WORLD Premieres New Series Stories from the Stage
Revealing the Art of Storytelling to a Live Audience
September 7, 2017 (Boston, MA)—As we explore the meaning and value of diversity in America, WORLD Channel presents Stories from the Stage, a new series that illustrates the power of real stories told by both masterful and first-time multicultural storytellers. The first of its kind for WORLD Channel, each episode features storytelling to an audience, interviews with tellers before and after performances as well as comments, reactions and short stories from the audience. Stories from the Stage premieres on October 9th at 9:30PM (check local listings) with online streaming starting on October 10th.
Stories from the Stage will launch with 12 half-hour episodes, showcasing diverse storytellers and addressing universal themes in each episode, including “Last Dance,” “Food Confessions,” and “Hell or High Water.” These storytellers from the U.S. and around the world reveal candid personal memories that connect with audiences across a wide range of human emotion and experiences:
- During an armed robbery at the family’s hardware store, Korean-American Eson Kim makes the crushing realization that her father is willing to gamble her life to save a stash of money. They survive the ordeal, but will their relationship? (Episode 102)
- Growing up gay in a small Kentucky town, Mark Lamb could not wait to get out and start his career as a performing artist. Decades later as an established choreographer with his own dance company in New York City, he was offered the opportunity to return home and teach a dance workshop in his former rural public school. Will he be welcomed home? (Episode 101)
- Was Sandi Marx successful during her Broadway audition for the original offering of the hit musical, “A Chorus Line?” Did she carpe diem? (Episode 101)
- Rodrigue Kalambayi was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A son of a human-rights lawyer, Rodrigue, his mother and nine siblings were forced to flee their country when he was 10 years old. How will they survive as refugees? (Episode 102)
Now more than ever, Stories from the Stage hopes to amplify the voices of people usually not see on national television,” says Liz Cheng, GM for WORLD Channel and co-executive producer of the series. “Personal stories rich in human experience and emotion can create understanding, empathy and appreciation for people very different from ourselves. With Stories from the Stage, we hope to prove how much we all have in common.”
The series also includes original digital content—stories and interviews not seen in the broadcast episodes—on social media and the WORLD Channel website. On Facebook, visitors can immerse themselves in audience-booth commentary and “Masterclass” videos. Audiences will also have the chance to share their own stories and experiences through WORLD Channel’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
The series is co-executive produced by Liz Cheng and Patricia Alvarado Nuñez, hosted by humorists/storytellers Theresa Okokon and Wes Hazard with lead camera/director/editor Michael Rossi and Chris Hastings, executive in charge of production.
Stories from the Stage is a collaboration of WORLD Channel, WGBH Events and Massmouth.
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Media Contact:
Alexis Feinberg, WGBH
alexis_feinberg@wgbh.org
617-300-5334
About WORLD Channel
The WORLD Channel delivers the best of public television’s nonfiction, news and documentary programming. The channel features original content by and about diverse communities to U.S. audiences through local public television stations and streaming online at worldchannel.org. WORLD reached 33.3 million unique viewers 18+ last year (52% adults 18-49) and over-indexes in key diversity demographics. Online, the WORLD Channel expands on broadcast topics and fuels dialogue across social media, providing opportunities for broad and diverse audience interaction. WORLD has won numerous national honors including Tellys, a Media for a Just Society Award, two Lesbian & Gay Journalist Awards, a Gracie, an Asian American Journalists Award and many others. WORLD Channel also won the Radio Television Digital News Association’s 2017 Kaleidoscope Award for its critically-acclaimed series, AMERICA REFRAMED and has received four National News & Documentary Emmy Nominations.
WORLD is programmed by WGBH/Boston, in partnership with American Public Television and WNET/New York, and in association with PBS and National Educational Telecommunications Association. Funding for the WORLD Channel is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation and The Kendeda Fund. For more information about The WORLD Channel, visit www.worldchannel.org
October Premiere Episode Descriptions
EPISODE 101: LAST DANCE
A last dance may be at the end or beginning of something big: Sandi Marx narrowly misses getting cast for Broadway’s A Chorus Line; choreographer Mark Lamb returns to his small, unaccepting town in Kentucky and encounters an extraordinary reunion; and Jean Appolon dances his way out of a death sentence in Haiti.
EPISODE 102: CHANCE
Chance could mean possibilities, risk or opportunity: Rodrigue Kalambayi seeks asylum from political violence in the Congo; Korean-American Eson Kim is held at gunpoint in her family’s hardware store in New York; and Christine Gentry donates a kidney to a complete stranger.
EPISODE 103: WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORBHOOD
Neighborhoods are forever in flux: Paloma Valenzuela travels to a Dominican neighborhood searching for her identity; Mark Redmond learns what happens when you are no longer welcomed on your street; and Norah Dooley finds the real meaning of community from neighbors who teach her life lessons.
EPISODE 104: TICKETS, PLEASE! Tickets mean opportunity, but for what? Dan Dahari describes being adopted and smuggled out as an infant from Mexico; Courtney Allen finds freedom during a trip to Havana, Cuba; and Social Psychology Professor Michael Sargent confronts his own biases on a flight immediately after September 11, 2001.