Join us for our second night of our NEW storytelling series, StoryNights. At StoryNights, talented performers, actors, comics and writers take to the mic for a night of personal stories told live. Sometimes touching, sometimes inspiring, sometimes embarrassing but always real; these stories won’t shy away from true grit.
StoryNights host, David Nihill (Found of FunnyBizz) and first-rate storytellers perform 10 minute true stories. Tonight Nihill is joined by Brandon Spars, Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Ron Jones, Gina Gold and Josh Cereghino.
MEET THE STORYTELLERS
Brandon Spars
TEDx speaker and 3 time Moth Winner (1 Grandslam). Brandon Spars lived and traveled in Indonesia and the Pacific Islands for six years before earning a Master of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of California/Berkeley. Brandon recently released his first collection of tales, entitled Live to Tell. This collection includes the scripts of six award-winning performances at The Moth in Berkeley and San Francisco as well as at West Side Stories in Petaluma. Brandon lives with his wife and two children in Santa Rosa, California.
Dhaya Lakshminarayanan
Dhaya Lakshminarayanan is the 2016 winner of the Liz Carpenter Political Humor Award (previously awarded to Samantha Bee, Wanda Sykes and satirist/humorist Mark Russell) presented by the National Women’s Political Caucus. KQED named her one of the twenty “Women to Watch” a series celebrating women artists, creatives and makers in the San Francisco Bay Area who are pushing boundaries in 2016. Dhaya is also a TV host and storyteller. She hosted the premier year of the Emmy award-winning series High School Quiz Show on PBS’s WGBH. She is a frequent comedic storyteller on NPR’s Snap Judgment and has appeared live in Austin on The Risk podcast. She is currently the host of San Francisco’s monthly Moth StorySLAM after winning a Moth StorySLAM and competing in the GrandSLAM at the Castro Theater (capacity 1400). ON24 awarded her the grand prize for “Best Travel Disaster Story.”
Ron Jones
Ron Jones is a native San Franciscan. As an author he has written about everyday heroes that enrich our life. Three of his stories The Acorn People, The Wave, and B-Ball have been made into television specials garnering an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Peabody for their producers. A book entitled Kids Called Crazy was nominated for a Pulitzer. And Say Ray the story of a disabled man abducted to Mexico was honored as the American Book of the Year. His classroom experiment in Fascism, The Wave has been produced as a feature film Die Welle and documentary Lesson Plan. The novelized version of The Wave, available through Random House, is printed in 23 languages and required reading in German and Israeli schools. Theatric and musical productions of The Wave have been performed in theaters worldwide.
Gina Gold
Gina Gold is an African American, Jewish humorist, filmmaker and stage artist. After telling a story called Hands Up on NPR’s radio show Snap Judgment, Gina fell in love with storytelling and started her own series called TMI (Too Much Information), which she currently produces. She is also on tour in a show called You’re Funny But You Don’t Look Jewish, a touring stand up comedy show with some very funny African American, Indian, Italian American and Vietnamese Jewish comedians.
Josh Cereghino
At age five, Josh was sent home from kindergarten for biting a kid named Mike Duda. When Mom asked for an explanation, Josh told her a story to defend his innocence; a tale of dragons, jetpacks and Kung Fu, which ended with him biting in self-defense when Mike attacked him with the Nunchuks of Lightning. Josh fell in love with stories that day, and now tells them from his life experiences, instead of channeling cartoons. Josh teaches storytelling locally, and has won 7 Moth StorySlams, 3 Moth GrandSlams, and his stories have aired on several NPR shows; including Snap Judgement, Unfictional, and The Moth Radio Hour, as well as lots of podcasts. Look for his own podcast, The Tell, launching in summer 2017.
David Nihill (host)
Leaving Dublin, Ireland, where he was born and raised until the age of 22, David got drunk on travel and never quite hit the sobriety of it. A bestselling author, David has been featured in Inc, NPR, Huffington Post, Forbes, Lifehacker and the Irish Times, and was recently part of the Irish Kings of Comedy Tour, SF Sketchfest, the Ventura Comedy Festival, Ukiah Comedy Alley, and the Kansas City Irish Festival. A multiple Moth Storyslam winner, Grandslam finalist and occasional host David has also told tales at Porchlight, The Naked Truth, Fireside and Litquake. Always a funny storyteller, these days he calls San Francisco home when immigration officials permit.
