Tag: 2012

Stories

• Linda Wright, 100 Years Ago, Harriet Tubman Lived
• Gene Gore, Cheesecake and Demerol
• Kurt Bodden, Steve Seabrook: Better Than You
• Laura Wiley, Driven Bananas

Music

Laura and Bernie Duo: flute, vocals and guitar

Oakland native Linda Wright is a UC Berkeley graduate who works at two elementary schools as a Second Step guidance teacher. A wife and mother of 3 (two in college and one in high school), she leads assemblies on African American history and tells tales from around the world.

Gene Gore is an award-winning acting professional with experience in live theater, film, commercials, and voice-over work.  A resident of San Francisco since 1991, she studied with Ed Hooks, David Ford, Bobby Weinapple and currently is being directed by Wayne Harris.  Her autobiographical work Cheesecake and Demerol was featured at the 2012 San Francisco Fringe Festival where Gene performed to sellout audiences and earned a “Best of Fringe” award. 

Kurt Bodden has performed improv at the Edinburgh Fringe, hosted a talk show at a nightclub, and toured as a standup. Recently he completed a few years of study in physical performance at Flying Actor Studio. Tonight’s performance is an excerpt of the full-length show that will open at the Marsh San Francisco on February 22. Steve Seabrook: Better Than You is directed by Mark Kenward. See kurtbodden.com.

Laura Wiley will perform Driven Bananas, an excerpt from her second solo show.  She performed her first solo show, Panic!, at the 2012 SF Fringe Festival. It was a comedy about the onset of panic attacks while attempting to teach Hamlet to a roomful of college students. Both Panic! and Driven Bananas are directed by Rebecca Fisher.  In addition to acting and writing, Laura also play the flute, sings, and paints. Her websites are: www.lauraaustinwiley.com and www.resonancejazz.com.

Stories

• Sally Holzman, Women’s Work
• Jerry Gillies, 5 Unpeelings of the Jerry Onion
• Maria Grazia Affinito, Eating Pasta off the Kitchen Floor (excerpt)
• Bruce Pachtman, How Would I Know I Was in the Movie if No One Told Me?

Music

Rana Weber, Singer/Songwriter

A week after retirement, Sally Holzman joined a storytelling class and has been practicing this great oral tradition ever since in schools, senior facilities on stage and radio. She is host of a monthly story telling swap at the Orinda library (ask her about it), a member of Antic Witties Improv troop, as well as an active participant in the Stagebridge program.

Jerry Gillies has been an NBC newsman in New York, a comedy writer for such legends as Phyllis Diller and Henny Youngman, a workshop leader and motivational speaker, and a bestselling author of self-help books (Moneylove; Transcendental Sex). He has lived in a motorhome, on a houseboat, in a sex commune, and in a 4 by 8 cell at Folsom State Prison. He will soon make the transition from ex-convict to expat, living in Panama City, Panama, and starting a new career as that nation’s first English language stand-up comedian. There’s a lot of layers of this fat onion to unpeel, but Jerry will attempt to take an uplifting, sometimes poignant, often hilarious shot at five of them.

Maria Grazia Affinito is a local equity actor. 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). Eating Pasta Off the Kitchen Floor is being developed with David Ford at The Marsh. She will be performing a larger excerpt of this piece at Solo Sundays, Stage Werx Theatre, January 27, 2013.

Bruce Pachtman wrote and performed a solo show titled Don’t Make Me Look Too Psychotic which was developed with Club Solo and directed by W. Kamau Bell. It ran for 300 performances. Bruce currently co-produces three monthly series at Stage Werx Theatre in San Francisco: Underground Sound (music), Previously Secret Information (storytelling) and Solo Sundays (solo performance). Tonight, Bruce will be telling a story.  

Rana Weber is a Bay Area actor, singer/songwriter, director, coach and teaching artist. She is currently working to complete her first album, which will be released some time in mid-2013. Thanks for listening!

Stories

• Lauren Crux, My Lunch with Sophia Loren
• Kirk Waller, Separate and Unequal
• Safiya Martinez, So You Can Hear Me (Excerpt) 
• Rana Weber, I’m Sorry, WHAT?

Music

Vanessa Lowe, singer/songwriter/guitarist

After receiving her MFA a bit late-ish in life fifteen years ago, Lauren Crux, who was a writer and photographer, began her performance career. Before that she was a perfectly nice person. She was born in Canada but makes home in Santa Cruz, CA. More Info: laurencruxartist.com. 

Kirk Waller brings musicality, mime and emotion to his broad range or stories for young and old alike.  His performance venues range from local libraries to the National Storytelling Festival and events across the country. He is currently the Director of Storytelling at Stagebridge Senior Theater and Chair of the Storytelling Association of California.

Safiya Martinez is a playwright, performer, poet and educator. She is currently shopping her one-woman show entitled So You Can Hear Me, based on her experience being a first-year teacher in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She has performed her self-produced works in New York City and the Bay Area.

Rana Weber is a Bay Area actor, singer/songwriter, director, coach and teaching artist. Recent acting credits include Ruth in Pirates of Penzance (Jon Tracy) and Evelyn in Alaska Leavin’ (SF Fringe). This is Rana’s first attempt at writing a solo show. Eek.

Vanessa Lowe’s performances feature distinctive rhythmic finger-picking and imagistic lyrics. KFOG DJ Rosalie Howarth says, “She knows how to tell a compelling story in under 3 minutes!” www.vanessalowe.com

Stories

• Jeanne Haynes, A House Under Water
• Kari Kiernan, Mud Slinging
• David Caggiano, Jurassic Ark
• Evan Karp, Other People (excerpt)        

Music

Kaitlin McGaw and the Mr. Right Nows:
Bluesy, Soulful Singer-Songwriter, Vocals, Piano, Bass, Drums, Violin/Saxophone

With her TIOT December performance, Jeanne Haynes celebrated her 15th anniversary of saying “bye bye” to her public relations consulting business to become a full time storytelling performer and teacher. Other venues include the Bay Area Storytelling Festival and in San Francisco: The Marsh, Brava!, City Solo and SF Theater Festival.  She has taught some 300 adults in ongoing Stagebridge classes and more than 3,000 students as a schools artist in residence.  

Kari Kiernan is a San Francisco writer and storyteller whose work has appeared in Skirt! Magazine and The Morning News, as well as onstage in various places including Porchlight, Previously Secret Information, and Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match. You’ll find her sporadically maintained blog at: http://withraisins.blogspot.com

David Caggiano toured with the Celebration Theatre, led by the late Tony Montanaro. As a playwright, his full length original play Walk Like A Man was produced at the Noh Space and his series of one acts: The Arrival, The Tinker, and The Prophet at the Soma Theatre. Jurassic Ark is David’s first solo play.

Evan Karp is working on Other People, a sprawling and sometimes stalling meditation on consciousness, creation, self, friendship, and society. One of his poems was just turned into an original composition by New York based quartet Rose & the Nightingale. He writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, organizes the nonprofit submission-based reading series/press Quiet Lightning, and edits Litseen.com, a daily calendar and video archive of Bay Area readings. http://evankarp.com

Jazz, Hip Hop, Blues, Pop Rock, Children’s music; stalwart fans of these genres would have trouble finding much crossover or similarities between them, but Oakland-based singer songwriter Kaitlin McGaw does them all. Receiving comparisons to Sara Bareilles, Carole King, and Liz Phair, McGaw has a gift for finding herself in prestigious company and collaborations. Her newest project, Kaitlin McGaw and the Mr. Right Nows, is showcasing her vocal and piano abilities in a bluesy pop rock outfit all over the Bay Area. www.kaitlinmcgaw.com

Stories

• Gray, Burst (excerpt)
• Harry Richard Hall, The City
• Maryclare McCauley, A Real Cowboy and Indian Story (excerpt)
• Ron Jones, How I met God and some unusual angels

Music

Kikelomo Adedeji, Cabaret artist: standards, jazz, and show tunes, accompanied on piano by Benny Watson

Gray draws on her eclectic background of improv, theater, dance, gymnastics, linguistics, Zen Buddhism and Corporate America to rub a metaphorical nose in the juicy, blurry spaces between I, me, you, Who? Mu! Gray is on a mission to love Existence with such wild abandon that she inspires in others the courage and enthusiasm to do the same. You game?

Harry Richard Hall is a KCSM Jazz 91 DJ, Sunday Nights from 9 to 11 p.m. for Jazz Sessions. His uncle, Charles Sullivan, was a primary architect of the R&B and Jazz music scene in the Bay Area from 1940 until his death in 1966. This story is about his unsolved murder and those who have hidden the truth about what happened to him. Through workshops at The Marsh, Harry has weaved a story about what happened to his Uncle Charles.

Maryclare McCauley loves to hear and tell stories. She welcomes any comments you may have to help make this work-in-progress better. A feisty young girl from Baltimore thinks she can adapt to living on an isolated mountain top with a sexy, loner, cowboy. But can he adapt to her? Passion and secrets are the ingredients that glue these two together, but also what tears them apart. 

Ron Jones lives in San Francisco where he shares his life with poetry, grandchildren, and a peaceful garden. For info about the plays, feature film, and documentaries developed from his literary work see: www.ronjoneswriter.com. Yes, there are photos of the grandkids… and a few surprises!!! Tonight he tells the true story of getting fired, hired by God, and coaching a Special Olympic basketball team.

Kikelomo Adedeji is an actress and singer and has appeared onstage in Los Angeles, London and throughout the Bay Area, acting in plays, original musicals, and her own cabaret show, In Love at Last. She would love for you to visit her at www.kikelomoadedeji.com

Stories

• Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Sit There and Be Quiet
• Muriel Johnson, Adventure At Petencito Zoo
• Newt Bailey, Roadside
• Mark Kenward, Nantucket, Part 3 (excerpt)

Music

Joshua Raoul Brody, pre-show ivory-tinkling

Dhaya Lakshminarayanan is a San Francisco-based stand-up comedienne, storyteller, television host, business consultant, and ubergeek. Before starting in the business of “show,” she taught “Charm School” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she graduated (twice). She’s traveled to Cuba as a researcher, worked as a venture capitalist, and taught public speaking in Kathmandu, Nepal. She was the host of the emmy-winning High School Quiz Show, on PBS’s WGBH. www.dhayacomedy.com

Muriel Johnson was born and raised in Maryland where her mother, an actress, avid reader and English teacher, exposed her to a wide range of literature. This instilled in Muriel a love of language and an awareness of the power of stories. As a parent and veteran pre school teacher, Muriel began telling folk tales to her own children and students. Now she enjoys sharing personal and traditional tales with all ages. www.forherstories.com

Newt Bailey is an Englishman who has lived in the Bay Area since 1997. He currently works as a communication trainer (www.communicationdojo.com), and makes occasional forays into the world of solo performance. For ten years in the 80s and 90s he spent a lot of time standing by the side of the road in Europe and the USA.

Mark Kenward is a writer, performer, and director based in Oakland. He has written seven full-length one-man shows and performed them in over thirty-five cities throughout the US and Canada, including several main stage runs at The Marsh in San Francisco.  “Kenward is a warm, wonderful storyteller who establishes an instant rapport with his audience.” (SF Examiner) Recent directing projects include full-length pieces by Angela Neff, Howard Petrick, David Jacobson, David Kleinberg, David Caggiano, and Victoria Doggett. markkenward.com

Joshua Raoul Brody: When asked to describe himself in one word, Mr. Brody replies “Unable to follow instructions.” www.jraoul.org

Stories

• Jeff Byers, Escalator
• Ady Abbot, What Ever Happened to Sara Jane?
• Elaine Magree, Pilgrimage, or Why I’m not an Indian
• Malcolm Grissom, Can’t Ain’t Nothing But A Four-letter Word

Music

Freddy and the Freeloaders
(Way Better then Your Average Jazz Band)

Jeff Byers tells stories and teaches storytelling at the Asian Art Museum and in classrooms from first grade to UC Berkeley. He has appeared in various performance venues, including the San Francisco Theater Festival, The Magic Theatre, the Chicago Calling Arts Festival, Ashby Stage, and (very happily) Tell It On Tuesday. He is a board member of the Storytelling Association of California.

Ady Abbot has been performing in some capacity for most of her life.  She began writing this piece in February of 2011 while taking a class on solo performance with David Ford at the San Francisco Marsh.  She has performed excerpts at Monday Night Marsh, and last month at the Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival.  This September, she is thrilled to be presenting an hour of What Ever Happened to Sara Jane? at the San Francisco Fringe Festival.

Elaine Magree, a Californian native: sometimes a wave, sometimes a photon—because you can’t be in two places at once, or can you? Pilgrimage was developed with David Ford and is being directed by Rebecca Fisher.

Malcolm Grissom is a Bay Area Comedian who has perfomed theater and comedy for 20 years.  www.malcolmgrissom.com.

Freddy and the Freeloaders has been playing around the bay area for three years and the majority of the gigs we’ve played have been in Marin County, Richmond, and the City.

Stories

• Jeremy Greco, With Held
• Neshama Franklin, Packrat Meets Packrat
• David Kleinberg, The Little Shop of Horrors from The Voice
• Annette Roman, Hitler’s L’il Abomination (excerpt)

Music

Boundless Gratitude, guitar and vocals

Jeremy Julian Greco wrote Elvis in Space I and Elvis in Space II, which both premiered at The San Francisco Fringe Festival. He has performed excerpts of With Held at Ever Gold Gallery in San Francisco (featuring John Held Jr.’s mail art), Words First at CounterPulse, Monday Night at Marsh in SF and at The Marin Fringe Festival, where Greco won a Critics’ Circle Best Actor Award.

Neshama Franklin loves stories (almost) more than life itself and thanks the creator for giving her so much material. She started telling 20+ years ago in the library where she still works and is equally at home in personal tales, folk tales, and epics. In her not so spare time she dances, hikes, hangs out with her beloved teenage grandchildren, and has a biweekly radio show on KWMR where she reviews books, tells stories, and reads classics aloud.

David Kleinberg was a writer and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle for 34 years, including his last 14 years as editor of the Sunday Datebook. David is also a comedian who has appeared with Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Sinbad and Richard Lewis.

Annette Roman has performed her solo show Hitler’s Li’l Abomination at the Boulder, San Francisco, and Fresno Fringe Festivals. In July and August of 2012, she will be performing at the Winnipeg and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. In high school, Annette played the role of the Narrator in Franz Kafka’s play Josephine the Mouse Singer while wearing mouse ears and a tail. This might explain a lot. annetteroman.wordpress.com/

Whether Boundless Gratitude and his guitar are crooning a mellow ballad, rocking an up-tempo foot-tapper, or laying down a spiritual or political folk song, they still just sing the truths of life in healing, empowering and entertaining ways that listeners describe as “warm” and “calming.” For Boundless, music is religion, vocation, and therapy, because of its heavenly harmonies, earthy rhythms and divinely earthy metaphors.