A Little History of Elizabeth

Early Early Life
Born in Sumter South Carolina, she soon moved overseas to live in Germany where the U.S. Air Force  stationed her father. Eventually her family landed in Las Vegas, Nevada where Elizabeth lived for 13 years until graduating high school and moving to Olympia Washington in 1991 to attend The Evergreen State College.

College Days
While there she fell in love and grew a passion for oral storytelling and traditional folktales. She studied performance, mythology, and oral literature which resulted in a degree in Folklore and Theater in 1995. She joined the Olympia Storyteller's Guild in 1992 (now the South Sound Storytelling Guild) and In 1996 began storytelling professionally. Since then she has performed for numerous organizations and groups both public and private throughout Western Washington.

Adult Times 
In addition to storytelling Elizabeth is a teacher of theater arts and storytelling. She was the primary youth acting instructor for Capital Playhouse Northwest Theater for Youth from 1996-2005, and the Acting Coach for many of their Kids At Play summer stock youth theater programs.  She was employed with Pierce County Library Sytem for three years, 2001-2003, as the Summer Storyteller for their summer reading program.

She has been a regular visitor at many schools in the Olympia area including Nova School where she has conducted annual two-week artist residencies teaching storytelling skills to junior high school students. Now she participates in their annual Winterim Program in March,  teaching students the art of improvisational acting in a multi-day Acting Improvisation Intensive. 

Elizabeth has performed at elementary, junior and senior high schools, colleges, libraries, private birthday parties, weddings, city sponsored events, conferences, state government programs, regional festivals, and other civic events.

In 1999, at the age of 26, she presented her first solo storytelling show directed at adult audiences. This was a mixture of traditional folktales and new original stories. Since then she has written and performed 8 full length original solo storytelling shows.  Her most recent solo show was  one that explored enduring domestic violence as a child at home and the escape to summer camp titled Homesick, performed in June of 2018.

The Weekly Volcano wrote about Elizabeth. Read the article here. And another article about Elizabeth, her previous storytelling show, and the holiday show here.

In addition to storytelling and theater, over the years Elizabeth has become a favorite Master of Ceremonies and has hosted numerous local events and galas, especially for Olympia Film Society which holds large public events at the historic Capitol Theater in downtown Olympia, WA.

She also created the  annual Lord Franzannian Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show in 2007. She felt there was a desire for short, one act entertainment different from a full-length stage plays that was still focused on the live arts.  The Vaudeville show runs every October in downtown Olympia. Every show includes a story told by Elizabeth.

She tells at regular storytelling events in town, is the co-producer of StoryOly, a monthly storyslam, and is the creator of the Bubble, a bi-monthly show in downtown Olympia.

To view a list of organizations and schools that Elizabeth has performed for click here.