Kind Stories in Concert March 5th

Kindness is having the ability to speak with love, 

listen with patience, and act with compassion.”

-Random Acts of Kindness Foundation

Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of kindness in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales, personal, and historic stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of kindness. What is it? How does it impact us and our relationships to ourselves, to each other, to the world? Come and listen to “kind stories” shared by both professional tellers and community members and see what memories of kindness emerge for you. Featured tellers on March 5th, 2023 are Charlotte Blake Alston, Antonio Sacre, and Robin Bady. Our esteemed emcee is Lani Peterson.

About the Artists

Robin Bady is a storyteller and writer who performs and teaches throughout the United States and internationally. Her repertoire includes personal stories, true ghost tales, folk and fairy tales. She hosts a monthly series, the BADYHouse Storytelling Concerts, in her hometown of Brooklyn. She curates “No, We Won’t Shut Up!” a topical show featuring female storytellers and comics.  She is currently touring her one woman show, “Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter”, a show about how her family coped with anti-Semitism and government persecution during America’s McCarthy period. Coming up this year will be “The Abortion Show.” Robin was awarded the JJ Reneaux Emerging Artist Grant Award and the Oracle Award from the National Storytelling Network. She has received 8 yearly SU-CASA grants from the Borough of Brooklyn and New York City. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Tom, their cat Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, and the four stray cats who live in their backyard.

Charlotte Blake Alston breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and cultural traditions. She has graced stages for over 30 years in venues throughout North America and abroad. Venues are wide and include the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Symphony Orchestra Narrations and at regional, national and international Storytelling Festivals. She is a frequent guest artist in universities, grade schools, museums and cultural arts institutions around the country but this former elementary school teacher also presents in Day Care Centers, for Special Needs populations as well as prisons and youth detention centers. Her many awards include the Circle of Excellence Award, PA Artist of the Year, Zora Neale Hurston Award (NABS). In 2021 she was named The Philadelphia Orchestra's Official Storyteller, Narrator and Host. 

Antonio Sacre is an award winning children’s book author and a professional storyteller who has been performing for 25 years in 13 countries and for over 3 million people. His tales of growing up bilingually in a Cuban and Irish-American household have inspired children worldwide to gather their own family stories and become storytellers themselves. His stories have been published in award-winning books and audio recordings. His Professional Developments and Keynote addresses have helped educators teach writing to students from pre-Kindergarten through graduate school. Now his stories are being developed for film and television.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two children, and two cats. Yes, he's a cat guy.

Emcee

Lani Peterson, Psy.D, as a storyteller, psychologist and coach, works with story to promote growth, connection and change.  Lani relies on her joy in telling stories matched with her knowledge of the theory behind stories to guide people in finding, exploring and sharing the stories that might transform their understanding of themselves and others. She is a member of the HSA executive and programming committees.

Community Tellers

Also featured will be Community Tellers who will share anecdotes of kindness from their lives and work.

Jamie Redgrave, MD has been a practicing Endocrinologist and Primary Care Physician for most of his professional life. Ten years ago she embarked on chaplaincy training and has worked at Children’s Hospital Boston and Hebrew Senior Life on the Palliative Care Team. She retired from her medical practice in 2020.  She now leads memorial services for people searching for a spiritual but not religious service, and is a guide at the Arnold Arboretum teaching groups of school children in the Boston Public Schools. She has just started to work on a program researching delays in cancer diagnosis and subsequent outcomes for patients and providers.

Delphia Bizzell is 59 years old and will turn 60 this year. Originally from Louisville KY, she has been in Boston for 5yrs. She was homeless for 2yrs and is now housed in Chinatown for the past 3yrs. She is a Jehovah’s Witness, an advocate for the homeless, a member of BacHome council, Winter Walk Board of Directors, MHSA Board of Directors, MHSA Speaker Bureau and a member of MCLDG on Mental Illness.

For more information, contact:

Lani Peterson: Lani@LaniPeterson.com 

Elisa Pearmain ElisaHSA@wisdomtales.com  or

Sara deBeer sdebeer@comcast.net