply personal and resonant story. For Tell It On Tuesday, Mimi will be joined by guitarist/vocalist Dave Tilton (“Indiamericana” trio Cededa) and pianist Joshua Raoul Brody (Tango No. 9, Orchestra Nostalgico, and BATS Improv).

Stories

• Joe Cole, The Train Outta ICU
• Tim Ereneta, Tales from the Urban Campfire 
• Scott Ullman, A Walk to Remember
• Sally Holzman, Dunkirk Challenge
• Tina D’Elia, The Breakup. There’s a Show for That?

Music

Duncan Carling, instrumental jazz and blues

Joe Cole began his acting career in 1980, after moving to the Bay Area from his native Atlanta. Joe has performed in film and network TV and has bagged a few radio and TV commercials along the way, but theatre is his first love. He will always have a special fondness for his role as Ollie Olson in Eugene O’Neill’s Four Plays of the Sea.

Tim Ereneta does not make films, manage corporate brands, design video games, photograph weddings, parse data, write marketing copy, or investigate news stories. What he does do is tell folktales, fairy tales, and the occasional shaggy dog story to audiences. Live. Without notes. Apparently there is not a word for this.

Scott Ullman is currently an adult librarian at Berkeley Public Library, but he’s worked in libraries for over 30 years. A life-time political activist, Scott spent 13 years organizing in the nonviolent social change movement as a paid organizer. A member of Stagebridge, Mr. Ullman is doing storytelling in the Oakland Unified School district for second graders, and he’s also active with Books for Wider Horizons providing weekly book reading, storytelling, puppetry, etc. with preschoolers in Oakland.

The past of radio, books and stories offers storyteller Sally Holzman grist for stories for today. Mining her childhood, this time boarding schools, she finds little gems to share, with the hope that they brighten the listeners day.

Tina D’Elia, owner/founder of Tina D’Elia Consulting is a Performance Coach, Casting Director, Workshop Facilitator, and Actor. About her piece tonight: Where does our protagonist Me go when faced with heartache from a recent breakup? As memories, music, and familiar places come raining down… Me finds herself running right into the Recent Breakup Support Group. Here is the place where despair and hope dance between the habitual questions of “What Happened?” “What Now?” “How long will this last?” and “Where is my time-machine?”

Stories

• Annette Roman, Inauguration Vacation
• Tony Cyprien, Work in Progress
• Theresa Donahoe, Confessions of a White Mexican
• Geoff Hoyle, Fake: (based on a true story)

Music

Stuart Rosh, guitar and vocals

Annette Roman is the creator/performer of 3 solo shows—Hitler’s Li’l Abomination, Animal Love, and Inauguration Vacation—performed at 15 theater festivals to date in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. She is a member of the Berkeley Monday Night Playground writer’s pool and her short plays have been performed at SF Olympians, PianoFight, and at the Playwrights Center of San Francisco’s PlayOffs. 

Tony Cyprien was born and raised in Watts, California, but now lives in Berkeley, where he discovered improv. Since stepping out on stage, he has won a Moth StorySlam, performed at two Moth MainStage events, and has been broadcast on National Public Radio. Tony has also performed for Marin Shakespeare’s Social Justice Troupe and the Marsh’s Monday Night Marsh. Tonight he is sharing new material. 

Theresa Donahoe is an actress who recently started performing solo pieces. Her first full length solo show, Late Bloomer, made its debut at the Rogue Fringe Festival in March 2017. Confessions of a White Mexican is her latest solo piece and is currently being developed into her next full length show.

Geoff Hoyle, maybe best known as Zazu in the original Broadway cast of The Lion King, has been an actor and clown (Pickle Family Circus, Cirque du Soleil) for more than 50 years, appearing nationally and internationally and in many plays and solo performances in the Bay Area at ACT, Berkeley Rep and The Marsh where he collaborated with David Ford on Geezer and Lear’s Shadow.

Stuart Rosh has made four albums with national distribution, one of which hit the Top 40 on the Americana Music Association chart back in the day. Stuart Rojstaczer is a geophysicist (who was a National Science Foundation Young Investigator back in the day) and has written a SF Chronicle and American Booksellers Association bestselling novel. Rosh and Rojstaczer are the same person. He is currently trying to get decent at bocce and his next novel will be out in 2018. 

Stories

• Abe Bernstein, How The First Letter Was Written
• Jeanne Lupton, My Life in Tanka
• Malcolm Grissom, Work: it’s more than just a 9 to 5 job
• Lois Sanifu Kincy, Was Enslaved and Still Feeling the Fall Out
• Laura Hedli, too old to be this young

Music

Adrian West Band, Acoustic Rock & World Styles
Kevin Goldberg & Brandon Farmer

Abe Bernstein is an actor, improviser, and storyteller. His most recent acting role was as Mortimer in The Fantasticks. He regularly performs in Bay Area senior centers and senior residences as a storyteller and as a member of Stagebridge’s Playback Theatre Troupe. 

Jeanne Lupton is happy to be on the Tell It on Tuesday stage again. She writes tanka, a 5 line Japanese poetic form, and has hosted the poetry reading series at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda for ten years. Many thanks to coach Jeanne Haynes.

Malcolm Grissom is a Storyteller, an Employment Counselor, a podcast host, a friend and a gentleman (sometimes). Tonight he is premiering the work-in-progress for his fourth show.

Lois Sanifu Kincy. Life is its own story. Stagebridge gives me opportunity to practice in the “telling” and I am blessed to be a part of its “telling.”

Laura Hedli is a writer and storyteller. Laura’s articles on the arts have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and American Theatre, and online at TDF Stages, Playbill, and SoloSundays. She also writes about science and works at Stanford University School of Medicine. This show, too old to be this young, will debut at the Maui Fringe Theater Festival in January 2018.

Blending acoustic rock and world styles, the Adrian West Band performs the most storyesque songs from its repertoire, plus a couple instrumentals. Infectious original songs and grooves featuring Adrian West on vocals, guitar, electric violin & live looping, Kevin Goldberg on bass and Brandon Farmer on drums. www.adrianwest.com

Stories

• Naomi Puro, A Travel Curveball
• Geoff Hirsch, How I Got My Start in Comedy
• Phil Surkis, Happy People Do Not Play The Bass
• Ellen Jay & Liz Callahan, You’re sisters???
• David Hirata, American Wizards

Music

Ragtime Bowling: Americana, blues, and bluegrass, featuring
Scott Underwood, Sean Dougan, and Jared Karol

Naomi Puro has studied Storytelling at Stagebridge in Oakland, and performed at the Monday Night Marsh & Laugh Lines in San Francisco. She has been teaching Dance & Movement classes to Older Adults for so many years, the she’s become an older adult. Her weekly Fun Fitness & Dance class at the Berkeley Jewish Community Center is in its thirty-fourth year! A Travel Curveball is directed by Jeanne Haynes.

Geoff Hirsch has been teaching math for over 30 years at Ohlone College and the College of San Mateo. He changed his schedule so he might Tell it on Tuesday. He owns the world’s most diverse tie collection (Google “Geoff Hirsch As long as I got my suit and tie”) He was the first person in the Third Millennium, but that’s another story.

Phil Surkis was inspired to try comedic storytelling and comedy producing after leading a Seder. Performance-wise, Phil is a regular on the Solo Sundays series at Stage Werx, and has performed at The Marsh, Starline Social Club, and Freight & Salvage. He’s a producer on two podcasts for W. Kamau Bell, including Kamau Right Now! and Politically Re-Active. 

Liz Callahan doesn’t plan on quitting her day job as an executive coach, and she’s happy to be using her skills as a front-of-the-room trainer to (hopefully) entertain. She and her sister, Ellen Jay, have been looking for projects to collaborate on for decades. Found one! Many thanks to Jeanne Haynes for her expertise, enthusiasm, support and gift of laughter.

David Hirata is the writer/performer of two shows that ran at the Marsh, Kanji by Starlight (1997) and Magic Holiday (2007). He has also created theatrical magic pieces for the Exploratorium, the Yerba Buena Center and the Oakland Museum. He is delighted to be gracing the Marsh stage again.

An eclectic mix of ragtime and country fingerstyle blues, bluegrass, Americana, and old-timey, Ragtime Bowling will get your feet tapping, your hands clapping, and leave you thinking: “I get the ragtime part, but what does bowling have to do with anything?”

Stories

• David Kleinberg, Return to the Scene of the Crime
• Barbara Newman, Tradition
• Linda Wright, The King of Pop
• Reha Zamani, Don’t Call me Fashia
• Beth Huizenga, Help God, I Hear You Hate Us

Music

Doris Moskowitz: early jazz standards 

David Kleinberg was an editor and writer at the San Francisco Chronicle for 34 years, the last 14 years as editor of the Sunday Datebook. He has also been a standup comic for 10 years, appearing with Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, and Richard Lewis. This is his third one man show and the sequel to Hey, Hey, LBJ!, about David’s year as an Army combat correspondent in Vietnam.

Barbara Newman MD, MPH (Masters of Public Health) worked in medical projects in the developing world: India, Angola, Sudan, southern Mexico, Haiti; and with immigrants seeking asylum in the US. She worked for 20 years as an emergency room physician in US, after 10 years as a family physician.

Linda Wright is an Oakland native, and a UCB graduate who works at two elementary schools as a Second Step guidance teacher. A Wife and mother of 3, she leads assemblies on African American history and tells tales from around the world. lindadwright.com/

Reha Zamani is an Afghan American actress with a background in theatre and commercials. After college she moved to L.A. and worked in various independent films, commercials and plays. Reha decided to return to the Bay Area after getting a job working for a tech company and is currently working on the piece: Don’t call me Fashia. 

Beth Huizenga’s dream as a Dutch American kid growing up in New Jersey in an ultra-religious community was to be fabulous, travel around the world and go swimming on Sundays. She did just that—living in Asia working in broadcasting—before landing in the Bay Area as a DJ on KFOG during its heyday. Somehow, she managed to keep the same bike lock since working as a messenger in Manhattan in the late 80s, and that makes her proud. 

Doris Moskowitz is the youngest daughter of Berkeley’s famous bookseller Moe Moskowitz, owner of the legendary Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue. Now it is Doris who owns and operates Moe’s, keeping her father’s legacy alive. She performs early jazz standards monthly at Nabolom Bakery and Pizzeria at 2708 Russell (at College) in Berkeley, and is delighted to join TIOT for the first time tonight!

Stories

• Ginger Parnes, Paris Faux Pas
• Jan Friedman, The Committee
• Phyllis Dantzler, Pretty Little White Girl
• Wayne Harris, In the Garden of Gethsemane

Music

Mimi Heft and Friends: folk, jazz, a capella, blues

When Ginger Parnes was 3 years old, her brothers sent her on stage to sing at a movie theater talent show. They wanted her to win them a bicycle… and she did! Since then, she has been singing  (including 10 years with Berkeley Broadway Singers) and performing with delight when opportunity presents itself.

Jan Friedman, formerly a designer and author of a series of books on American eccentrics, embraced her retirement by joyfully exploring her own eccentric potential through improv and storytelling.  Plunging into a new world of senior dating and previously repressed sexuality, she developed The Committee with Marsh director Charlie Varon, first performing it last year at SF’s Monday Night Marsh series.  

Phyllis Dantzler is a monologist, stand-up comedian, writer, filmmaker, artist, and slacker extraordinaire. She lived the first 30 years of her life within spitting distance of where the Civil War started. She defected from The South in 1982 when she moved to San Francisco. Phyllis currently lives in Oakland with her two dogs, cat and five chickens.

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 5 full length plays, presentations for schools, directing and designing for pageantry groups as
well as various musical projects. Wayne is also the director of The Marsh Youth program.

Mimi Heft lends her melodious voice to a wide range of music, from jazz and blues to a capella and folk. Whether presenting originals or songs by others, Mimi makes each her own deeply personal and resonant story. In addition to performing with her own band, Five-Legged Mule, Mimi has shared the stage with Joshua Raoul Brody, Myles Boisen, Three Drink Circus, Miniwatt String Trio, Mark Growden, Thad Povey, Delco, and others.