Available Performances
Milbre Burch offers live online and prerecorded performances for festivals, colleges and universities, museums, nonprofits, and house concerts.
Tales from Beyond the Ban: Folktales from Libya, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen
In January 2017, citizens from seven predominantly-Muslim countries were banned from entry to the United States. Weaving oral histories of exclusion with folktales of hospitality and resilience, Milbre Burch invites you to share the wisdom of ancient cultures as they teach us how to be human in an inhospitable world. (75-minute performance)
AUDIENCE RESPONSE
“When you tell the story of Nazneen and open the box, and there is a bridge between this world and the other world – these stories do the same thing for us, take us to these beautiful memories, take us to our country, and I am grateful.”
– Azadeh Vatanpour
“Thank you for being a voice about the injustice we’ve experienced.”
– Mojtaba Khajeloo
Selected Performances of Tales from Beyond the Ban
The 2020 Virtual Women’s Theatre Festival
The 2019 Unbound Book Festival at Stephens College
Busboys and Poets
The Hans Christian Andersen Society storytelling series in Central Park
The RaceBridges online project in Chicago
The Performance Studies International Conference in Calgary, Canada
The National Storytelling Network’s 2018 Summit in Kansas City
The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network
Changing Skins: Tales about Gender, Identity and Humanity
Explore a world of stories about the fluidity of gender. Contemporary stories and traditional tales from Armenia, Chile, India and Scotland, from the Inuit, Ojibway and Okanagon traditions, and from the Maasai of East Africa remind us that human beings have long considered a continuum between he and she. (75-minute performance)
AUDIENCE RESPONSE
“Refreshingly brave. We were on this journey and it became an adventure. The playful opening relaxed us, and allowed us to safely question unexamined beliefs.”
– Allison Downey, artist and educator
“Excellent performance, the kind of humanities-based program I hope we can offer on a regular basis, a narrative that is at times funny, at times disheartening, in exploring an enduring question.”
– Mark Livengood, Story Center Director, Mid-continent Public Library
Selected Performances of Changing Skins
Columbia College, MO
American Folklore Society
Dixon Place, Manhattan, NY
(double bill with Holly Hughes)
National Storytelling Festival
Tri-Pride Fest, Johnson City, TN
Sometimes I Sing
Travel back to 1902 with a young female reporter to the Women’s Ward of the Anamosa State Penitentiary in Iowa, where you’ll meet Minnie Wright, serving a life sentence for the murder of her abusive husband. Combining the distance of history with emotional immediacy, Sometimes I Sing indicts the systems that still keep battered women in abusive environments, even today. (35-minute performance)
AUDIENCE RESPONSE
“Milbre Burch will hold you spellbound in Sometimes I Sing.”
– Bill Clark, Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune
“Sometimes I Sing is a theatrical tour de force.”
– Patricia L. Bryan, author of Midnight Assassin
“Thank you for your work on behalf of our friends and neighbors who continue to suffer in the shackles of violence.”
– Heather Harlan, Phoenix Programs, Columbia, Missouri
Selected Performances of Sometimes I Sing
The Provincetown Playhouse at New York University
The International Conference on American Theater and Drama in Seville, Spain
The National Storytelling Festival
The International Conference on American Drama
The Mariposa Storytelling Festival
Georgia College and State University
The University of Georgia
The University of Missouri
