“Strange” curated by Simon Donovan
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Doors at 6:30 p.m., show at 7:00 p.m.
The Screening Room 127 E. Congress Street
$8 Adults, $6 Students
Expect tales of the odd, the zany, the uncommon and / or the unexpected…Unusual experiences and feelings are always memorable and imprinted memories make for good stories. Here some “strange” people will recant what they think is “normal” and some “normal” people will illuminate the “strange”….you decide which is which….
Storytellers:
David Gramling publishes regularly on multilingual film and literature, Turkish German migration and literary history, theoretical approaches to monolingualism, foreign language pedagogy, gender and LGBT studies, and the medical humanities. David’s next book, entitled The Invention of Monolingualism, will be published in October 2016 with Bloomsbury. He is currently a Translation Fellow with the National Endowment for the Arts for his collaboration with Aron Aji (University of Iowa) on a collection of the poems of Murathan Mungan, entitled The Heart’s East. David teaches in the Department of German Studies at the U of A.
Puppeteer and storyteller, Gwen Ray has been entertaining folks for over 30 years! Migrating in 1979 to Tucson from the high plains of West Texas she balances performances with gardening, travel, and an intense love of the red nose approach to clowning!
Caitlin Reinhard was born in the West Bank at the Qalandiya checkpoint to an Israel refusenik and Palestinian law student. Her parents’ union was forbidden, as was the product of their torrid affair. So she was sent to the Golan Heights and adopted by a infertile Druze couple. Caitlin set out on her own when she was 19 and ended up in Jowzjan, Afghanistan. There, she found work at a café/opium den serving fair trade tea and gluten-free pastries. Four years ago, Caitlin and her husband, Ashraf Rashid Abdulmalek Mohaqiq, a reformed warload, moved to Skull Valley, Arizona and opened a small goat farm. Ashraf and Caitlin quickly became the number one Halal meat producers in the southwest until a mad goat scare shut their doors in 2014. Caitlin, recently divorced, now lives in Tucson. She is working on her first novel to be published next spring.
Lori Riegel is the Development Director for Southern Arizona at Arizona’s Children Association. Lori chairs the Tucson Unified School District Technology Oversight Committee and serves as board chair of Youth in Philanthropy for the Southern Arizona Association of Fundraising Professionals. She is chairing this year’s Arizona Gives Day Southern Arizona Initiative and is a board member of the Educational Enrichment Foundation and StoryArts Group. Lori is a PhD candidate in Educational Leadership, researching family engagement of diverse groups in schooling. Lori is a candidate for TUSD Governing Board. When she can find a little free time, she likes to rescue greyhounds, write a food blog and sleep!
John Muller is a man of many talents. When not tending his flock of giraffes at his downtown ranch, he is an author of such NY Times best sellers as “Playing the Theremin for Fun and Profit,” “Marge Laszlo, the Medea of the Bay Area Bombers,” and his tell-all memoir, “I Was A Chihuahua for the FBI.” In addition, Mr. Muller has co-authored (with Ayn Rand) “The Great Objectivist Songbook.” A prolix composer as well, Mr. Muller’s “Concerto for Gamalan, Accordion, Tuba and Small Orchestra is part of the score for SyFy’s “Vampire Octopusnado (the Second Movement, marked Tempo alla Polka.) The film is due for an Easter 2016 release. He is currently developing a hybrid rose which smells like dirty socks, especially for people who hate their neighbors.
Gloria Elizalde is full time student at the University of Arizona and a part time baker of Pugpays Cheesecakes. She is studying Communications with minors in Finance, Business Administration, and Engineering Management. Although she was born and raised here in Tucson Arizona, she comes from a Mexican decent. Her mother is from Sonora Mexico and her father is from Chihuahua Mexico. She has lived part of her adult life in Hermosillo Sonora where she created her start up company of Cheesecakes. She is due to finish school in Spring of 2017.
Curated By Simon Donovan
An artist of sorts, faded bon vivant, raconteur, provocateur: Simon Donovan is a compulsive everything. He is one of those annoying people that seems to be in love with the sound of his own voice. Be ready with the hook.
