Innovative Storytelling Art Performance

“I am a painter and a storyteller, and this is how I tell my stories.”

StoryFaces is an exciting storytelling show in which I paint the faces of audience volunteers to illustrate the stories as I tell them, engaging the audience with uniquely animated tales of world cultures and our shared humanity — ranging from new takes on familiar tales like Aesop’s Fables, to hero tales like Punia and the King of the Sharks and The Tail of the Dragon,  plus comic characters and surprising faces in my original stories such as The Tiger that Went to the House of the Sun, When A Man Met A Crocodile, The Adventure of 2 Lizards on 4 Faces, and The Amazing Face Story — with the follow up DIY Amazing Face Story Activity in which kids create an original story starring themselves.

The general performance for family audiences is a mix of folktales and adventure tales. A typical performance runs 60 minutes, with 4 -6 stories involving 8 – 12 volunteers being facepainted onstage as I tell my tales. Length and content is flexible. A variety of performances are available for theatres, festivals, events and arts-in-education programs for schools, with a range of content for any age, including kids, teens and adults.

Please contact me with any questions or to schedule a performance.

2022— StoryFaces was presented as a special event in three performances at the 50th annual National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN

StoryFaces shows are a surprising combination of storytelling and visual arts that engages the entire audience as the stories come to life on the faces of audience volunteers. A typical performance runs 60 minutes, with 4 or 5 stories involving 5 – 10 volunteers being facepainted onstage as to illustrate my tales as I tell them. Like a magician would do, I pick my volunteers from the audience to be part of the show onstage while I am also engaging the full audience with my interactive storytelling and audience involvement.

Talking Art — a special StoryFaces arts-in-education program of stories about art history origins, inspirations and appropriations, connecting students to some essential questions:  Why art? How does art work?

Adventure Tales!  Become Your Own Hero — for libraries 2024

The Ocean Comes to Visit — sea life, magic fish and an ocean of possibilities

The Amazing Face Story Activity — an arts-in-education exercise to get kids to create an original story starring themselves.

The Power of a Story — an essay on why I tell tales

StoryFaces Movie — available online for streaming

 Agostino Arts School Programs — a menu of our arts-in-education shows and workshops

StoryFaces came out of my 45 year adventure in theatre and facepainting, developing makeup art as a performance through my background in story theatre and physical comedy, enriched by exploration into the origins, inspirations and history of the art of transformation.