Stagebridge Partnership Performance

Music
Misha Safran, Singer/Songwriter

Stories
Eleanor Clement Glass, Not in Kansas Anymore!
Magda Peck, Hearing Change
Gerry Keenan, An Ark on Wheels
Melinda Ginne, Three Therapists and a Psychic
About the Performers
Misha Safran has been singing and creating songs since she was five years young—that’s 50 years! Growing up, Misha also spent a lot of time listening to folk songs, classic rock, and the blues. Today, Misha is a social justice song writer and sings about topics that are sometimes uncomfortable but thought-provoking and relatable to many. Check out Misha’s YouTube channel.
Eleanor Clement Glass delights children with folktales from around the world as a Volunteer Storyteller at the Asian Art Museum. She also tells personal family stories from her Black and Filipino cultures. Eleanor contributes to Asian American Storytopia, a YouTube channel offering Asian folktales and cultural activities by Asian American Storytellers for young children (K-5), as a way to combat Asian hate. As a cultural ambassador with Eth-Noh-Tec, she has exchanged stories with storytellers in China and South Korea.
Magda Peck has been known throughout her career for weaving powerful personal stories into leadership practice for the public’s health and equity. About 10 years ago, she took a deeper dive into the art and science of storytelling for social change, first as an Urban StoryTelling Fellow with Ex Fabula in Milwaukee, then with StoryCenter and StageBridge, in Oakland. Her latest intergenerational collaboration, SquareRoot Stories, builds storytelling skills and strategies in communities across the country for healthier women, children and families. Magda loves how a light cracks through when our hardest stories are honed and heard from the inside out.
Gerry Keenan has been telling stories for many years as a writer and fine art photographer. Ten years ago she decided to add spoken word telling to her lexicon of written word stories and the stories her photos evoke. She thinks stories may be in her DNA as she grew up intrigued by her Irish father’s ‘gift of gab’ and her Polish mother’s family tales of ‘the old country’ and credits Stagebridge and its EPIC program for giving her the tools to take her stories on-stage.
Melinda Ginne, Ph.D., is a psychologist with over 40 years of experience in geriatrics and treating the psychological aspects of major medical illnesses. She draws inspiration from Glinda the Good Witch (Billie Burke), Oliver Sacks, Sid Caesar, and Imogene Coca. For generations, her family lived in Boyle Heights, the Jewish-Latino comunidad of East Los Angeles where tacos were kosher and the Shul was directly across the street from the Catholic Church. She is a graduate of the EPIC storytelling program at Stagebridge in Oakland and has been telling stories on Bay Area stages for many years.