Welcome to Dreamshapers

http://www.dreamshapers.org/ . They are an organization of Storytellers, Musicians, Magicians, Animal Acts and goodness knows what else. Late last year we were asked to be a part of Dreamshapers, joining some very fine performers here in the southland. So this is a picture of us at our first Dreamshapers event, a Los Angeles County Library Showcase. What is a Showcase, you ask? Well, a bunch of us performers (see above performer types) gather the ‘strut our stuff’ before a bunch of library folks. You see, these library folks are always looking for some live talent programming to bring to their libraries. Especially, for their Summer Reading Program. This year’s theme is all about Animals. So these folks are exposed to a good number of acts that they can book for their libraries.

So there we were, with such wonderful folks as Ina Buckner-Barnett, Barbara Wong, Flights of Fancy (another Story Theatre Duo), Linda King & Bob Pruitt, Wendy Hersh, Michael McCarty, and oh so many special performers. It was great to see them, walk around and look at people’s promotional materials, and catch up on what friends have been up to. The hard part of being independent artists is we don’t that often get a chance to see one another. Often we hear, “Oh Linda was just here last week.” We love being part of this vibrant community of southern Californian artists.

As we had only seven minutes to present ourselves to the throng, we had to cut it close. We teased “Caps For Sale”, then told a quick version of one of our favorite, and most popular tales, “The Baby Coyote”. In that story we open with James wearing a coyote tail and running on all fours through the audience. We think that set us apart from the other acts for sure! Then we ended the story with the whole audience howling!

We got a couple of immediate “bites” for bookings, and hope to hear form some other the other librarians as they put together their year’s schedules. Both of us love libraries and the free access it gives people to books and learning. It was a good day.

Then, on the way home, we got a call from the good people at The San Diego Children’s Hospital. It looks like we are in line for an interview for telling stories to the kids in hospital. So we ask ourselves…why just Children’s Hospital? Storytellers should be in every hospital everywhere! If you know someone in the hospital game, tell them they need storytellers.

Warning: January 15th may be our last telling of “A Hero’s Journey” at the J Paul Getty Museum. Well, at least the last telling we are scheduled to tell…
Check out their website at http://www.getty.edu/ and come on in to see this tale. It is one of our favorites.