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Eva Tenuto | eva@tmiproject.org
TMI Project | 65 Saint James Street, Kingston, NY 12401
Season 1: Tragedy + Time = Comedy
What’s happening today might not be funny, but if it includes TMI, give it time, and it will surely make you laugh. In Season 1 of The TMI Project Story Hour: Tragedy + Time = Comedy co-hosts Eva Tenuto and Micah profile some of our favorite storytellers from over a decade of live performances, as they step on stage and transform the stories their most afraid to tell into powerful, inspiring, and often hilarious, monologues of resilience and survival. Join us as we take a deeper dive and share the stories behind the secrets, and what happened next. While you binge listen, don’t forget to ask yourself, “What is my TMI story?” We all have one.
Podcast Co-hosts:
Eva Tenuto
TMI Project Co-founder & Executive Director
Pronoun: She/Her/Hers
“One of the most rewarding parts of working at TMI Project is seeing what storytellers look like when they step off the stage. It often looks like they’re floating out of the theater. They look taller; lighter. It’s as if something has truly been lifted. To be able to witness that over and over again fills my spirit. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”
Eva Tenuto is the co-founder and executive director of TMI Project. Since 2010, she has brought TMI Project from her living room to a host of performance spaces, schools, detention centers, mental health facilities and the United Nations. Eva is the editor and director of multiple solo shows, one of which was awarded Best Comedic Script of 2014 in the United Solo Festival. In 2018, her directorial film debut, Vicarious Resilience, a docu short, celebrated its world premiere at The Woodstock Film Festival. Eva’s own true stories have been published on Longreads.com and in numerous anthologies including Drinking Diaries, Goodbye to All That and others. Eva studied acting at American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She received a BA in Fine Art and Women’s Studies and an MA in Elementary Education, both from Hunter College. More at www.evatenuto.com
Micah
TMI Project Workshop Leader
Pronoun: He/Him/His
“TMI Project allows an exchange to happen. It feeds a deep need to know our own truth, to connect to something real. This is an ancient practice of sharing our stories and it’s perhaps the most revolutionary tool we have at our disposal.”
In addition to leading TMI Project workshops, Micah serves as the manager at GWI’s (Good Works Institute) Greenhouse Kingston, a yoga teacher at Mudita, and creator of DAY 1 (a New Year’s Day community event). He is on the board of Wild Earth (a non-profit Wilderness School), Radio Kingston, The Center for Creative Education, and O+ (a nonprofit health and wellness festival for artists and creators). He also serves as City of Kingston’s Art Commissioner at the Kingston Farmers Market.
Podcast Season 1 Executive Producer:
Hayley Downs
Pronoun: She/Her/Hers
In addition to producing The TMI Project Podcast and leading TMI Project workshops, Hayley is a writer, storyteller and documentary filmmaker. She produced the documentary film Hidden Battles directed by Victoria Mills about the psychological effects of killing on soldiers. She also produced and broadcast edited Naturally Obsessed: the Making of a Scientist, a documentary about laboratory research by Richard and Carole Rifkind. Naturally Obsessed premiered on WNYC/Thirteen and is distributed by PBS International. Most recently she produced J.L. Sert: A Nomadic Dream, a Spanish/U.S. co-production directed by Pablo Bujosa. Her installations and experimental films: Move, Coleslaw Wrestling and Boar Hog, exploring multi-generational Florida folk culture, have shown at underground film festivals including NY, Chicago and SF, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami and Art Basel. Her angst-filled teen journal was included in Mortified: Real Words, Real People, Real Pathetic, published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment. Hayley moved to upstate New York from Brooklyn four years ago where she’s focused on writing and her work as a TMI Project Workshop Leader.
Some Voices of Season 1:
Verna Gillis
Storyteller
TMI Project’s co-founder Eva Tenuto met the well-known ethnomusicologist turned comedian and storyteller Verna Gillis ten years ago at TMI Project’s first story slam. Eva was mesmerized by the regal, older woman who stepped up to the mike and brought the house down with a raunchy monologue about sex and aging, but that was only the beginning.
Dusty Childers
Storyteller
TMI Project storyteller Dusty Lynn Childers grew up in Gaffney, South Carolina. As a kid young Dusty felt pressure to fit in and that meant assuming a masculine persona that didn’t quite ring true. Dusty’s story is about the day his straight-talking mother, who he calls a “rainbow dipped witch,” called him out on it.
Sam Osterhout
Storyteller
Before TMI Project storyteller Sam Osterhout became an award-winning writer and producer in New York, he was a guy from Minnesota, married too young and working as an Assistant Montesorri teacher. Then, like in that great Peggy Lee song, he started to wonder, “Is that all there is, my friend?”
Erin Baretto
Storyteller
TMI Project storyteller Erin Barreto didn’t believe she was beautiful, or that romantic love was in the cards. She had resigned herself to life as the black, tall, shy sidekick to her shorter, thinner girlfriends at the nightclub when a mysterious Tom Selleck look-alike came along and helped her see things in a different way.
Erica Chase Salerno
Storyteller
There are many ways to receive a Stage IV breast cancer diagnosis: disbelief, rage, horror are a few words that come to mind. But it’s possible that nobody has ever taken the news quite like TMI Project storyteller, Erica Chase Salerno, who was known to treat the chemo ward like a cocktail party, a place to chat up the other patients, whether they were in the mood or not.
Margarita Meyendorff
Storyteller
TMI Project storyteller Margarita Meyendorff, known to most as Mourka, was born in a Displaced Persons’ camp in Germany, the daughter of Russian and Estonian aristocrats who fled Communist persecution after WWII. But life really got interesting when she moved to upstate New York and applied for a job with the FBI. Mourka shared her story at the Rosendale Theater in July 2012.
Maria Elena De Valle
Storyteller
Storyteller Maria Elena De Valle participated in a TMI Project true storytelling workshop in 2015 in partnership with Gender at Work, which gathered gender activists from around the world in New York City where they workshopped their stories and presented them at the United Nations. Maria Elena wrote her story about the first strike she organized to protest the labor inequality between her and her brother.
Markel Mosley
Storyteller
When TMI Project storyteller Markel Mosley was a kid, he and his older brother were sent to live with their grandparents because his parents could no longer care for them. Markel explores some painful and some joyful memories from his past through a unique lens in his touching and often funny story.
Hayley Downs
Storyteller
TMI Project storyteller Hayley Downs grew up in Central Florida in a chaotic home where she went to elaborate lengths to dodge the rage of her troubled parents. It all came to a head on the day of her tenth birthday party.
LOGOS
PHOTOS FOR PUBLICATION
TMI Project storyteller Hayley Downs (Season 1, Episode 9) at her 10th birthday party. Courtesy of the artist.
TMI Project storyteller Dusty Childers (Season 1, Episode 2) as a boy. Courtesy of the artist.
TMI Project storyteller Dusty Childers (Season 1, Episode 2) in 2018. Photo courtesy of the artist.
TMI Project storyteller Verna Gillis (Season 1, Episode 1) as a young woman. Courtesy of the artist.
TMI Project storyteller Sam Osterhout (Season 1, Episode 3) as a young boy. Courtesy of the artist.
TMI Project storyteller Sam Osterhout (Season 1, Episode 3). Courtesy of the artist.
Right click to download logos and photos.
