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hplandmark.com Life & Arts<br />
the highland park landmark | May 24, 2018 | 19<br />
<strong>HP</strong> residents share their stories at event<br />
Locals enjoy ‘good,<br />
old-fashioned’<br />
storytelling event<br />
Jason Addy, Freelance<br />
Reporter<br />
It’s an artform that<br />
might seem outdated to<br />
younger generations, but<br />
storytelling was alive and<br />
well Thursday night, May<br />
17, at the Miramar Bistro<br />
in Highwood.<br />
Approaching its seventh<br />
year, the Short Story Theatre<br />
featured a handful of<br />
storytellers — some seasoned<br />
veterans and others<br />
making their debuts.<br />
A newly refound sensation<br />
thanks to public radio,<br />
storytelling is “the world’s<br />
oldest professions,” Short<br />
Story Theatre Producer<br />
Donna Lubow said to kick<br />
off the show.<br />
“Storytelling is as old as<br />
the language itself,” she<br />
said.<br />
Jennifer Dotson, an executive<br />
assistant to Highland<br />
Park Mayor Nancy<br />
Rotering and the city manager,<br />
spoke of her treacherous<br />
escape as a preteen<br />
from the yoga and meditation<br />
summer camp she was<br />
sent to every year.<br />
Each summer, Dotson<br />
and her friends longed for<br />
decadent sweets during<br />
the restrictive two-week<br />
camp, ignoring the spiritual<br />
and environmentalist<br />
teachings of their camp<br />
leader as they plotted ways<br />
to skirt the dietary rules.<br />
Those annual plans culminated<br />
in a final-year<br />
hike from camp to the local<br />
convenience store. In<br />
the end, she was caught<br />
with candy by camp counselors.<br />
Dotson finished with a<br />
stirring and surprisingly<br />
political poem about wishing<br />
she had paid more attention<br />
to her apocalyptic<br />
camp leader.<br />
“We ignored his words<br />
as so much ‘nutty crunchy’<br />
nonsense and slid into<br />
adulthood as if asleep,<br />
not paying attention to<br />
the frackers and the pipelines<br />
and the inconvenient<br />
truths, and we let the climate-change<br />
deniers take<br />
control,” Dotson said.<br />
“Maybe he was right.<br />
Maybe the planet wants us<br />
to wake up. And we, living<br />
in a dream or feeling inadequate<br />
to the challenge,<br />
have refused to rise — until<br />
now.”<br />
Elizabeth Brown, a pathologist<br />
from Lake Forest,<br />
proudly told her story,<br />
“Human Pearls,” to the<br />
crowd of nearly 100 people,<br />
working them from<br />
shock and disgust into fits<br />
of laughter as she recounted<br />
the “complicated quest<br />
for her gallstones.”<br />
After comically detailing<br />
her pre-op experiences<br />
— a redundant ultrasound,<br />
struggling to rate her pain<br />
between one and 10, and<br />
trying to finish a crossword<br />
puzzle — Brown said she<br />
pleaded with her surgeon<br />
to keep the two gallstones<br />
her body worked so hard<br />
to make.<br />
One was disappointingly<br />
gnarled, but “the other was<br />
the size of a jawbreaker,<br />
perfectly round — the alpha<br />
stone. It was beautiful,<br />
artistic, a rich-green color,<br />
studded with white cholesterol<br />
crystals,” Brown triumphantly<br />
recalled as she<br />
wore the now-gray stone<br />
around her neck.<br />
At the end of the show,<br />
Brown again was the center<br />
of attention as people<br />
tried to get a good glimpse<br />
of her self-made fashion<br />
statement on their way out.<br />
Though there were only<br />
a few millennials in the<br />
crowd, Brown said she has<br />
no reason to worry over<br />
the future of traditional<br />
storytelling, because it’s a<br />
process that’s so familiar<br />
to people.<br />
“To me, it’s all about being<br />
self-aware and examining<br />
your life and thinking<br />
about events, why they<br />
happened and putting them<br />
into context,” Brown said,<br />
adding she hopes to see<br />
some younger storytellers<br />
try their hand at it soon.<br />
Attendees Julia Lunn<br />
and Christina Corsiglia,<br />
both of Lake Forest, were<br />
at the show to support their<br />
friend, Brown, but even<br />
they were shocked to learn<br />
she’d be telling a story<br />
about gallstones.<br />
Lunn and Corsiglia<br />
said they penciled the<br />
show into their schedules<br />
two months ago, having<br />
laughed throughout the<br />
first Short Story Theatre<br />
show they attended.<br />
Corsiglia said her<br />
19-year-old son was perplexed<br />
by the idea of listening<br />
to stories as a night<br />
of fun, but she said she<br />
loves the “old-fashioned”<br />
artform that truly engages<br />
the imagination.<br />
“People used to listen<br />
to radio shows. They<br />
couldn’t see anything,<br />
they just listened to what<br />
was happening,” Corsiglia<br />
said. “When people are<br />
telling a story, you have to<br />
imagine.”<br />
Founded in 2012 with<br />
just four members, the<br />
Short Story Theatre has<br />
featured more than 50<br />
storytellers in its first six<br />
years.<br />
The troupe has grown<br />
to a rotating cast of nearly<br />
two dozen storytellers<br />
who perform monthly at<br />
restaurants in Highwood,<br />
Wilmette, Glencoe and<br />
Glenview.<br />
The next Short Story<br />
Theatre will start at 7:30<br />
p.m. June 28 at the Miramar<br />
Bistro in Highwood.<br />
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Featuring Woven Boucle carpet byKarastan<br />
Highland Park resident Rick Leslie tells the tale of his<br />
“green toe,” on May 11 at Miramar Bistro in Highwood.<br />
Claire Esker/22nd Century Media<br />
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