TOTALLY TRUE THINGS Storytelling Show Features Artists Focusing On Mental Health And Social Issues

"Totally True Things: A Socially Conscious Storytelling Show," is a live-streamed series featuring award-winning performers sharing true stories that focus on mental health, and social issues on Thursdays at 7:30 pm EST starting February 18, 2021.

This show is an opportunity for solo artists and storytellers to perform long-form stories live and is offered as an opportunity for mental health professionals to learn about complex issues through the art of storytelling.

Host and producer Jude Treder-Wolff will lead a discussion following each performance with the artist and a specialist on the topic explored in the show, which is produced by Lifestage, Inc, a consulting and training company that provides personal and professional development workshops utilizing storytelling and Applied Improvisation and partners with organizations to produce arts-based events..

Schedule:

February 18, 2021

A Hundred Indecisions written and performed by Mel Dockery (The Moth Radio Hour on NPR, The Armando Diaz Experience, Surprise Stories, (mostly) TRUE THINGS) explores what happens when living a life so fearful of failure that all decisions are avoided in ingenious ways. Rick Andrews (Magnet Theater faculty, Kornfeld & Andrews) joins the discussion about how improv can help with fear of failure, overthinking and the roots of indecisiveness.

February 25, 2021

Black Voices Matter featuring:

Nick Baskerville is active in the storytelling scene and has been featured on The Moth, Story Collider, Better Said Than Done, Mistakes Were Made, and Perfect Liar's Club, Armed Services Arts Performance, the 2019 DC Black Film Festival, the 2019 Annual DC Create Yourself Festival as well as in comedy clubs and theaters. He can be seen on the Clean AF Comedy Show every Friday night.His blog is Story Telling On Purpose,

Helena Lewis, DSW, is a theatrical scholar-practitioner who uses qualitative research and social work theories to illuminate social justice issues. Her solo show We Are Still Human - based on her research about the struggles of incarcerated women - has been performed internationally. She is a keynote speaker for conferences around the country and has been featured in national publications including Social Work Advocate.

Donna Washington is an internationally known master storyteller, artist educator, and published author who has been performing for audiences of all ages for over thirty-three years. She is renowned for her storytelling for both children & adults from poignant & funny fables about the human condition to racy relationships stories to spine tingling tales of terror. She has been featured at numerous festivals, schools & libraries theaters and other venues around the world including Canada, Peru, Argentina & Hong Kong. Donna's eleven storytelling CDs have garnered thirty national awards. She has authored numerous articles about storytelling and education including her very popular blog Language, Literacy & Storytelling. She is also the author of four children's books: Li'l Rabbit's Kwanzaa, A Pride of African Tales, The Story of Kwanzaa, and A Big Spooky House. Her fifth, Boo Stew will be out in fall of 2021. She travels all over the world performing and giving workshops, but she lives with her husband and two cats in Durham, NC.

Roseann Hamilton is a military veteran and mother of five, trained in storytelling, creative writing, standup comedy, and improv. She performs in events around the Washington, DC Metro area to include Northern Virginia and Delaware. As an alumnus of the Armed Services Arts Partnership program, she hosted a live zoom event featuring Josh Radnor of How I Met Your Mother, and Dion Flynn of The Tonight Show.

March 4, 2021

Song Of Omecihautl written and performed by Valentina Ortiz Pandolfi - a true story about the feeling of total exclusion and vulnerability that results from migration. Valentina describes what it is like to live with war, the search for safety, and to have the feeling of home remain only a mirage. Her pain and loss bring her to a new way of thinking, one of constructing the idea of home and carrying it with you.

March 11, 2021

'One Nation, Under Brow written and performed by Anoush Froundjian - a series of candid stories about how the cultural gap between her Armenian upbringing - and attending Armenian Day School - shaped her childhood, and what it took to claim her own identity.

March 18, 2021

Runaway Princess: A Hopeful Tale of Heroin, Hooking and Happiness, written and performed by Mary Goggin who shares a true story, laced with wicked humor and much pathos, of her Irish Catholic upbringing, drug addiction and prostitution, and the multitude of characters she encountered along the way to ultimately finding joy.

March 25, 2021

Second Helping written and performed by Kelli Dunham. (Moth Mainstage, RISK! Story Collider, Stories From The Stage, co-founder of Queer Memoir) Kelli Dunham grew up the youngest child in a large Germanic midwestern farm family that taught self-reliance as a religion. As an adult, Kelli struggled somewhat with her sexual orientation (queer) and gender identity (nonbinary) but her true lifelong fight has been to accept even even the tiniest bit of assistance from even those closest to her. When Kelli lost not one but two partners in a row to cancer, she was forced to start making different choices. Second Helping is part stand up comedy, part sit down tragedy with love and body fluids in the cracks in between.

April 1, 2021

Thank You For Playing written and performed by Jude Treder-Wolff, After a long career in mental health helping people cope with a crazy world that often does not make sense and battling burn-out, Jude Treder-Wolff immersed herself in the world of improv. Thank You For Playing is a human comedy about how making things up with other people can help us deal with reality.

April 8 2021

Dangerous When Wet: Booze, Sex and My Mother written and performed by Jamie Brickhouse, takes us from Jamie's childhood in Texas to a high-profile career in book publishing in New York and a near-fatal descent into alcoholism. About his memoir by the same name that tells this story, Mary Karr, New York Times best-selling of The Liar's Club wrote: "A blisteringly funny, wrenching account of wrestling way too close to - and later loose from - booze, sex, drugs and his adorable, infuriating mother."

April 22 2021

'Tech Babies written and performed by Jessica Robinson is an intimate story about the medical and psychological realities of what seems like the most natural and simple thing in the world - making a baby. Jessica is very active in the storytelling scene, and hosts Better Said Than Done, which produces live storytelling shows and is based in northern Virginia but now streaming around the world.

Learn more at https://lifestageinc.regfox.com/totally-true-things-show-series