Hello!
I Believe….
stories speak for themselves.
When performing on stage, I have felt the little tug in a new direction, as though the story I was telling knew best how it should be heard.
As a narrativist, I pay close attention to how stories guide our lives. We are meaning-making creatures who long for sense and structure. When we review our past, our decisions, and our dreams, we can trace the bright thread of our greater story. This is the scaffold of our self.
I Bring….
both academic rigor and strong creative training to my practice.
I am not a therapist, but as a trained ritualist and teaching artist I have witnessed the profound impact story slanting can have.
Storytellers I work with dive into deep introspection to uncover new context and clarity embedded in difficult personal experiences. I work with you to help your story bloom in profound and maybe unexpected ways.
Once upon a time…
I watched a tall Hawaiian man capture the attention of a crowded room with the tale of Maui dragging his island up from the deepest blue of the ocean. The storyteller looked each of us in the face. He walked near and swung his arms up to demonstrate Maui’s great feat. I resonated with the full-body engagement, the simple narrative voice, and the face-to-face engagement.
I began hosting full-length show with casts of musicians and dancers and presenting small pop-up stories in neighborhood bars and cafes. I went off to get my graduate degree in Folklore in order to connect more rigorously with the ethics of story collection and research and learn collaborative ethnographic practices to de-centralize narrative authority.
In graduate school I helped women tell bold and heartbreaking stories about belief, bodies, aging, and fear. These heroic stories, which often bloomed from women’s marginalized experiences, were the seed of my Story Slant project. This passion to kindle strong stories from our secret places still guides my work.
inspirations
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Lucia Neare’s Theatrical Wonders
I’ve helped make magic in Lucia Neare’s company since 2010 in site-specific community activations from spontaneous appearances in everyday places to enormous participatory performances.
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My students at Kantkaw in Yangon
I launched my Story Slanting journey in 2011 after a classroom conversation about poetry and other techniques to code our truth telling. Thank you all! Your stories were my call to adventure. I am grateful for your generous passion to learn.
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International Rescue Committee
I have helped manage the IRC Summer Youth Program in the Seattle area & hosted workshops for their Youth Peer Mentors. They support people suffering humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more and support the IRC.
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4 Culture
This community champion helps fund artists’ projects and cultural organizations. I am the proud and grateful recipient of two 4Culture grants. If you are a King County artist, check out the great resources on the 4Culture site.
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Seattle CityArtists
I am fortunate to live in a city with arts funding through the county and the city. I was honored to receive a Seattle’s CityArtist grant. Check out the extensive opportunity listings on the Office of Arts & Culture site.
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Jack Straw Cultural Center
This non-profit multidisciplinary audio arts center serves artists and cultural champions. Among many of the unique offerings at Jack Straw I’ve participated in the Audio Description training hosted by the great Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium.
Offerings
I bring full-bodied, two decades of performance experience plus the research training of a Folklorist to my art. This magical combination lets me offer respectful and engaging presentations for theatre, festival, or classroom.
