Adults

Mary Jo provides a variety of programs for adults.

Musical programs include Fabulous Folktales and Cabaret.

She also offers Coaching, Professional Development, and more

Fabulous Folktales,
Myths & Urban Legends

Adults and Seniors love Mary Jo’s Fabulous Folktales & Myths Interwoven with Song and Guitar

The sensibilities and deep experience of life that adults and seniors bring to this show inform its success. Storytelling isn’t one person talking, it’s an implicit dialogue among the shared feelings, thoughts, memories, associations, words and mental imagery between the teller and the listeners. There’s also the simple joy of taking part in a good story, something for which we humans are wired.

Narrative makes sense of the abundance of the cosmos, gives us a thread out of which to weave the cloth of our mysterious existence. Arachne, the world’s first spider, as spun through Greek mythology, explores jealousy, power, the meeting of talent with work, and ownership of one’s authentic voice. In Giovannin Senza Paura—Dauntless Little John, writer Italo Calvino plays with the existential absurdity of a small man fearless in facing a giant who arrives in body parts down an old palace chimney, only to reassemble and follow the lead of the little man to treasure in the cellar. Urban legends such as The Vanishing Hitchhiker have listeners feeling safe in their very own woods till admitting the undeniable strangeness of a thin girl drenched in the night rain like a ghostly birch tree. In the African Cow Tail Switch, Ogaloosa's children bring their hunter father back from the dead, highlighting the value of asking questions that initiate action, how our speech has the power to bring meaning and memory alive. Then there's Kikosaburo, whose encounter with artistic frogs from his childhood reawakens his ability to live a spiritually fulfilled life.

Make no mistake, the child inside you and the grown person without meet at the crossroads of stories told for thousands of years, freeing you to make sounds of spring peepers, an Italian speaking giant, finishing the storyteller’s sentences, because you know these places, these words.

Fabulous Folktales, Myths & Legends is a great pick any time for entertainment and enrichment. “Dark Tales for Dark Nights” aka "Up Spoke Death" celebrates Halloween. Other themes are available, from Women’s History Month (March), St. Patrick's Day, intergenerational shows and more. Ask. And then, there's Cabaret...please keep scrolling down--

“You are a fabulous storyteller! Your

stories were truly fabulous!”

—Samantha Talora, Canyon Ranch, Lenox, MA

The Kildare Pooka, Irish Tales & Tunes

Cabaret
Great American Songbook

A cabaret program featuring music the Great American Songbook with pianist Bob Shepherd

You can have a cabaret all your own with this set of wonderful and diverse tunes from the Great American Songbook. Mary Jo travels to you with her top-flight keyboard players with professional sound system and keyboard (where needed). Recently, she turned the Lee Library Association’s community room into a cozy living room with carpet and lamps for an intimate setting to heighten connection to a brilliant repertoire.

Tunes include:

Let’s Face the Music and Dance
Starting Here, Starting Now
I’m All Smiles
I Could Write a Book
You Go to My Head
Something’s Gotta Give
All the Way
That Old Black Magic

“Your cabaret set was intelligent, sophisticated, classy, elegant polished just great. Terrific performance.”

- Carolyn Martino,

Storyteller, CSC

“Mary Jo knows how to tell

a story in song with passion.”

—Sherry James Buxton,

former Broadway singer

"Mary Jo applied for and received a grant to fund a cabaret concert for the Lenox Council on Aging. She also helped publicize the event. Attendees thoroughly enjoyed the performance. It was professionally done and sounded beautiful! We would be more than happy to host Mary Jo and her pianist, Bob Shepherd in the future."

--Darlene McCauley, Director, Lenox Community Center/COA

“In the Wee Small Hours” offers you a mix of standards sung by the likes of Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra Streisand and composed by an astonishing variety of gifted lyricists and composers from the '30s and '40s as well as contemporary songwriters. Mary Jo draws in listeners with a repertoire that brings you deep into the moods of love and life with lively highs along with words and tunes that sink into the human heart. Many of the composers came from Europe to escape persecution during World War II. Imagine speaking German and Yiddish and using the English language with such nuance and agility, meshed with perfect melodies and harmonies!

Mary Jo has performed this show in varied versions at The Connecticut Storytelling Festival’s “Mid-nine Cabaret,” so-called because no one there admittedly would last till midnight. Also: Nantucket’s Great Harbor Yacht Club, Lenox Community Center, many retirement associations including Loomis House, South Hadley, MA, Ruth’s House and Jewish Geriatric Services in Longmeadow, MA; at Pittsfield’s (MA) Colonial Theatre and at Cranwell (Lenox) with Cabaret to Go.

View Mary Jo's performance of "There'll Be Another Spring"

View Performance

Coaching

Public Speaking
Speeches
Keynotes
Professional Development

Recently, a friend and colleague told me he was in the audience when a totally accomplished director of a major public institution spoke as the keynote—and his terrible delivery turned off the audience so badly that instead of building reputation, he undermined it. His audience included major donors. This can happen to the best and brightest, and it’s not your fault, because most of us never get training as public speakers.

Are you an accomplished musician, performer, sales or corporate representative, marketer, non-profit leader or just someone who wants to persuade others of your cause, who gives presentations, but still feels uncomfortable on stage? Are you a novice wanting to safely explore theatre or performance arts or presentations of any kind? Do you want to feel more confident presenting your ideas and projects persuasively?

With Mary Jo’s kind and supportive coaching, you will grow your technical know-how, confidence and polish in front of any audience (even of one!). She understands the issues that come with public presentations; better, she can share techniques, some very simple, that can make an enormous difference in making your presentations of any kind more effective, some of them immediately.

In her coaching, tailored to your specific needs, she can help you as a non-judgmental helper. You can benefit from her own many training sessions not just in speaking, but in how to walk on stage (yes, it’s a thing), stand (yes, it’s a thing), address the audience in a relaxed and authentic way.

Need help crafting your speech? Bring a draft for either quick advice or engage Mary Jo for writing/editing. She knows how to make your own words come alive and engage and persuade!

And she makes it super comfy and fun.

Mary Jo is not just a performer—she has a vast background in sales, marketing, writing (creatively as well as expository and for persuasion). She’s a fantastic copywriter with a degree in English, background in freelance advertising, training in sales from The Prudential insurance company to promoting causes via Shakespeare & Company’s advanced speech workshops—not to mention some 5,000 presentations.