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| Programs - Theatre of The Spoken Word |
| Originally commissioned
for the annual women's retreat of a Congregational Church in the Bay
area, The Mary Stories is a quartet of pieces written and performed
by Milbre Burch. "They asked me to contemplate three defining moments
in the life of Jesus' mother," says Burch, " the Annunciation, the
Visitation and the Finding in the Temple. Once those pieces had been
written, I realized there was a fourth story I had left to tell: that
of a mother who outlives her son. So I wrote about the Crucifixion
from her point of view. In these four pieces Mary is very human, despite
her extraordinary circumstances. It's that word portrait I wanted
to paint, that story I wanted to tell."
Since their debut in 1990, the stories have been featured at the National Storytelling Festival; the Sierra Storytelling Festival; and an interdenominational mix of churches from coast to coast. The Yarnspinner, a publication of the National Storytelling Network, described the work as "an old parchment come to life.... Milbre's thorough research shows and so does her skill of writing and performing. It's a brilliant collection." And Yellow Moon Press in Somerville, Massachusetts, called it: "Unusual, refreshing and beautifully done... the stories have a simple and everyday quality... an incredible mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary." The night after Burch's performance of The Mary Stories at
the 1999 National Storytelling Festival, award-winning teller and
emcee Susan Klein wrote to her: "... when I asked my host at a dinner
party how he enjoyed your Mary stories, he filled up with tears
and couldn't speak. When he regained his composure, he asked me
how you did it, with so little historical reference to go on, how
did you get inside of characters like this? I could only tell him
what I knew. 'Because she's the best, ' I said." Running time is 70 minutes. Performed with or without an intermission. Milbre Burch's recording of The Mary Stories features the selections above. |
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©2007 Kind Crone Productions. Site restoration by xynoMedia.com |