Odyssey Storytelling Presents: Camp
Curated by Mary Jo Pollack
Produced by Ethel Lee-Miller and Miles Schneiderman
Thursday, April 1, 2021
We’re incredibly excited to share that we have officially launched our Patreon site. As you know we have not charged for shows the entire pandemic, and as I’m sure you can imagine, that has taken it’s toll. As a nonprofit we rely on proceeds from the shows to stay financially sustainable. If you love Odyssey as much as I know you do, please purchase a membership to our shows and help Odyssey reach it’s goal of financial stability. Simply go to https://www.patreon.com/odysseystorytelling
Camping, tramping, or glamping, the April 1, 2021 Odyssey Storytelling show has it all. An International lineup of eight talented tellers will regale, scare, or entertain you with their outdoor experiences in the wilds of nature. This show drops on YouTube at 700 pm and you can be in your pjs with a cocktail. Enjoy the show.
Storytellers include:
Drew Cronyn is a gay father, pediatrician, husband, storyteller, and dog owner. He’s not a camper, except in the Sontagian sense. He likes a soft pillow, a firm mattress, hot coffee and a warm shower. He comes from a small town in Southern California (Borrego Springs, population 1500) that to this day has no stoplights. This is his last story before leaving Arizona. Soon Drew will settle in Northampton, Massachusetts as pediatrician and clinical director at the newly-forming TransHealth Northampton.
Sally Lanyon climbed the corporate ladder in the aerospace and medical industrial complexes, chalking up “attagirls” in lean six sigma process improvement and HR leadership development. Since retirement Sally returned to her main love, gardening, with spurts of creative writing. She is a published author, writes www.thebrutusblog.com , and has one SAG credit for her stand-in role in a Whoopie Goldberg movie. A board member of Literacy Connects, she loves spreading the joy of reading and creative expression. Personally, she enjoyed COVID lockdown with husband Paul and yearns to spend face-to-face time with her children, their spouses and nine grandchildren.
Anna Marie Trester is a linguist, story researcher, and co-founder of PIER Consulting Group, a boutique communications firm that uses Narrative Inquiry to help organizations build inclusive cultures through story listening. She is the author of Bringing Linguistics to Work and is finishing Employing Linguistics, due out in 2021. Before moving back to Tucson summer 2020, she told at Connect With STORY when living in Oakland California. She also lived in Washington DC, where she was a regular performer with Better Said Than Done Storytelling and Washington Improv Theater. Find her online @careerlinguist and careerlinguist.com
Kevin Scott Chess spent many years as an investigator, dealing with people of varying degrees of sanity, dependency, instability and hidden agendas. Kevin began to write and tell his stories as a systematic refuge in order to alleviate anxieties addressed in his occupation. In his teens and twenties, Kevin and his roommates saw story-living and storytelling as a competition. Kevin had plays and stories performed and published.
Ron Lancaster has been telling stories since he was three years old according to his mother who revealed that unfortunate incident with the missing cookies. Despite that scrape with authority, he kept refining his stories to an ever finer point until 1992 he opened the first night club devoted to storytelling called the Storyteller Café in Los Angeles and another one by the same name later in Mesa. Ron is author of five books including the ever popular “How I Helped Win World War II: Memoirs of a Five-Year-Old.” and his soon to be released “How to Buy Tires.”
Johanne Pelletier is a communications expert based in Montreal, Canada, and part of her work includes teaching storytelling concepts to scientists and startups. She has been telling stories in Canada and the United States for a few years and continues to learn more with each story. She particularly loves very short stories and recently won the GRIT Storytelling 99-Second Story Grand Slam. When not thinking about the next story, she is a certified boxing official in Canada and the US. Yep boxing. For more, check out www.jpelletier.ca
Julie Baker is a writer and storyteller from the Boston area. She’s appeared on The Moth and Stories from the Stage, she posts daily 99-second stories to @lazyjulie on Instagram and Twitter, and she’s developing an open-mic, workshop, and story play series called Blue Chakra Stories. Stay tuned.
Ethel Lee-Miller (Producer): A year of pandemic living has only increased my love of 11 years of desert living. Pre and (soon) post-pandemic we get to hike, bike, find open spaces to relax and breathe. My campground for this past year has been at home in Tucson AZ. I’ve widened my storytelling circle with Odyssey, Life Story Summit, Notes from the Motherfield, Artists Standing Strong, laughing with Unscrewed Theater, writing with the Eastside writers, and seeing friends and family in those little Zoom boxes. Thinking of Miller Place, and Seedlings, Stories of Relationships, are two proud results of my love affair with words. Contact: https://etheleemiller.com
Mary Jo Pollack (Curator) transplanted to Tucson July, 2014 via Los Angeles, via San Francisco Bay Area, via Los Angeles, via St. Paul. Artists never completely retire, but she withdrew from the 9-5 grind a decade ago. She is passionate about storytelling and has told stories live in Tucson for Odyssey Storytelling, FST!, and Tucson Tellers of Tales, where she is 2nd vice president. Recently, she told stories on a variety of virtual platforms and won Phoenix Moth Story Slam in July, 2020.
