Join us for our February show in DC for five true, personal stories inspired by curses—from paying a witchdoctor to cast a curse to struggling to gain control over our fickle bodies.
Hosted by Shane M Hanlon & Maryam Zaringhalam.
Doors open at 7:30pm. Please note: seating is first come, first serve.
Louise Chase Dettman is a local storyteller and lapsed flying trapeze artist, who has performed for Story District, Perfect Liars Club, The Moth StorySLAM, DC Improv, StoryFest ShortSLAM, and in circuses at the Trapeze School New York, DC. As part of the Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival 2018, Louise collaborated with Street Light Circus to combine her passions and put on the storytelling circus show, “Circus in Lines: Many Stories Tall,” at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. For a dozen years before returning to DC in 2014, Louise served as an aid worker fighting anti-democratic forces and tropical disease in the Former Soviet Union, Middle East, and South Asia. She is a recovering Southerner, a writer and photographer, wife and mother, and communications specialist in public health. She loves meeting new people and adopting pets with missing parts. Follow her on Instagram at @louisedettman.
Michael Sainte-Andress champions arts education in public schools, adult literacy, voter registration and civil/human rights. He is an educator, a professional multi-talented entertainer (actor/producer/director), an award-winning poet and writer, but more importantly he is fully committed to making the world a better place in which to live. He honorably served in the U.S. Navy and since 1974 has made DC his home. He is a two-time Mayoral appointee to the Ryan White HIV Planning Council and a Mayoral appointee to the Citizens Complaint Review Board. He does all these things with a determination and sense of purpose that is remarkable.
Erik Vance is an award-winning science journalist based in Baltimore. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator. He graduated in 2006 from UC Santa Cruz science writing program and became a freelancer as soon as possible. His work focuses on the human element of science — the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. He has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, National Geographic, and a number of other local and national outlets. His first book, Suggestible You, is about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities. While researching the book he was poked, prodded, burned, electrocuted, hypnotized and even cursed by a witchdoctor, all in the name of science.
Katherine J. Wu is a Boston-based scientist and science writer. She recently earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where she studied how bacteria deal with stress so that she could one day learn to do the same (it has yet to pan out). Now, she is a Digital Editor for PBS NOVA and a Story Collider producer. She formerly served as a 2018 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Smithsonian magazine and as Co-Director of Science in the News, a graduate student organization dedicated to communicating science to the general public. In her spare time, she serves as a heat-generating pillow for her cats and continues her quest to find the authentic tacos east of the Mississippi. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineJWu.
Emily Yarrison is a high school English teacher who works with newly-arrived immigrant students. She only recently discovered storytelling by attending The Moth StorySLAM on a whim. Now with a StorySLAM win under her belt, she's excited to explore this brand new world. In her spare time, Emily enjoys volunteering, studying languages (she speaks Korean and Spanish because she's quirky like that), and yelling out Jeopardy! answers in her empty apartment. You can find her online @emilyyarrison.