March 28, 2023 • 31 mins
Internationally known voice-over artist, Cedering Fox, joins us on LOVE SOMEONE today! If you've ever watched The Oscars, The People's Choice Awards, The GLAAD Awards (or any number of other televised events,) you've heard her unmistakable voice and incredible announcing skills at work.
Today I'm hoping to shine a light on Cedering's life's passion - WORDTheatre, a charitable organization she founded 20 years ago, bringing together incredible actors to read the words of impactful authors that "that awaken us to our humanity." With large and small events in Los Angeles, New York, and London, a robust school visitation program, and access to video-taped presentations via their web page, a WORDTheatre membership is the gift you didn't know you needed, but won't want to wait to give yourself!
Pull up a chair, and come on in as I chat it up with Cederling! ~ Delilah
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Spring is here, and I am so happy to greet it.
The farm seems to be happy to greet it too.
There are daffodils popping up and poppies popping up in
the now green fields. The plum trees have been in
furling their tiny purple and white blossoms. The rest of
the fruit trees have buds that are plumping out on
(00:28):
their still bare branches. The goats have baby goats, the chickens,
the EMUs are acting especially frisky. We have six emu
eggs in the incubator right now. We've got bird songs
that fill the air during the day. We've got frogs
billions of frogs in the ponds filling the air at night.
(00:51):
And hope, hope is filling my heart. This is my
wish for you too, that your heart is full of faith, hope,
and charity during this beautiful season of rebirth. I am
so pleased to be sharing today's episode of Love Someone
with you, and very excited for the conversation that is
(01:14):
about to take place. You may or may not have
heard the name of my guest before today, but I
guarantee you won't forget it after this conversation. Cedaring Fox
Isn't that a beautiful name? Cedaring Fox she is a
trail blazing voice over artist. You've heard her as she
(01:36):
announces major live televised award shows and events such as
the Oscars, the People's Choice Awards, the Democratic National Convention,
and numerous non broadcast events including the Producer's Guild Awards,
the Luminaire Awards, the OSCAR Nominees Luncheon, the Governor's Awards
(01:59):
for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and
the glad GLAAD Awards. Cededaring Fox has voiced hundreds of
national promotional spots for broadcast networks ABCNBCCBS Fox, and for
international cable networks such as CNN, BBC, ESPN, and Lifetime.
(02:24):
She has voiced award winning documentaries, countless national commercial campaigns,
and is the female voice of numerous local affiliate stations.
She regularly donates her voice to valued charitable organizations and
is featured on the book Secrets of Voiceover Success, Top
(02:45):
actors reveal how they did it. Her work as a
voice over artists is fascinating, but I am especially interested
in the amazing organization that she founded called Word Theater.
Word Theater dot Org is the address. They operate in
Los Angeles, New York, and London since two thousand and three.
(03:06):
Word Theater's mission is to connect people across the globe
with compelling stories delivered through performances by well known actors
from film, television, and theater. The stories reflect the colorful, complicated,
and fascinating world that we live in and celebrate the
power of language. We are going to chat with Cedaring.
(03:31):
I got to find out about that name. I love
that name, and learn about Word Theater and some of
their upcoming events, and perhaps you would like to take
part in that. But before all that, I'm going to
speak to the goodness of one of my favorite podcast sponsors,
the amazing Mercy Ships. Of the few things in life
(03:53):
that are universal, I believe love is the most powerful.
I've been talking about mercy ships a lot, and someone
asked me the other day, to Lilah, what is mercy Well,
to me, mercy is unfettered love. Unfettered means boundless, unrestrained, free,
(04:17):
the very best kind of love there is. There is
so much good in the world if only we train
our focus point upon it. With every surgery, every changed life,
Mercy ships restores a little bit of humanity, and that
is why I am such a huge fan. Mercy Ships
just launched the Global Mercy, the world's first custom built
(04:41):
civilian hospital ship, so they can perform even more surgeries
and change even more lives. Now that inspires me. Go
to Mercyships dot org and see for yourself what unfettered,
boundless love looks like. Mercyships dot org. Welcome to love
(05:01):
someone with Delilah Cedaring Fox. A lot of folks don't
know your name, but they certainly if they have watched
any awards ceremony, I know that voice. You're the voice
of everything like you are. Your voice is so so
connected with so many things in our society. But it's
(05:25):
not a voice that is shouting over the crowd. You're
just a voice that is strong and present. Thank you
so much for that, Delilah. I think that a big
part of your success is your voice, because I think
we have something in common where we're trying to just
gather people and connect people with our work, and I
(05:48):
do the same thing when I'm doing voice work. I'm
trying to bring people to see what I'm seeing and
feeling and thinking. And I think that you're so doing that,
and it's very comforting, the sound of a warm, welcoming voice,
don't you think, I hope. So that's my intent. So
(06:10):
is ceaedaring the name that your parents gave you or
is this a name you came upon? Well, my mother
was born and raised way up north in Sweden, in
thirty kilometers from the Arctic Circle, and they had and
probably still have a tradition in Sweden where normally you
would become the son or daughter of your father's first
(06:31):
name and her son Andre's daughter. And my mother's father
was Hilding, so she would have been Hilding's daughter. But
there is this option, and there certainly wasn't the nineteen
thirties when my grandfather Hilding married Elvi, where you could
create your own last name and send it to the
(06:54):
Swedish government and if no one has it, you get
to claim it as your own. So what happened is
my grandfather was a beautiful character who ended up owning
thousands of acres in northern Sweden, and he was a
nature lover. He knew every star, every tree, every flower,
(07:14):
every berry, and they took the cedar tree and the
circle as it was always described to me by my
poet mother of archetypal wholeness, and they made a cedar
ring say that ring? So yeah, wow, well you embody it. Well,
thank you. This is only a long answer, I know,
(07:36):
but I wanted the story, and that's what I do.
I love stories. That's my whole life is telling stories
and listening to stories. Well, we share a lot in
common because my entire life is dedicated to stories. And
we're currently creating a campus for educators and students. It's
called the Word Theater Campus. So tell me about a
(07:59):
Word Theater twenty year anniversary. So you're a storyteller. I
mean that's what makes the world go round, bringing people
together by sharing stories of what it means to be human.
I think your mission and the mission of Word Theater
is extremely similar. I found a diary recently where I
(08:21):
was an actress. I trained as an actress from a
very young age and a dancer, and I was in
a class when I was twenty two years old. It
was kind of a boot camp for actors to get
everybody going, and we had to write down our life's
objective and I thought, oh my god, you know, I
love dancing, I love acting, I love directing. I love
(08:42):
all these different things. What is my life subjective? And
I wrote down to bring people together to share stories.
And whether I'm doing a voiceover job or running word theater,
where I gather the world greatest actors, wonderful human beings
(09:03):
are attracted to doing my show. I get a great
actor that I think is the perfect person to inhabit
a particular short story, a beautifully written short story. I
tend to work with some of the best living writers
in the US and the UK. Very fortunate about that.
(09:27):
But I cast an actor, I direct the actor, and
I get the author into the room nine out of
ten times to experience their story, been act of the story.
And this sounds terrible, but I'm very proud to say
that nine out of ten times the author bursts into
(09:49):
is that the actor? They're so moved and it is.
It's a very I can just describe it until you
know the cows come home, But really people need to
experience it. So tell us how they do that. How
(10:11):
can somebody experience just what you just described? How can
they be invited into that circle of stories? Yeah? I
started doing these stories many many many years ago, and
there there was a moment where I realized that I
had to commit to this as my life's work, because
the simplicity of an actor inhabiting a story and having
(10:36):
it be so brilliant is one of the purest forms
of theater. So I committed my life to this. I'd
been doing it in different incarnations, in different shows, but
twenty years ago I started Word Theater and we do
live events. We do small events, we do big events.
For example, Saturday, we are commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of
(10:59):
the end of the war in Vietnam. And what I
did was create an event that we had on March eighteenth, gathering.
This extraordinary group of actors came in from all over,
and I brought in some of the most important writers
on Vietnam, Tim O'Brien who wrote the Things They Carried,
(11:20):
Tobias Wolfe, who burst into the literary fame with This
Boy's Life, which was made into a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio,
Robert de Niro. He has a memoir of his time
in Vietnam called Infaraoh's Army. So it was eleven different
stories by veterans of the Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan.
(11:47):
There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Kathy Baker
closed with a letter from a Vietnam mother to her
son that she posted at the wall the Memorial in Washington,
and this everybody got to walk a mile in the
shoes of these veterans who had managed to create these
(12:10):
unbelievably beautiful stories, not necessarily true stories, but authentic stories
that came from their brilliant writing talents about an experience
of war. And so that's one event, that's one themed
event that I would create this summer. For example, we're
(12:34):
doing a big beautiful in an outdoor amphitheater here in
Los Angeles, an event about the history of jazz in
the words of the artists. So we do big shows
and then we do little shows, like on May sixth,
I'll have three actors reading two stories by two wonderful
(12:55):
women from their collections. Lisa Kopolo and Dana Johnson are
the authors. So I'm always creating big shows, little shows,
and the public is completely welcome to come. We do
shows in Los Angeles, New York, and London. We also
(13:16):
started we started to record video record these events, and
we started to get really much more sophisticated about our
videos in recent years. And so what we do is
we will film an event like the event that we
did for the veterans, and it will be posted any
(13:38):
day now. And if you're a member of Word Theater,
which helps sustain our nonprofit. We're a complete and total nonprofit.
We visit schools in person. We're just always trying to
do good things and bring people together. But you can
as a member, an annual member, it's one hundred and
fifty dollars a year. You can access these videos in
(14:01):
the members area at your leisure, so you will see
beautifully filmed events. And we just did a benefit for
Ukraine in London. It's living on the it's living on
the website right now. And we have a weekly audio
podcast where we share a free story each week. Amazing, amazing.
(14:25):
I love the power of the spoken word. A lot
of people don't realize that there are thousands of languages
that don't have a written component, they only have spoken tradition.
When you share a story, you're sharing wisdom. And he's
so intuitive, Delilah, that's exactly right. I always I always
(14:49):
felt like the traveling minstrels and the storytellers would go
from town to town back in the day, it's the
oral storytelling or st it would be the King and
the people, and it did. Everybody was included. And I
say word, theater is for everyone, everybody, plumber or the president.
(15:13):
And when you hear someone step into these characters, they
become alive in your head and you see your own movie.
And that's what I love about listening and visualizing what
it is and feeling because the writers are so good
and they've written and rewritten, but by the time the
(15:35):
actor says it, it sounds like he's just writing it
in front of you, exactly telling the story. A good
actor is writing it in front of you. Yeah. Yeah,
Bringing to life words on a page is such a gift,
such a talent. Absolutely, it's beautiful. So tell me about
(16:01):
the going into schools. The people who are attracted toward
theater are the most wonderful people because they remember that
they had that one teacher who realized they had a
spark and they had something, and they want to give back.
They become successful. They might be winning Emmy's and Oscars,
(16:22):
and they might be the busiest people in the world.
But if you say JK. Simmons, I have a story
for you. Will you come to Venice High School and
perform it for the kids, And he'll say Tuesday, you know,
can we do it on Tuesday? And so we have
(16:43):
been taking for many years, almost since our inception, actors
into schools and it could be one actor like JK.
It was unbelievable. And we'll also film that. And now
we're building a campus online where students can access many
(17:03):
of these stories with curriculum. It will be available digitally
in Seattle and in London. You know, but the going
into the schools having that live performance, I will never
stop doing that. It's such a joy. It's such a
joy for the actors to participate. We also bring writers
(17:24):
in and we're just here to make everybody realize that
those books on a library shelf, they're written by people.
The only difference between the writers who we focus on
is that they've rewritten those stories and rewritten those stories,
and they've shared them with people and gotten comments and feedbacks,
and they work them until they're really exactly right and
(17:49):
then they end up in a book. We have a
little project in West Africa that I would love to
talk to you about because I think you could help
us take it to a whole different level, called the
West African Wisdom Project, because all of West Africa is
spoken tradition and there are no written components to most
(18:11):
of the native languages. So for years, for decades, their
history and their faith and their there everything, they have
these wonderful little like proverbs. But each proverb has a
whole story behind it. Yes, I love learning those things.
So when you hear the proverb, you know it makes
(18:31):
no sense at all. You know that turtle with a
crack shell knows not to fly like that? What does
that mean? But then when you hear the story behind
the proverb, it's amazing and has all this like life
lessons in it. So what we what we want to
do is these take the stories, record them in the
(18:56):
native language, translate them into other language, have local artists
illustrate them, and then use them as a tool to
help kids learn how to read, because the kids in
West Africa do not read for pleasure, They only read
for purpose. I absolutely love that idea, you know. I
(19:18):
actually I grew up on Aesop's fables and Greek myths.
My grandmother Lillian, who read read all those stories to me,
and those have been passed down for thousands of years.
That is, would anything I can do to help you, Delilah,
please call me. You know, it's one of the important things.
(19:39):
It was a late addition to the Honor in Their
Words program that we did commemorating the end of the
Vietnam War. I was driving along a couple of weeks
before the live show and realize that we didn't have
any Native Americans represented. And I started doing my research
and did you you know that Native Americans were the
(20:02):
number one largest demographic in Vietnam. Eighty two thousand Native
Americans fought in Vietnam. And I found a poem that
was so profound and I feel very, very lucky. I'd
never worked with this actor before, but Zon mclarnan, who
(20:26):
he was in Longmeyer Far Ago. He's starring in his
own TV series right now. Beautiful Native American actor called
his agent. He made himself available and came in and
it was such a collaboration rehearsing with him because there
were sounds and he said, you know, what do you
(20:48):
think this sound is? I mean it was at a
pow wow and he ended up calling I said, I said,
I need to I need help from you to help
me find this this sound. He called his friend who
runs pow Wows, did her recording, sent me the recording.
He you know, anybody who watches a show Atword Theater
(21:09):
dot org. He just honoring these cultures. Delilah is so important.
I don't feel that the show would have been the
same if Zon hadn't been there doing that poem. If
he moved me so profoundly, and to represent the men
and women who have been part of the armed forces
(21:30):
was really important. Internationally known voiceover artist Cedaring Fox is
with us today sharing all sorts of fascinating information. We've
got much more to talk about right after I spend
some time with you talking about today's podcast. Sponsor Eyes
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(21:53):
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(22:16):
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(22:38):
And I see their frames and choose the ones that
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Eof optical dot com. Well, I'm going to talk to
you about a favorite writer of mine. His name is
(22:59):
Brian Doyle, and Brian Doyle lived in Portland, Oregon and
worked at the university. He was a newspaperman, a writer,
ended up being a very prolific, very prolific writer. And
I found one of his stories, which was really an essay,
(23:22):
and it starts out the hummingbird's heart beats this many
times a minute, and it goes on. It's three pages long,
and it goes on to the heart of a blue whale, etc.
And it is the most fascinating little piece and at
the end you're in a flood of tears. And I
had read this thing, I called him. I tracked him
(23:44):
down in Oregon asked him for permission to have it
read at a benefit in Easthampton, New York, and he
said sure absolutely, and the actor Linus Roach and I
were going, we just kept stopping going this guy, what
is he channeling? What planet is? This is so beautiful.
(24:06):
So I asked Brian, I said, thank you for permission
to do the story. Can you tell me where it
came from? And he said, oh, well, I have twin boys,
and when they were born, one of them had a
heart problem and had to have open heart surgery. And
this was my way of dealing with this. This story
is called joyous voladoras. Anyway, it just it stops traffic
(24:32):
when you when you read this story out loud, I'll
send you I'll send you a copy. So he ended up,
you know, I ended up doing many of his stories,
and then he started sending me stories. And now we've
done shows with his stories and people just walk out
of these shows. We're doing another show with his stories
on June first. I was working with his stories for
(24:55):
twelve years before I finally met him, and he came
to Los Angeles in twenty sixteen with his wife and
we had a three day you know, we had events
and he had a book signing and things like that,
and that's where J. K. Simmons is so in love
with him. He'll be part of this show at at
the Grammy Museum on June one, the Grammy Museum Theater
(25:19):
at La Live. At the end, he just stood up
and talked about stories. There's the power of stories. They
are food for the soul. He went home and I
got a call a month later that he had developed
a glioblastoma and he died. And I told his wife,
(25:41):
I am on a mission to get everybody in the
world to hear these stories. You will be so moved
when you hear. When I send you Joyce Voladorus this story,
every story he written and their essays there at least
two page things that make you look at the world
(26:02):
completely differently. And you are all about heart stories. These
are all open your heart stories he had, and they're
so unpretentious. Tobias Wolf, who's a you know, he taught
at Stamford for years. He's nurtured George Sanders and Adam
Johnson and all these really great writers. I showed him
(26:24):
Brian Doyle's book. It was one of his many books.
It was published posthumously called One Long River of Song,
and he just was in tears. He goes, You've made
me cry. It's a Sunday morning. It's like I'm sitting
here crying. Thank you for introducing me to this writer.
I just want to say to everybody out there, Brian Doyle,
(26:45):
One Long River of Song, go find this book and
find all his books. But if anybody is anywhere near
Los Angeles on June first, come see this show. We
have a remarkable cast coming together and these are it
also they're they're just so accessible and they're so human. Wow. Wow.
(27:12):
So Wordtheater dot com or dot org. We're a dot org.
We're a five O one C three nonprofit in the
United States and we're on the cusp of getting our
charitable status in the UK. This has just been such
a pleasure of speaking with you, and I hope that
your listeners will go check out our free Word Theater
(27:33):
short story podcast. Yes indeed and join Word Theater. And
if you're anywhere near any of your big events trying
to get ticket little events or little events, yeah, these
talents give their time, the amount of rehearsal that they do.
They people work so hard and when they get off
(27:56):
that stage, they feel proud and they know that they've
touched people, They've reached people, They've done something that is
not about commercial success. It's about giving, giving culture that
we live in and receiving the love back, knowing that
you've moved people and engendered empathy and compassion for you.
(28:20):
All of the things I try to do are just
that bring people together, just like what you're doing. So
I just thank you so much for this opportunity. On
June first, a new selection of stories by beloved Oregon
author Brian Doyle brought to life by extraordinary actors including JK.
(28:41):
Simmons and Moore at the Grammy Museum Theater, Los Angeles, California.
Whether voicing a thirty second promo, announcing an award show live,
or directing an actor to give voice to a finely
crafted short story, Seating harnesses the power of language to
clearly communicate every story. She is on a mission to
(29:05):
bring people together in a celebration of our shared humanity,
one word at a time. If you are interested in
attending one of these amazing events, visit the Word Theater
website at www dot Wordtheater dot org. You can learn
so much about the organization there about the founder our
guest today, seating, the amazing array of talent that support
(29:30):
and participate in this, and importantly, how to get tickets
to go to the shows. Being an Oregon girl, I
would love to attend the Brian Doyle event in June.
It would be a new experience for me. I live
by the motto You're never too old to try a
new experience. But it's also my granddaughter's birthday weekend, so
(29:50):
that comes first. What is new for you these days?
What are you trying? Have you taken up any new interests?
Are you playing any new games? Have you got any
new hobbies or activities? If you automatically said no, I
hope you will consider doing so, trying something new, stepping
out of your comfort zone. Our brains and bodies need
(30:12):
to be poked into action every once in a while.
And if you look to me for suggestions, I'm always
going to recommend you grow something. It is springtime, it
is time to garden. Gardening is a passion of mine,
and I wish it would become a passion of everyone's
because it's so healing, so nurturing, and so good for us.
(30:32):
Plant at water at tend it, read a few dozen books,
says the seeds are doing their thing, and then eat it,
Enjoy it. No food ever tasted as good as that
you've grown yourself, especially tomatoes. That's the advice I am
leaving you with today. Couple that with the amazing conversation
we just had with cedaring, and once again I suggest
(30:53):
you check out word theater dot org and finally take
some time out of your spring schedule to slow down
and love someone. M
Spring is here, and I am so happy to greet it.
The farm seems to be happy to greet it too.
There are daffodils popping up and poppies popping up in
the now green fields. The plum trees have been in
furling their tiny purple and white blossoms. The rest of
the fruit trees have buds that are plumping out on
(00:28):
their still bare branches. The goats have baby goats, the chickens,
the EMUs are acting especially frisky. We have six emu
eggs in the incubator right now. We've got bird songs
that fill the air during the day. We've got frogs
billions of frogs in the ponds filling the air at night.
(00:51):
And hope, hope is filling my heart. This is my
wish for you too, that your heart is full of faith, hope,
and charity during this beautiful season of rebirth. I am
so pleased to be sharing today's episode of Love Someone
with you, and very excited for the conversation that is
(01:14):
about to take place. You may or may not have
heard the name of my guest before today, but I
guarantee you won't forget it after this conversation. Cedaring Fox
Isn't that a beautiful name? Cedaring Fox she is a
trail blazing voice over artist. You've heard her as she
(01:36):
announces major live televised award shows and events such as
the Oscars, the People's Choice Awards, the Democratic National Convention,
and numerous non broadcast events including the Producer's Guild Awards,
the Luminaire Awards, the OSCAR Nominees Luncheon, the Governor's Awards
(01:59):
for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and
the glad GLAAD Awards. Cededaring Fox has voiced hundreds of
national promotional spots for broadcast networks ABCNBCCBS Fox, and for
international cable networks such as CNN, BBC, ESPN, and Lifetime.
(02:24):
She has voiced award winning documentaries, countless national commercial campaigns,
and is the female voice of numerous local affiliate stations.
She regularly donates her voice to valued charitable organizations and
is featured on the book Secrets of Voiceover Success, Top
(02:45):
actors reveal how they did it. Her work as a
voice over artists is fascinating, but I am especially interested
in the amazing organization that she founded called Word Theater.
Word Theater dot Org is the address. They operate in
Los Angeles, New York, and London since two thousand and three.
(03:06):
Word Theater's mission is to connect people across the globe
with compelling stories delivered through performances by well known actors
from film, television, and theater. The stories reflect the colorful, complicated,
and fascinating world that we live in and celebrate the
power of language. We are going to chat with Cedaring.
(03:31):
I got to find out about that name. I love
that name, and learn about Word Theater and some of
their upcoming events, and perhaps you would like to take
part in that. But before all that, I'm going to
speak to the goodness of one of my favorite podcast sponsors,
the amazing Mercy Ships. Of the few things in life
(03:53):
that are universal, I believe love is the most powerful.
I've been talking about mercy ships a lot, and someone
asked me the other day, to Lilah, what is mercy Well,
to me, mercy is unfettered love. Unfettered means boundless, unrestrained, free,
(04:17):
the very best kind of love there is. There is
so much good in the world if only we train
our focus point upon it. With every surgery, every changed life,
Mercy ships restores a little bit of humanity, and that
is why I am such a huge fan. Mercy Ships
just launched the Global Mercy, the world's first custom built
(04:41):
civilian hospital ship, so they can perform even more surgeries
and change even more lives. Now that inspires me. Go
to Mercyships dot org and see for yourself what unfettered,
boundless love looks like. Mercyships dot org. Welcome to love
(05:01):
someone with Delilah Cedaring Fox. A lot of folks don't
know your name, but they certainly if they have watched
any awards ceremony, I know that voice. You're the voice
of everything like you are. Your voice is so so
connected with so many things in our society. But it's
(05:25):
not a voice that is shouting over the crowd. You're
just a voice that is strong and present. Thank you
so much for that, Delilah. I think that a big
part of your success is your voice, because I think
we have something in common where we're trying to just
gather people and connect people with our work, and I
(05:48):
do the same thing when I'm doing voice work. I'm
trying to bring people to see what I'm seeing and
feeling and thinking. And I think that you're so doing that,
and it's very comforting, the sound of a warm, welcoming voice,
don't you think, I hope. So that's my intent. So
(06:10):
is ceaedaring the name that your parents gave you or
is this a name you came upon? Well, my mother
was born and raised way up north in Sweden, in
thirty kilometers from the Arctic Circle, and they had and
probably still have a tradition in Sweden where normally you
would become the son or daughter of your father's first
(06:31):
name and her son Andre's daughter. And my mother's father
was Hilding, so she would have been Hilding's daughter. But
there is this option, and there certainly wasn't the nineteen
thirties when my grandfather Hilding married Elvi, where you could
create your own last name and send it to the
(06:54):
Swedish government and if no one has it, you get
to claim it as your own. So what happened is
my grandfather was a beautiful character who ended up owning
thousands of acres in northern Sweden, and he was a
nature lover. He knew every star, every tree, every flower,
(07:14):
every berry, and they took the cedar tree and the
circle as it was always described to me by my
poet mother of archetypal wholeness, and they made a cedar
ring say that ring? So yeah, wow, well you embody it. Well,
thank you. This is only a long answer, I know,
(07:36):
but I wanted the story, and that's what I do.
I love stories. That's my whole life is telling stories
and listening to stories. Well, we share a lot in
common because my entire life is dedicated to stories. And
we're currently creating a campus for educators and students. It's
called the Word Theater Campus. So tell me about a
(07:59):
Word Theater twenty year anniversary. So you're a storyteller. I
mean that's what makes the world go round, bringing people
together by sharing stories of what it means to be human.
I think your mission and the mission of Word Theater
is extremely similar. I found a diary recently where I
(08:21):
was an actress. I trained as an actress from a
very young age and a dancer, and I was in
a class when I was twenty two years old. It
was kind of a boot camp for actors to get
everybody going, and we had to write down our life's
objective and I thought, oh my god, you know, I
love dancing, I love acting, I love directing. I love
(08:42):
all these different things. What is my life subjective? And
I wrote down to bring people together to share stories.
And whether I'm doing a voiceover job or running word theater,
where I gather the world greatest actors, wonderful human beings
(09:03):
are attracted to doing my show. I get a great
actor that I think is the perfect person to inhabit
a particular short story, a beautifully written short story. I
tend to work with some of the best living writers
in the US and the UK. Very fortunate about that.
(09:27):
But I cast an actor, I direct the actor, and
I get the author into the room nine out of
ten times to experience their story, been act of the story.
And this sounds terrible, but I'm very proud to say
that nine out of ten times the author bursts into
(09:49):
is that the actor? They're so moved and it is.
It's a very I can just describe it until you
know the cows come home, But really people need to
experience it. So tell us how they do that. How
(10:11):
can somebody experience just what you just described? How can
they be invited into that circle of stories? Yeah? I
started doing these stories many many many years ago, and
there there was a moment where I realized that I
had to commit to this as my life's work, because
the simplicity of an actor inhabiting a story and having
(10:36):
it be so brilliant is one of the purest forms
of theater. So I committed my life to this. I'd
been doing it in different incarnations, in different shows, but
twenty years ago I started Word Theater and we do
live events. We do small events, we do big events.
For example, Saturday, we are commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of
(10:59):
the end of the war in Vietnam. And what I
did was create an event that we had on March eighteenth, gathering.
This extraordinary group of actors came in from all over,
and I brought in some of the most important writers
on Vietnam, Tim O'Brien who wrote the Things They Carried,
(11:20):
Tobias Wolfe, who burst into the literary fame with This
Boy's Life, which was made into a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio,
Robert de Niro. He has a memoir of his time
in Vietnam called Infaraoh's Army. So it was eleven different
stories by veterans of the Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan.
(11:47):
There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Kathy Baker
closed with a letter from a Vietnam mother to her
son that she posted at the wall the Memorial in Washington,
and this everybody got to walk a mile in the
shoes of these veterans who had managed to create these
(12:10):
unbelievably beautiful stories, not necessarily true stories, but authentic stories
that came from their brilliant writing talents about an experience
of war. And so that's one event, that's one themed
event that I would create this summer. For example, we're
(12:34):
doing a big beautiful in an outdoor amphitheater here in
Los Angeles, an event about the history of jazz in
the words of the artists. So we do big shows
and then we do little shows, like on May sixth,
I'll have three actors reading two stories by two wonderful
(12:55):
women from their collections. Lisa Kopolo and Dana Johnson are
the authors. So I'm always creating big shows, little shows,
and the public is completely welcome to come. We do
shows in Los Angeles, New York, and London. We also
(13:16):
started we started to record video record these events, and
we started to get really much more sophisticated about our
videos in recent years. And so what we do is
we will film an event like the event that we
did for the veterans, and it will be posted any
(13:38):
day now. And if you're a member of Word Theater,
which helps sustain our nonprofit. We're a complete and total nonprofit.
We visit schools in person. We're just always trying to
do good things and bring people together. But you can
as a member, an annual member, it's one hundred and
fifty dollars a year. You can access these videos in
(14:01):
the members area at your leisure, so you will see
beautifully filmed events. And we just did a benefit for
Ukraine in London. It's living on the it's living on
the website right now. And we have a weekly audio
podcast where we share a free story each week. Amazing, amazing.
(14:25):
I love the power of the spoken word. A lot
of people don't realize that there are thousands of languages
that don't have a written component, they only have spoken tradition.
When you share a story, you're sharing wisdom. And he's
so intuitive, Delilah, that's exactly right. I always I always
(14:49):
felt like the traveling minstrels and the storytellers would go
from town to town back in the day, it's the
oral storytelling or st it would be the King and
the people, and it did. Everybody was included. And I
say word, theater is for everyone, everybody, plumber or the president.
(15:13):
And when you hear someone step into these characters, they
become alive in your head and you see your own movie.
And that's what I love about listening and visualizing what
it is and feeling because the writers are so good
and they've written and rewritten, but by the time the
(15:35):
actor says it, it sounds like he's just writing it
in front of you, exactly telling the story. A good
actor is writing it in front of you. Yeah. Yeah,
Bringing to life words on a page is such a gift,
such a talent. Absolutely, it's beautiful. So tell me about
(16:01):
the going into schools. The people who are attracted toward
theater are the most wonderful people because they remember that
they had that one teacher who realized they had a
spark and they had something, and they want to give back.
They become successful. They might be winning Emmy's and Oscars,
(16:22):
and they might be the busiest people in the world.
But if you say JK. Simmons, I have a story
for you. Will you come to Venice High School and
perform it for the kids, And he'll say Tuesday, you know,
can we do it on Tuesday? And so we have
(16:43):
been taking for many years, almost since our inception, actors
into schools and it could be one actor like JK.
It was unbelievable. And we'll also film that. And now
we're building a campus online where students can access many
(17:03):
of these stories with curriculum. It will be available digitally
in Seattle and in London. You know, but the going
into the schools having that live performance, I will never
stop doing that. It's such a joy. It's such a
joy for the actors to participate. We also bring writers
(17:24):
in and we're just here to make everybody realize that
those books on a library shelf, they're written by people.
The only difference between the writers who we focus on
is that they've rewritten those stories and rewritten those stories,
and they've shared them with people and gotten comments and feedbacks,
and they work them until they're really exactly right and
(17:49):
then they end up in a book. We have a
little project in West Africa that I would love to
talk to you about because I think you could help
us take it to a whole different level, called the
West African Wisdom Project, because all of West Africa is
spoken tradition and there are no written components to most
(18:11):
of the native languages. So for years, for decades, their
history and their faith and their there everything, they have
these wonderful little like proverbs. But each proverb has a
whole story behind it. Yes, I love learning those things.
So when you hear the proverb, you know it makes
(18:31):
no sense at all. You know that turtle with a
crack shell knows not to fly like that? What does
that mean? But then when you hear the story behind
the proverb, it's amazing and has all this like life
lessons in it. So what we what we want to
do is these take the stories, record them in the
(18:56):
native language, translate them into other language, have local artists
illustrate them, and then use them as a tool to
help kids learn how to read, because the kids in
West Africa do not read for pleasure, They only read
for purpose. I absolutely love that idea, you know. I
(19:18):
actually I grew up on Aesop's fables and Greek myths.
My grandmother Lillian, who read read all those stories to me,
and those have been passed down for thousands of years.
That is, would anything I can do to help you, Delilah,
please call me. You know, it's one of the important things.
(19:39):
It was a late addition to the Honor in Their
Words program that we did commemorating the end of the
Vietnam War. I was driving along a couple of weeks
before the live show and realize that we didn't have
any Native Americans represented. And I started doing my research
and did you you know that Native Americans were the
(20:02):
number one largest demographic in Vietnam. Eighty two thousand Native
Americans fought in Vietnam. And I found a poem that
was so profound and I feel very, very lucky. I'd
never worked with this actor before, but Zon mclarnan, who
(20:26):
he was in Longmeyer Far Ago. He's starring in his
own TV series right now. Beautiful Native American actor called
his agent. He made himself available and came in and
it was such a collaboration rehearsing with him because there
were sounds and he said, you know, what do you
(20:48):
think this sound is? I mean it was at a
pow wow and he ended up calling I said, I said,
I need to I need help from you to help
me find this this sound. He called his friend who
runs pow Wows, did her recording, sent me the recording.
He you know, anybody who watches a show Atword Theater
(21:09):
dot org. He just honoring these cultures. Delilah is so important.
I don't feel that the show would have been the
same if Zon hadn't been there doing that poem. If
he moved me so profoundly, and to represent the men
and women who have been part of the armed forces
(21:30):
was really important. Internationally known voiceover artist Cedaring Fox is
with us today sharing all sorts of fascinating information. We've
got much more to talk about right after I spend
some time with you talking about today's podcast. Sponsor Eyes
of Faith. If you're going to wear glasses, there's one
(21:53):
brand of frames I recommend you have to look for it,
but it's worth it. The brand is called of Faith Optical.
I discovered this brand, I fell in love with their
style of frames. I wear them every day now and
get so many compliments. It was only after I discovered
the beauty of their frames did I discover the subtle
(22:16):
message hidden on the inside of every frame, a scripture
from the Bible. Their purpose is not only to provide
you with a great frame, but to help others too.
Eyes of Faith Optical shares a generous amount of the
money they earn to improve the lives and eyesight of
so many others, many of them less fortunate than you.
(22:38):
And I see their frames and choose the ones that
make you feel great when you wear them. Eof optical
dot Com is their website. You're gonna love what you discover.
Eof optical dot com. Well, I'm going to talk to
you about a favorite writer of mine. His name is
(22:59):
Brian Doyle, and Brian Doyle lived in Portland, Oregon and
worked at the university. He was a newspaperman, a writer,
ended up being a very prolific, very prolific writer. And
I found one of his stories, which was really an essay,
(23:22):
and it starts out the hummingbird's heart beats this many
times a minute, and it goes on. It's three pages long,
and it goes on to the heart of a blue whale, etc.
And it is the most fascinating little piece and at
the end you're in a flood of tears. And I
had read this thing, I called him. I tracked him
(23:44):
down in Oregon asked him for permission to have it
read at a benefit in Easthampton, New York, and he
said sure absolutely, and the actor Linus Roach and I
were going, we just kept stopping going this guy, what
is he channeling? What planet is? This is so beautiful.
(24:06):
So I asked Brian, I said, thank you for permission
to do the story. Can you tell me where it
came from? And he said, oh, well, I have twin boys,
and when they were born, one of them had a
heart problem and had to have open heart surgery. And
this was my way of dealing with this. This story
is called joyous voladoras. Anyway, it just it stops traffic
(24:32):
when you when you read this story out loud, I'll
send you I'll send you a copy. So he ended up,
you know, I ended up doing many of his stories,
and then he started sending me stories. And now we've
done shows with his stories and people just walk out
of these shows. We're doing another show with his stories
on June first. I was working with his stories for
(24:55):
twelve years before I finally met him, and he came
to Los Angeles in twenty sixteen with his wife and
we had a three day you know, we had events
and he had a book signing and things like that,
and that's where J. K. Simmons is so in love
with him. He'll be part of this show at at
the Grammy Museum on June one, the Grammy Museum Theater
(25:19):
at La Live. At the end, he just stood up
and talked about stories. There's the power of stories. They
are food for the soul. He went home and I
got a call a month later that he had developed
a glioblastoma and he died. And I told his wife,
(25:41):
I am on a mission to get everybody in the
world to hear these stories. You will be so moved
when you hear. When I send you Joyce Voladorus this story,
every story he written and their essays there at least
two page things that make you look at the world
(26:02):
completely differently. And you are all about heart stories. These
are all open your heart stories he had, and they're
so unpretentious. Tobias Wolf, who's a you know, he taught
at Stamford for years. He's nurtured George Sanders and Adam
Johnson and all these really great writers. I showed him
(26:24):
Brian Doyle's book. It was one of his many books.
It was published posthumously called One Long River of Song,
and he just was in tears. He goes, You've made
me cry. It's a Sunday morning. It's like I'm sitting
here crying. Thank you for introducing me to this writer.
I just want to say to everybody out there, Brian Doyle,
(26:45):
One Long River of Song, go find this book and
find all his books. But if anybody is anywhere near
Los Angeles on June first, come see this show. We
have a remarkable cast coming together and these are it
also they're they're just so accessible and they're so human. Wow. Wow.
(27:12):
So Wordtheater dot com or dot org. We're a dot org.
We're a five O one C three nonprofit in the
United States and we're on the cusp of getting our
charitable status in the UK. This has just been such
a pleasure of speaking with you, and I hope that
your listeners will go check out our free Word Theater
(27:33):
short story podcast. Yes indeed and join Word Theater. And
if you're anywhere near any of your big events trying
to get ticket little events or little events, yeah, these
talents give their time, the amount of rehearsal that they do.
They people work so hard and when they get off
(27:56):
that stage, they feel proud and they know that they've
touched people, They've reached people, They've done something that is
not about commercial success. It's about giving, giving culture that
we live in and receiving the love back, knowing that
you've moved people and engendered empathy and compassion for you.
(28:20):
All of the things I try to do are just
that bring people together, just like what you're doing. So
I just thank you so much for this opportunity. On
June first, a new selection of stories by beloved Oregon
author Brian Doyle brought to life by extraordinary actors including JK.
(28:41):
Simmons and Moore at the Grammy Museum Theater, Los Angeles, California.
Whether voicing a thirty second promo, announcing an award show live,
or directing an actor to give voice to a finely
crafted short story, Seating harnesses the power of language to
clearly communicate every story. She is on a mission to
(29:05):
bring people together in a celebration of our shared humanity,
one word at a time. If you are interested in
attending one of these amazing events, visit the Word Theater
website at www dot Wordtheater dot org. You can learn
so much about the organization there about the founder our
guest today, seating, the amazing array of talent that support
(29:30):
and participate in this, and importantly, how to get tickets
to go to the shows. Being an Oregon girl, I
would love to attend the Brian Doyle event in June.
It would be a new experience for me. I live
by the motto You're never too old to try a
new experience. But it's also my granddaughter's birthday weekend, so
(29:50):
that comes first. What is new for you these days?
What are you trying? Have you taken up any new interests?
Are you playing any new games? Have you got any
new hobbies or activities? If you automatically said no, I
hope you will consider doing so, trying something new, stepping
out of your comfort zone. Our brains and bodies need
(30:12):
to be poked into action every once in a while.
And if you look to me for suggestions, I'm always
going to recommend you grow something. It is springtime, it
is time to garden. Gardening is a passion of mine,
and I wish it would become a passion of everyone's
because it's so healing, so nurturing, and so good for us.
(30:32):
Plant at water at tend it, read a few dozen books,
says the seeds are doing their thing, and then eat it,
Enjoy it. No food ever tasted as good as that
you've grown yourself, especially tomatoes. That's the advice I am
leaving you with today. Couple that with the amazing conversation
we just had with cedaring, and once again I suggest
(30:53):
you check out word theater dot org and finally take
some time out of your spring schedule to slow down
and love someone. M
Host
Delilah
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