Katherine Grier: Artist Profile
Photo by Eleanor Crowder
On Friday, March 31st at 7pm, storyteller Katherine Grier performs Beating the Odds. This show is the third in Radical Connections’ Healing Interactive Performances online concert series, made possible through a partnership with GigSpace music studios Purchase Tickets here or Donate and get a free ticket . Katherine Grier, a Radical Connections’ artist, is also available for one-on-one personal online performances or workshops.
Katherine will tell stories from her family, adding a few traditional tales to the mix. From the light-hearted to the serious, they're all about beating the odds in one way or another. You’ll hear sober and silly tales of strange cats, unsettling encounters, and surprising ways of facing potential disaster.
The show will wrap up with Noble Thornhill, a wonderful (and true) story from Katherine’s dad, about unlikely redemption in the 1940s lumber woods. It takes place over a long harsh winter and heralds spring — which we are all looking forward to.
Katherine is an amazing storyteller with an interesting life story of her own. She has been telling tales professionally since the early 1980s. She believes that one story sparks another and that stories let us connect, understand that we’re not alone, explore places that frighten or delight us, and see possibilities that might not have occurred to us otherwise. She tells real-life stories from her own and others’ lives as well as narratives passed down through her family. She also tells folktales from around the world that are as relevant now as they ever were.
In the course of her career as a storyteller Katherine has worked with people with difficulties or limitations in their lives. She helped to create develop the Mother Goose Enrichment Pilot Program, a story and language-play program for at-risk parents. Later she co-founded the Parent Child Mother Goose program which was based on the pilot MGEP but designed for a broader audience of parents, babies and young children. which It focuses on the pleasure and power of using rhymes, songs, and stories together. Through the program’s activities and helps parents gain the skills and confidence and to give their children healthy early experiences with language and communication.
Katherine Grier has performed with Ottawa Storytellers many times. In a show last June she partnered with stand up comedian Alan Shain. Her work has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council, the Newfoundland Council for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and ArtsSmarts.
Katherine’s stories are humorous, real, and deeply engaging. You are invited to a place where family narrative and community memory give rise to the folktale that holds the world together.