Thursday, January 4, 2018: Memory

All alone in the moonlight–Memory–ghosts of Christmases past. Things forgotten remembered. Distortions. Clarities. Revelations. Remember that time when…No, I don’t recall. Traditions and sacred events that keep memories alive–Grammy’s cookie recipes, Anniversaries, Passover. Do this in remembrance of me. 

Storytellers:

In 2009 Ellen Melamed, a former playwright and teaching artist, left NYC, her hometown, to reinvent herself in Buffalo NY, where she created a program at a local college that combined her love of the arts with her experience in healthcare. After relocating to Tucson in 2013 she was hired at UA as an Artist in Residence and has been teaching the Alexander Technique at the College of Fine Arts. She recently published Moving Meditation: The Alexander Technique for Performing Arts Students. Ellen developed and teaches a Narrative Medicine program in the UA Honors College and for medical students at the College of Medicine, where she uses art forms to help increase compassionate care in the medical field. Ellen works with people in chronic pain, interprets stories of the body, is a holistic health coach, and has an Alexander Technique private practice in Tucson. Visit her website: www.ellensalexandertec.wix.com/tucson-az

Phil Gordon: It is my great pleasure to return to the Odyssey Storytelling stage to a share another story.  Last time I participated the theme was Neighbors I told the one about how the boys at my Chicago public high school got to know each other by being forced to swim nude together in gym class.  Tonight, I promise to keep my clothes on but remain excited to share another tale at Odyssey’s beautiful new venue Sea Of Glass Center for the Arts.  Phil Gordon is a Tucson comedian and actor.  He performs stand-up comedy at clubs and casinos across the country and regularly hosts Laughing Liberally Tucson a local political comedy review.  Phil Gordon has also selected to appear at the World Series of Comedy, Iowa Comedy Festival and the Ventura Comedy Festival.  As an actor he is a member of the By the Time I Get to Tucson Players which produced the Alfred Hitchcock satire, “Dial L for Latch-Key”, broadcast on KXCI radio’s 30th anniversary tribute.  Mr. Gordon appears as the voice of Walter Pidgeon in the recently released Hollywood film, “Near Myth; The Oskar Knight Story”.  Phil has also written, produced, and appeared in many short independent films including, “Reposessed” and “Commuting To Tomorrow” which were broadcast on WTTW s “Image Union” and the award-winning “Pain Within” at the Vidiocy Film Festival.  

In 1996 Glenda Bonin left the 9-to-5 office workforce to tour the country as a storyteller providing library programs and teaching kids in schools how to create and tell stories. She never imagined she would change her focus as a children and family entertainer to become a storyteller for memory care residents in senior living communities, but in 2015 she reluctantly agreed to give this demographic a try and she was hooked! Glenda has had so much fun meeting the challenge of delivering appropriate stories to older adults that she hasn’t looked back.  See more at www.StoryWorksGroup.com.

Monica Bauer, playwright. Full length plays produced Off Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, regionally in Denver, Boston, Providence, Omaha, Detroit, and internationally. MA in playwriting from Boston University. Selected credits: “My Occasion of Sin,” premiered at Urban Stages Off Broadway in 2012, and was part of the 2014 season of the Detroit Repertory Theater. Her play for one actor, “Made for Each Other” has been in various productions since 2009, including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. “Chosen Child” was part of the 2014-2015 season at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, where it was nominated for an IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) award for Best New Play, and was produced in a staged reading at the Bridge Initiative for Women in Theater in 2017 at the Tempe Center for the Arts. Her newest full length play, “Anne Frank in the Gaza Strip,” won for Best Script of a Comedy at the 2017 Planet Connections Theater Festivity in New York. Tucson audiences have seen a staged reading of “The Higher Education of Khalid Amir” and a full production of “The Maternal Instinct” at ZUZI in the Historic Y. More info at www.monicabauer.com

Emily “Emmy” Creigh, a Tucsonan since 1960, holds degrees in international studies and education, makes music with Way Out West, and believes in signs. She is also fascinated by memory. In February 2016 she published a memoir, Journey to the Heart of the Condor, about her life in Peace Corps-Paraguay from 1975 to 1977. The book won the 2017 Peace Corps Experience Award and is currently being translated into Spanish. Emmy is delighted to be making her storytelling debut with Odyssey and wishes to thank former colleague Adam for inviting her. Indeed, she couldn’t decline as, when he asked, she was in Paraguay visiting the Museum of Memories … and reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller. Signs this clear are not to be ignored!

Ana Chavarin is a passionate community organizer with Pima County Interfaith Council, and working on her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She received her GED after an incredible life journey that included being a single mom to four amazing children. 

Adam Hostetter is Quantum Mennonite. An avid food fermenter, Reiki practitioner and Tarot reader, he believes that with the energy of love and peace, we create change, and we heal, not just ourselves, but the entire universe. You can find info on Reiki, Tarot and his essays on his website QuantumMennonite.com.

Penelope Starr loves helping people tell their unique stories. She is a writer, founder and producer of Odyssey Storytelling, workshop presenter, community activist, citizen folklorist and restorer of Navajo rugs, Her book, The Radical Act of Community Storytelling: Empowering Voices in Uncensored Events, was published by Parkhurst Brothers in 2017. Her new passions are consulting with communities to begin their own storytelling events and finishing her novel in linked short stories. See more at www.PenelopeStarr.com.

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