On Saturday, November 16, BLR took to the stage in a sold-out performance in NYC. Six storytellers shared their interpretations of Body Politic, BLR’s theme this year, to a rapt audience in the theater, as well as an even wider audience via livestream.

Bravo to storytellers Sofia Ali-Khan, Kelli Dunham, Delight Chinenye Ejiaka, Lena Gilbert, G.K. Jayaram, and Ginelle Testa who bravely shared their true-life, personal stories–without notes, slides or teleprompters. They were fabulous! And if you missed the show or livestream, stay tuned for the professionally edited film coming in 2025.

It’s (almost) showtime!

Storytellers rehearsed and shaped their performances with the help of producers Maggie Cino and Catherine Burns (former Senior Producer and Artist Director, respectively, at The Moth). The final rehearsal took place the night before the performance. In the green room, storytellers received final notes, producers discussed production logistics, and our co-hosts, BLR Editor-in-Chief Danielle Ofri and board member Ashley McMullen, went over their opening remarks.

Attendees filtered into the sold-out Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, picking up a complimentary back issue of BLR, and were greeted by the musical stylings of jazz musician Kwami T. Coleman.

Making an entrance

Ashley and Danielle opened the show with the importance of storytelling in healthcare. They shared their experiences as primary care doctors and what is missed when we don’t (or can’t) see the entirety of a patient’s story.

Ashley told the story of one patient, an older white veteran she met during the Covid pandemic, who was reluctant to trust a government doctor. “He was noticing that people were quick to dismiss him, to make assumptions about him and his abilities,” she said. “I knew a little something about that as well.” The two of them eventually came to establish a relationship over their shared connections to the South, their recent experiences of grief, and their opinions on what constitutes good salsa. “In every subsequent visit, he always tells me, you know, doc, I have a lot of love for you. And I always say I feel the same way.”

The stories

One by one, the storytellers stepped into the spotlight, welcomed onstage by Kwami T. Coleman’s music, stories translated into ALS by Avery Gordon and Candace Davider.

Up first was Delight Chinenye Ejiaka, a writing graduate student coming to us from Nigeria by way of Nevada. Delight talked about the pressure in her community to have light-colored skin, and the lengths people will go to adhere to this standard of beauty. In her story of her relationship to her skin color and to her mother—and to the use of bleaching products on children—Delight taught us the importance of embracing one’s own beauty:

“I have a picture of myself that I really love. My hair was shaved so low. My skin was hyper pigmented. I had a rebel fashion sense. In fact, I was wearing this white fluffy dress that seems ridiculous right now. But there was something about that picture. There was this laughter and joy and confidence that I had about me, and I wanted to protect that, and I wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of that.”

Next was Sofia Ali-Khan, a public interest lawyer, ceramic artist, and author. Sofia took us through the frustrating and often terrifying process of finding a diagnosis for her young daughter’s mysterious ailment. After seeing 25 doctors, she said,

“I started to really wonder if, by advocating so zealously for my daughter with doctors who could not diagnose or treat her, I ran the risk of being blamed for her illness. …My family were racial and religious minorities, and I worried that we ran the risk of losing Zayneb, of having her taken away from us.”

Our third storyteller, Kelli Dunham, describes themselves as “the nonbinary nurse, ex-nun, and trauma-informed comedian that is so common in modern Brooklyn.” Their story of being in the ER with an infected knee was both harrowing and hilarious. It seemed that the healthcare team took the symptoms more seriously if they appeared more masculine than feminine. Kelli realized that they needed to…

“…take some dude-ification measures. I should put on my big oversize sweatshirt and my baseball cap…. So I did, and that worked! It was like the cloak of believability.

Ginelle Testa, who describes herself as a queer, sober, and body-positive author, told the fourth story. Rather than get a promised used-car for high-school graduation, Ginelle begged to attend “fat camp.” Ginelle charmed the audience with her story of a summers’ tasteless meals, sweltering work-outs, and teenage doubts, complicated by a revelatory romantic spark and the flickers of body acceptance. Ginelle met her new roommate…

“…Catalina–a vivacious, blonde who’s about 50 pounds heavier than me… I see the beautiful way her body curves and dimples… I look down at the stretch marks on my thighs and see tracks of shame…Catalina shows up in an aquamarine two-piece bathing suit and I am like, wow, she’s absolutely beautiful. I just want to kiss her belly..”

Lena Gilbert—writer, performer, and choreographer—told a raw and powerful story about the holes in the healthcare system that you don’t know about until you fall into them, about what happens when you end up on the knife-edge of pregnancy and abortion.

“I’m standing on the subway platform thinking, I’m bleeding. No one knows about it. I’m just another lady heading back to Brooklyn. I’m bleeding in that discrete way that women bleed. My womb is emptying…”

The final performer was G.K. Jayaram, who left corporate America to create schools for the children of India’s slums. His heartwarming tale of what happened when local bureaucrats threaten to shut down their program is set against his own story of how he almost missed out on schooling altogether because of a birth defect.

“From the moment I was born, our village got the news. People told each other and they concluded that this was an evil portent. It was not only a bad omen for the family, but it was for the whole village. From then on, we were not invited anywhere…”

The impact of storytelling

After sharing their incredible stories, our storytellers and co-hosts took the stage one last time for their final bow to the sound of Coleman’s piano and the audience’s applause. One audience member said, “It was inspiring and beautiful—and exactly what we needed. Each story felt absolutely necessary.” A livestream viewer commented, “What a beautiful evening!…All the stories were so tender and heartwarming.”

The professionally-edited film will be available to stream in early 2025. In the meantime, you can watch BLR events including last year’s live storytelling event on the theme of ‘Taking Care,’ our annual fall reading with writers from the ‘Body Politic’ issue, or our award-winning poetry-dance film “Reading the Body,” produced in partnership with The Paige Fraser Foundation. 

Next up, RSVP for Narrative Arc—our (free!) online event on December 5th, featuring readers interviewing their favorite BLR authors about the creative process.