FAQ

What kinds of stories do you tell?
I tell true stories. About my schizophrenic, lesbian mother. My father, who picked me up from school one day and left a note on my mother’s door which read: “I’ve taken Sage to California.” About wishing my best friend dead two weeks before she had a brian hemorrhage. Moving in with a man I’d met online after a four day visit. Living in a yurt in the middle of the woods with a toddler for two years. The moments that my life careened off the conventional track.

Using only my voice, I create complex scenes. Vibrant characters. I invite the audience to step into my life at five years old, or fifteen, or thirty. For a ten day or a ten year stretch. To look at insanity as a daughter. Isolation as a wife. Fear as a mother.

I revel in gently playing with the crowd’s emotions. Everyone laughs in public (hell, they’ll even fake it) but my goal is to so deeply involve a listener that he finds himself clenching his fists, or whispering, “YES!”, or suddenly in tears. To find himself rooting with all his heart for a woman he’d never heard of until the story began.

I shape and trim until the story is a vital staircase of bare bones. I delicately pick and choose the moments to include or exclude, walking the knife-edge difference between mundanity and fascination, resulting in a story in which every word is designed to engage and excite the audience.

What’s your target audience?
My stories are told with an adult and adolescent audience in mind.

How long are your stories?
I plan the duration of each performance according to your needs. I can tell a short story as part of a program featuring multiple artists, or I can weave true stories all alone for an hour or more.

What do you need in order to perform?
A microphone. That’s all. If the venue is small enough, I don’t even need that.

Where do you perform?
Because my needs are so small, I can tell stories in an enormous variety of venues. In the past, I’ve told at pubs, fundraisers, outdoor farmer’s markets, auditoriums, cabaret settings, storytelling festivals, and high schools. As long as distractions are minimal, nearly any venue can lend itself to storytelling.