Rockstar Storytellers is a collective of solo performers from a variety of disciplines — spoken word, stand-up, slam poetry, improv, creative non-fiction, sketch comedy, playwriting… hell, we’ve even got a mime. Get to know the company members below!
[Rockstar headshots by Craig VanDerSchaegen and Dennis Zerwas Jr.]
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A director, stage manager, musician and spoken word artist, Laura Bidgood has showcased her artistic talents at numerous theatres and groups around the Twin Cities including Minnesota Public Radio, Rockstar Storytellers, Women Stand Up!, Monday Night Comedy, The Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, Lyric Arts, Chameleon Theatre Circle, Bloomington Civic Theatre and the Dakota Valley Symphony, in addition to performing at open mics around town and, really, in front of any crowd she can find.
For more information, visit Laura’s website.
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Allison Broeren is the current co-Managing Director of the Rockstar Storytellers, SlamMaster of the nationally ranked Poetry SlamMN!, and founder of Story SlamMN! at Kieran’s Irish Pub. She’s described by City Pages as “[the force] behind the Twin Cities competitive poetry scene… bombastic, kinetic, and most importantly, highly entertaining.” Allison is excited to be bringing the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam to Minneapolis as the host city coordinator. She is also big into blending business and the arts and uses her MBA to help consult with artists so they can thrive, not just survive. Allison hosts, performs, and plans shows all over the Twin Cities and has produced four successful Fringe Festival shows by Mumble Mumble Productions. Sometimes she manages to sneak off the stage at Kieran’s and has appeared at Women Stand Up! A Comedy Cabaret, the Minnesota Book Awards, KFAI’s “Write On! Radio”, MPR, and on tables at house parties throughout the tri-state area.
For more information, visit the SlamMN Facebook page.
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Rob Callahan is a handsome Minneapolis-based writer whose work has appeared in Cracked, l’etoile Magazine and Secrets of the City. His published works of fiction include the 2008 novel Hellbound Snowballs and the 2011 chapbook Grave Whisperer. When not slinging idioms with the Rockstar Storytellers, he can be found posing as a professional science fiction writer and humorist. A local newspaper article once called him a “nerd icon” while referring to a popular local musician as “crushworthy”, but that was probably just a print error. They clearly meant it the other way round. (The Rockstar Storytellers do not endorse Rob Callahan’s interpretation of certain facts, namely these.)
For more information, visit Banthese Books.
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Allegra Lingo was first published at the age of 13, then promptly forgot she could write until taking a writing class in college, and hasn’t stopped since. She has performed in eight Minnesota Fringes, including five full-length solo shows, and her work has been featured on MPR and various stages around Minnesota. She spent two years on the road as the sax player for Buckets and Tap Shoes, performing in 21 states and two shows in Helsinki, Finland. She is also the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers.
For more information, visit Allegra’s website.
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phillip andrew bennett low is a Chinese-American playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theatre critic and libertarian activist. His performances have won acclaim at such varied venues as the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, Spirit in the House, FoolFest, CONvergence, and the Chicago, DC, Indianapolis, Iowa, and Kansas City Fringe Festivals — even as far as Melbourne, Australia. At the 2007 Minnesota Fringe, his hit one-man show Descendant of Dragons was the bestselling show in its venue and awarded a coveted Fringe Encore slot, while his storytelling performances have been nominated for awards by local website FringeFamous for three years running. He is the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers (for which he served as Chair for the two years that position existed) and was founder and producer of the touring theatre troupe Maximum Verbosity.
For more information, visit the Maximum Verbosity website.
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Courtney McLean is a storyteller, comedian, musician, improvisor, and actress originally hailing from Southern California. After 5 years in New York City, she now happily calls the Twin Cities home. She is a proud original member and current co-managing director of Rockstar Storytellers. Her shows, Normal-C and Super Glossy! have toured to Fringe Festivals across the nation. She’ll be taking her latest solo endeavor Courtney McLean is (not as) Obsessed With Sex (as one might think) on tour in 2013. Courtney has performed locally with Ferrari McSpeedy Theatrical Productions, Four Humors Theater, Freshwater Theatre, Sandbox Theatre, Theatre Arlo, Girl Friday Productions, and Maximum Verbosity, and she’s appeared on Celebrity Autobiography, KFAI, Works Progress’ Salon Saloon and Give & Take, Sample Night Live, MPR’s In The Loop podcast, and Women Stand-Up Comedy Cabaret. She is the bandleader of Courtney McClean & The Dirty Curls, pioneers of naughtybilly: sexually explicit comedy country music, and creators of the 2012 Fringe smash The Love Show!. Courtney also performs improvisational theater with JANESSA! and insult comedy with Renaissance Festival and BLB-mainstays Vilification Tennis. In 2011, Courtney was named #52 of City Pages 100 Creatives.
For more information, visit Courtney’s website.
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Tom Reed is a Minneapolis actor, improvisor and comedian who has performed regularly at Brave New Workshop, Comedy Sportz and Stevie Ray’s and is a frequent host of Sample Night Live as crooning sensation Lounge-asaurus Rex. Reed starred as Princeton in Mixed Blood Theatre’s production of Avenue Q and has created four Fringe Festival musical parody hits including The Hungry Games: Mocking the Mockingjay, Bite Me Twilight and Parry Hotter and the Half-Drunk Twins. His performance experience also includes films, choirs, competing with Minnesota Slam Poetry national teams and an unusually inclusive production of The Vagina Monologues. Reed grew up near the tiny town of Kent, MN on a small organic farm and graduated from Concordia College, Moorhead.
For more information, visit Tom’s website.
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Amy Salloway has been called “hilariously self-loathing,” “gifted at finding humor where most would see only darkness,” and “the voice for all of us who were picked last for kickball.” A lifelong fan of educational and issue-oriented theatre, she spent years playing flora, fauna, and astronomical objects at science museums and in touring school shows before taking the plunge and creating original work around the issues she knows best — body image, loneliness, bullying and ostracism, and the search for self-worth. Her mostly-true solo shows (Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?, So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!, Circumference and Entwined) all began their lives in the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and have gone on to tour to Fringes, solo festivals, colleges and theatres in the US, Canada and beyond. Amy’s been a guest playwright for Interact Center for the Arts, a contributor to MPR’s “In the Loop” and CBC Radio’s “Definitely Not The Opera,” and an instructor for Tellabration!, the Northlands Storytelling Conference, and Minneapolis Community Ed, where she teaches Creative Writing and/or Memoir most sessions (look for the catalog!).
For more information, visit Amy’s website and/or her Facebook page.
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A former newspaper reporter and humor columnist, Ben San Del features at comedy clubs and colleges throughout the Midwest, including the renowned Acme Comedy Co. in Minneapolis. San Del won Acme’s Funniest Person in the Twin Cities Contest in 2006 and has since become a fixture in the Twin Cities comedy and theater scenes. In 2010, his show “A Nice Guy’s Guide to Awkward Sex” was the fifth best-selling performance (out of 169) in the Minnesota Fringe Festival.
For more information, visit Ben’s website.
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Maggie Ryan Sandford is a science journalist, writer, and broadcast media producer. Her work has been published in Slate, mental_floss, the Onion’s A.V. Club, Thirty Two Magazine, Paper Darts, McSweeney’s Book of Politics and Musicals, has appeared at the Walker Art Center, the Seattle Art Museum, the Minnesota Institute of Arts, the Guthrie Theatre, the People’s Improv Theater, the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre NYC, and on Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television.
Learn more about her and whales via @Mandford on twitter and MaggieRyanSandford.com.
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Joseph Scrimshaw is a critically acclaimed writer/actor/comedian and the Creative Director of comedy theater company, Joking Envelope. Joseph has had multiple top ten best-selling shows at the Minnesota Fringe Festival including “Adventures in Mating”, “An Inconvenient Squirrel” and “The Damn Audition”. Outside the festival, Joseph and/or his plays have performed in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Orlando, the UK, Bulgaria, Peru, the middle of the Caribbean Sea, and various bars across the entire expanse of South Minneapolis. He also makes jokes on Twitter at @JosephScrimshaw.
For more information, visit Joking Envelope.
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Founding members (no longer active, but may pop in from time to time as special guests): |
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Mike Fotis is one of the Twin Cities’ premier comic performers. In improv circles, he’s known as an educator and member of Ferrari McSpeedy and Fingergun. Fotis also co-created such popular stage comedies as “Punk Rock Omaha” and “Speech!”.
For more information, visit Mike’s blog.
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Curt Lund‘s literary work has hit stages, pages and airwaves including Minnesota Public Radio, McSweeney’s, the Minnesota Book Awards, CBC Radio Canada, the Minneapolis Geek Slam, Literary Death Match, Cheap Theatre, the Walker Art Center, Northstar Storytelling League’s Tellebration!, First Person Arts, nine Minnesota Fringe Festival productions and GLBT Pride festivals in three states. Not to mention countless other benefit and cabaret appearances in glamorous locales from Vegas to Vermillion.
For more information, visit Curt’s website.
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Dave Mondy is a writer/performer/producer who has been oft-honored for his work in multiple genres. He has received four Solas awards for travel writing; his nationally-toured solo show received the Best Solo Comedy award at the San Francisco Fringe Festival; his much-lauded memoir/fiction can be enjoyed in a variety of media — heard on many pubic radio programs, seen online as a commissioned video series for The Smart Set, read in several literary periodicals, and seen in multiple MN Fringe Festivals. He is the creator of the Radio All Stars (City Pages ‘A List’), Sin Cities 7 (a Pioneer Press ‘Must See’), and The Entertainment Machine.
For more information, visit Dave’s website.
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Rik Reppe: Performer, writer, raconteur, occasional business geek.
For more information, visit Rik’s blog.
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HISTORY:
Rockstar Storytellers was founded in August 2007 to provide a forum for solo artists to come together to find new audiences for our work, push each other creatively, and further our own endeavors with the support and fellowship of others doing the same thing.
In August 2007, Allegra Lingo and phillip andrew bennett low were, as usual, drinking beer at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. They waxed superlative about how much they love the Fringe because it gives them a chance to talk with and bounce ideas off of other solo performers in town. Then they commenced bemoaning the fact that there wasn’t a group they could join to serve the same purpose the other 51 weeks of the year. Out of drunken hazes comes genius sometimes, and phillip and Allegra decided to start their own group, and invite their favorite fellow solo performers to join them in this adventure. Thus Rockstar Storytellers was born.
