Personal stories highlight Tellin' Tales Theatre's musical
Jordyn Norberg of Highland Park is one of six middle school students who wrote and performs virtually along with six adult mentors as Chicago's Tellin' Tales Theatre presents "Six Stories Up in The Roaring 20s."
High school senior Bennett Davishoff of Deerfield is the Radio Announcer. The show harks back to the time of Prohibition, flappers, the jazz age and the silver screen.
In this original musical, 13-year-old Jack is transported to a 1920s radio show when he visits a vintage car museum during the pandemic. He becomes one of the actors in the funny and touching stories of the people who lived through the decade that roared and finds the similarities between then and now.
The 13 performers come from the North and South sides of Chicago, the suburbs, and Madison, Wisconsin.
The show runs virtually at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 20 and 21, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22. 16th Street Theatre in Berwyn is the host on Vimeo, with closed captioning available.
General tickets are $15; tickets for children and the disabled are $10; and a family ticket is $35. Order tickets through tellintales.org or call (312) 540-1330. Running time is approximately 70 minutes.
Jordyn Norberg of Highland Park, an eighth-grader at North Shore Academy, has done theater since she was 3-years-old through Starland Company and Sarah Hall's Deerfield Performers Troop.
In "Six Stories Up in the Roaring 20s" she plays a young flapper who wants to be a star. Her adult mentor/performer is Sarah Bowden of Chicago, a hard-of-hearing playwright and teaching artist whose plays have been produced in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto and Stockholm.
Bennett Davishoff of Deerfield, who makes a special appearance as the radio show announcer, is a senior at Cove School in Northbrook. He has appeared in a number of plays, including "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" and "Shrek: The Musical."
The show is a humorous and often moving musical peppered with personal stories told by students and adults with cerebral palsy, ADHD, autism, Kallmann Syndrome and dwarfism, as well as their non-disabled peers. "Six Stories Up in The Roaring 20s" is geared toward adults and children ages 9 and older.
This year's "Six Stories Up in The Roaring 20s" is the final production of Tellin' Tales Theatre's 24th season. This is the 23rd year that TTT has produced a "Six Stories Up" show, which is an annual mentoring program developed by Tellin' Tales Theatre where middle schoolchildren and their mentors write and star in a full-length play.
In August, storytellers were paired with middle school students with and without disabilities. Each team took on a different aspect of the '20s and was given the mission to bring it to life while weaving in personal stories and insights about what's going on today.
In mid-September, Artistic Director Tekki Lomnicki and Stephen Donart drafted a final script, linking the six vignettes together into a cohesive final script; music and lyrics were added as well. All participants will perform under the direction of Lomnicki, assisted by Sue Nunamaker.
The mission of Tellin' Tales Theatre is to shatter barriers between the disabled and non-disabled worlds through the power of personal story. They bring together children and adults from both communities to share their stories in theatrically innovative productions and programs to promote awareness, understanding and acceptance.
Artistic Director Tekki Lomnicki led storytelling programs for Gallery 37 and After School Matters for over a decade. The idea for the initial "Six Stories Up" came from her work with these programs, which included students with and without disabilities.
Lomnicki, herself a person with a disability, took the process a step further to include adult mentors with disabilities. "Six Stories Up in the Roaring 20s" is a result of this mix, and strives to remove all barriers between artists, including race, ethnicity, gender, age and ability.