Just Rewards (with Guest Host Simon Brooks)

Elisa Pearmain

Elisa began her storytelling career by working for ten years as a Storyteller in Residence in the Boston Public Schools. There she came to appreciate and tell stories from the many diverse cultures that the children represented. Other early storytelling experiences included collecting stories from Vietnam Veterans and sharing them with high school, college and adults in a program called, The Defoliated Heart. She also led groups of women to share and learn from their stories together. These experiences helped to inspire her belief in the power of stories to heal.

Recently her most popular storytelling programs  in the schools are on character education and bullying prevention through story. She received a grant in 2002 to study character education through story from the National Storytelling Network.

She is a currently a board member of The Healing Story Alliance www.healingstory.org and is an active member of The League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (LANES), and past Board member.  You can learn more about LANES and the storytelling conference at www.lanes.org

 

Clare Murphy 

Clare is a storyteller. She travels the world and tells stories. From mainstages of theatres to medieval roundtowers Clare has told tales for all ages in more than 20 countries. Her work includes the political folkloric work such as her Syrian piece “The King of Lies” to playful pieces like UniVerse which explores where quantum physics, philosophy and mythology meet. She performs in English. She occasionally performs in Spanish when asked. Clare’s wide repertoire of stories includes traditional folklore to ancient mythology, to reportage to historical tales. Clare also performs at festivals, art centres, universities, public and private events, conferences and schools.  She is a storyteller, performer, writer, dramaturg, curiosist, teacher, consultant, wanderer, wonderer and maker.

 

Guest HostSimon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World!  He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new book Under The Oaken Bough and listen to his new podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

 

 

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Heavenly Visitors

The stories Richard Martin tells are the folk tales which have been told for hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. With over 300 stories in his repertoire, they reflect the full range of human experience: the comic, the bawdy, the profound, the divine. Far from being for little children (although he does tell for children, too), these powerful and deep tales offer unforgettable listening for adults. If you like theatre, you’ll definitely love storytelling. It combines the intensity of a play by a solo performer with the intimacy of a one-to-one conversation. Richard tells stories throughout Europe and as far away as India, Singapore, Hong Kong and America – in theatres, universities, schools, for corporate events or private parties. He usually tells in English, although having lived in Germany since 1976, he is sometimes asked to tell in German.

 

Stuart Stotts

Stuart Stotts is an award winning singer, author, storyteller. Stuart has worked as a full-time performer since 1986, and he gives over 200 shows a year for kids, families and adults around the Midwest, and sometimes farther. He’s a frequent presenter at conferences and workshops for teachers, parents and librarians, and he is a Kennedy Center teaching artist. He has released several award-winning recordings, and is also the author six books, including The Bookcase Ghost: A collection of Wisconsin ghost stories., Books in a Box: Lutie Stearns and the Traveling Libraries of Wisconsin, We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed the World, and Curly Lambeau: Building the Green Bay Packers. Stuart lives in Deforest, Wi.

 

Music by Podington Bear

 

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Can’t Please Everyone

Pam Faro

Since 1988, storyteller Pam Faro has earned her living by offering top-quality storytelling performances, workshops, keynotes and retreats. She lives in Colorado, and will travel ‘most anywhere to bring you the joy and power of storytelling!  More and more, she is teaching and performing internationally. Pam loves to travel near and far to bring the power, joy and nourishment of storytelling to people, to enable the reaching-across-boundaries that becomes possible when storytelling is shared.

 

Billy Babu 

Billy Babu international award winning story teller and author of Rubinder Hood Prince of Chors based on an Indian Robin hood; available on Amazon and Waterstones. From Wolverhampton England. You can hear his stories on YouTube. Follow on Twitter @BillyBabu7.

 

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Finders Keepers (with Guest Host Simon Brooks)

 

Joel Ben Izzy

It was back in 1983 that he graduated from Stanford with a self-designed degree in English, Creative Writing and Storytelling, and set off to travel the world, gathering and telling stories. Since then he has told stories and taught storytelling in some 36 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

With every stop on his itinerary, his repertoire of stories has grown. Some are tales from people he meets on the road, and others he finds are traditional tales from the places he’s traveled. Then there are the stories that seem to find him – and stick. These are true stories, more or less, and what he’s come to love over the years is the blend of all these stories together.

 

Clare Murphy 

Clare is a storyteller. She travels the world and tells stories. From mainstages of theatres to medieval roundtowers Clare has told tales for all ages in more than 20 countries. Her work includes the political folkloric work such as her Syrian piece “The King of Lies” to playful pieces like UniVerse which explores where quantum physics, philosophy and mythology meet. She performs in English. She occasionally performs in Spanish when asked. Clare’s wide repertoire of stories includes traditional folklore to ancient mythology, to reportage to historical tales. Clare also performs at festivals, art centres, universities, public and private events, conferences and schools.  She is a storyteller, performer, writer, dramaturg, curiosist, teacher, consultant, wanderer, wonderer and maker.

 

Guest HostSimon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World!  He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new book Under The Oaken Bough and listen to his new podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

 

 

 

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Bouquet of Stories II

Anne Shimojima

Anne Shimojima is a third generation Japanese American, born and
raised in Chicago, Illinois. An award-winning elementary school library
media specialist of 35 years, she first discovered the power of story
with her students, using storytelling to enrich and expand the
curriculum and develop a deep emotional connection with her listeners.

Some highlights in her storytelling career include a week as Teller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, TN and performing at such venues as the National Storytelling Festival, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the 1st Asian-American Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Talk Story Storytelling Festival in Honolulu, Storytelling Arts of Indiana, the Hans Christian Andersen Statue in Central Park, and the Stories Connect Us All Online Storytelling Festival.

 

Antonio Rocha, a native of Brazil, began his career in the performing arts in 1985. In 1988 he received a Partners of the Americas grant to come to the USA to perform and deepen his mime skills with Mime Master Tony Montanaro. Since then he has earned a Summa Cum Laude Theater BA from USM (University of Southern Maine) and studied with Master Marcel Marceau. Mr. Rocha’s unique fusion of mime and spoken word has been performed from Singapore to South Africa and many places in between including 16 countries on 6 continents. Some of the venues include The Singapore Festival of the Arts, Wolf Trap, The National Storytelling Festival, T he Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Geographic, The Tales of Graz in Austria, Dunya Festival in Holland as well as many other Storytelling Festivals and educational institutions around The USA. Antonio has three very entertaining and educational award winning DVDs, a picture book and a few awards including the coveted Circle of Excellence Award by the National Storytelling Network.

Caleb Winebrenner

” Caleb Winebrenner is a storyteller, poet, clown, and educator whose mission in life is to guide our discovery of our lost humanness. From clowning in West Virginia to storytelling in Brazil to a poetry classroom in Phoenix, Arizona, he’s deeply interested in how we can be our wisest and kindest selves through story, poetry, and playful conversation. He delights in the amount of knowledge and wisdom in a room when people gather, and he crafts his events enable that. He holds a BA in Linguistics, an MA in Educational Theatre, and a certificate in Transformative Language Arts. The son of innkeepers, hospitality and community are central to what he does.”

 

Denise Bennett

Denise Bennett tells stories, sings and plays the harp for audiences of pre-schoolers to centenarians.

One of the residents where Denise is part-time chaplain, used to wink and say, “storytelling huh?  that’s what my mama called lying…” and Denise did win the coveted Golden Shovel for winning first place in  Virginia’s Mountain Mac Liar’s Contest in 2015.

Other recent achievements include being a featured teller at the Stone Soup Storytelling Festival, as well as America’s Best Storytellers Festival, and a finalist for Timp Tells New Voices at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in Orem Utah 2016.  In November 2017, Denise will be a featured teller at the first ever Chincoteague Storytelling Festival on Virginia’s beautiful Eastern Shore.

 

Music by Podington Bear!

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Royal Problems

 

Donna Washington

Donna L. Washington is a professional storyteller, actress, and author. She started performing at age six. She has adapted folktales into two full-length stage productions at Chicago’s Upstage Downstage Theater and performed at numerous storytelling festivals. She is the author of “The Story of Kwanzaa, and she received a Parents’ Choice Award for her recording “Live and Learn: The Exploding Frog and Other Stories.

 

 

Milbre Burch

A Grammy-nominated recording artist; an internationally known, Oracle-award-winning storyteller; a published poet and writer, and a sought-after storytelling coach and teaching artist, Milbre Burch is a storyteller in every sense of the word!

 

 

 

Music by Podington Bear!

 

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Brink of War

Carolina Quiroga-Stultz

Carolina Quiroga-Stultz is a Bilingual Storyteller Performer and Podcaster, who graduated in 2013 with a Masters in Storytelling from the East Tennessee State University (ETSU). Her large repertoire of bilingual stories, explores the Native and Afro-Latin American and Hispanic Myths, Legends and Mysteries ranging from El Río Bravo to La Patagonia. Her bilingual storytelling enchants her audiences with her compelling mannerisms and the passion she brings to each story.

She has performed at several regional festivals and Conferences in Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kansas City, and also at numerous schools, libraries, universities and colleges to culturally and socially diverse audiences. On July 31 to Aug 4, 2018 Carolina was a TELLER IN RESIDENCE at INTERNATIONAL STORYTELLING CENTER – Jonesborough, Tennessee.

She is the creator of the podcast Tres Cuentos Podcast. A bilingual storytelling podcast, dedicated to the traditional narratives of Latin America. Tres Cuentos explores the myths, legends and folktales told all across the Hispanic, Indigenous and Afro-Latin American world.

Elisa Pearmain

Elisa began her storytelling career by working for ten years as a Storyteller in Residence in the Boston Public Schools. There she came to appreciate and tell stories from the many diverse cultures that the children represented. Other early storytelling experiences included collecting stories from Vietnam Veterans and sharing them with high school, college and adults in a program called, The Defoliated Heart. She also led groups of women to share and learn from their stories together. These experiences helped to inspire her belief in the power of stories to heal.

Recently her most popular storytelling programs  in the schools are on character education and bullying prevention through story. She received a grant in 2002 to study character education through story from the National Storytelling Network.

She is a currently a board member of The Healing Story Alliance www.healingstory.org and is an active member of The League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (LANES), and past Board member.  You can learn more about LANES and the storytelling conference at www.lanes.org

 

Music by Podington Bear!

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Be Polite (with Guest Host Simon Brooks)

 

Alton Chung

Alton performs at storytelling festivals internationally, sharing stories and legends from Hawaii and spreading aloha.  He also tells stories from the Hawaiian Monarchy and the Plantation Days as well as Asian folk tales from all around the Pacific Rim.  Alton is also passionate about sharing stories of the Japanese American Experience of WWII.  In 2005, Alton was awarded the first J.J. Reneaux Emerging Artist Award by the National Storytelling Network.  He has performed at the Congress of Asian Storytellers in Singapore, the International Gimme Story Storytelling Festival in the Cayman Islands, as well as venues in India, China, and Okinawa.  He has also performed at the Talk Story Festival, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Four Corners Storytelling Festival, the Oklahoma City Storytelling Festival, and has been a New Voice Teller at the National Storytelling Festival.

Find him at his website, and on Facebook!

Sheila Arnold

Sheila Arnold currently resides in Hampton, VA. She is the CEO and Lead Performer of History’s Alive! and her major focus is performing, managing and marketing this flourishing business. Through History’s Alive! Sheila has given over 600 presentations for schools, churches, professional organizations and museums, in 26 states. In addition, she contracts with Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to present Historic Character Interpretation and teach teachers at their Summer Teachers Institute.

Sheila has twice been one of the featured “regional” Storytellers at the Colonial Williamsburg Storytelling Festival. Sheila has also presented Professional Development sessions, Storytelling Programs and Character Presentations at educational conferences, including Valley Forge Teacher Institute (2 years), Social Studies Conferences in New York, Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas and Oklahoma, and at the National Council of Social Studies. Previously, Sheila has worked as a Social Worker with aggressive adolescents having emotional problems, a Hampton City Schools Substitute Teacher and led a Drama Ministry. She often uses her creative talents to do creative writing and/or drama workshops with children and teens, and has been called on to be a motivational speaker for high school students and young adults on many occasions.

 

Guest HostSimon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World!  He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new book Under The Oaken Bough and listen to his new podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

 

 

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The Foolish WiseMan Returns

Priscilla Howe

“I live in my head. A lot. I make stuff up, I borrow from old tales, I reinterpret new stories. As a storyteller, I’m a tour guide to that space in my brain. I work without a script, without costumes, without props. When I’m doing it right, listeners laugh, smile, sigh and breathe together, connected in the space of stories. I perform at schools, libraries, festivals, special events, and in my own backyard, literally. My mouthy hand puppets come along to shows for young children. I tell more grownup stories to, well, grownups and older kids. We play together. Apart from being the oldest educational method in the world, storytelling is just plain fun.”

 

Douglas McKay

Described as “prominent amongst Scotland’s emerging storytellers”“enigmatic with a raw sense of humour”, and “an excellent storyteller”, Dougie loves connecting with people, place and imagination through the ever evolving world of folk tales.

His recent “sold out” show at Edinburgh Fringe Festival received 4 star reviews as he shared gnarly old tales from Scotland in “Witches, Wee Folk and Watery Beasties”.

 

Rebecca Lemaire

I am Belgian-British and tell stories in English, Spanish and French wherever the wind takes me; Spain, India, Little Tibet, France, Belgium, etc. My passion is to look into people’s eyes, and travel with them through stories, whether in a prison, a yoga school, a Tibetan monastery in the Himalaya, a theatre, or online with young Palestinian refugees in Gaza. I use a minimum amount of props; mostly none, and sometimes some sounds (flute, kalimba, shakers, etc.)

Storytelling is a form of communication that goes way beyond words; it is a heart to heart interaction, and that is why I love it!

Denise Bennett

Denise Bennett tells stories, sings and plays the harp for audiences of pre-schoolers to centenarians.

One of the residents where Denise is part-time chaplain, used to wink and say, “storytelling huh?  that’s what my mama called lying…” and Denise did win the coveted Golden Shovel for winning first place in  Virginia’s Mountain Mac Liar’s Contest in 2015.

Other recent achievements include being a featured teller at the Stone Soup Storytelling Festival, as well as America’s Best Storytellers Festival, and a finalist for Timp Tells New Voices at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in Orem Utah 2016.  In November 2017, Denise will be a featured teller at the first ever Chincoteague Storytelling Festival on Virginia’s beautiful Eastern Shore.

 

Sean Buvala

Sean Buvala has been engaged with storytelling and communication since 1986. He started his work by accidentally using active storytelling to convert a classroom of slightly (but comically) homicidal 8th-grade teenagers from angry kids to storytelling practitioners themselves. From then on, both the kids and Sean were sold on the influence of a great story. An author, speaker, trainer and performance artist, Sean describes the collection of stories in his head as “life and legend” representing the mix of stories from his experiences, myth and legend from many cultures, sacred stories and observations of shared life events. He lives in the desert southwest of the Phoenix, Arizona area. Learn more at seantells.com

 

Laura Deal

Laura is a storyteller, writer, dream reader, and teacher with a wide variety of artistic and social interests. She loves the juxtaposition of images and words to shake loose creative energy. She works to make her neighborhood safe for pollinators, she photographs the beautiful world she lives in, and tell stories to children and adults. She also edits and publishes non-fiction and poetry, and she offers Juxtaprise Writing Classes and dream interpretation (one-on-one and groups).

 

Sue Searing

As a storyteller, my goal is to connect people with wisdom through the ancient art of story.  I tell traditional tales (fairy tales, folk tales, myths, legends, etc.) as well as true stories from my own life.  I love insights and lessons best when they’re wrapped in  funny or poignant stories.  I began my storytelling journey in Champaign-Urbana and have continued it in Minneapolis, where I perform at curated and open mic shows for both adults and children throughout the Twin Cities.

 

Caleb Winebrenner

” Caleb Winebrenner is a storyteller, poet, clown, and educator whose mission in life is to guide our discovery of our lost humanness. From clowning in West Virginia to storytelling in Brazil to a poetry classroom in Phoenix, Arizona, he’s deeply interested in how we can be our wisest and kindest selves through story, poetry, and playful conversation. He delights in the amount of knowledge and wisdom in a room when people gather, and he crafts his events enable that. He holds a BA in Linguistics, an MA in Educational Theatre, and a certificate in Transformative Language Arts. The son of innkeepers, hospitality and community are central to what he does.”

 

Liz Weir

Liz Weir is a storyteller and writer from Northern Ireland. She was the first winner of the International Story Bridge Award from the National Storytelling Network, USA, which cited her “exemplary work promoting the art of storytelling”. Liz Weir has told her stories to people of all ages on five continents. She has performed in pubs and prisons and hospital rooms. She worked on stages in the mighty Vanderbilt Hall of New York’s Grand Central Station and in the Royal Albert Hall.

 

The stories Richard Martin tells are the folk tales which have been told for hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. With over 300 stories in his repertoire, they reflect the full range of human experience: the comic, the bawdy, the profound, the divine. Far from being for little children (although he does tell for children, too), these powerful and deep tales offer unforgettable listening for adults. If you like theatre, you’ll definitely love storytelling. It combines the intensity of a play by a solo performer with the intimacy of a one-to-one conversation. Richard tells stories throughout Europe and as far away as India, Singapore, Hong Kong and America – in theatres, universities, schools, for corporate events or private parties. He usually tells in English, although having lived in Germany since 1976, he is sometimes asked to tell in German.

 

Laura Packer

Laura Packer has been telling stories her whole life – her mother reports she was born talking. The daughter of a children’s librarian and a writer, it seems inevitable that she become a storyteller and writer herself, since her childhood was steeped in narrative. By second grade, Laura was telling stories to her classmates, creating her own magazines and writing letters to the editor of her hometown newspaper; her deep love of fairytales and mythology eventually led her to obtain a degree in Folklore and Mythology from Boston University. Imagine her surprise when she discovered, upon graduating, that there isn’t a crying need for folklorists!

Undaunted by the lack of job openings for folklorists, Laura has built a career helping people and organizations find their own story, performing original and traditional tales around the world, and creating written narrative that draws the reader into new possibilities.

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