Episode 61: Today’s story comes from Janae Burris and was recorded live at our fifth anniversary show on March 18, 2015. The theme of the evening was “Symbiotes” and her story was entitled “My Shams of Tabriz.”

Janae is a Los Angeles native turned Denver transplant who has been performing standup, sketch and improv comedy for over a decade. Janae earned a bachelor of fine arts from California Institute of the Arts and worked for several years as an actor in Southern Californa. She has taught acting and improv comedy at Performing Arts Workshops, Oak View Middle School and Columbia College Hollywood. You can follow her @negativenegro on Instagram and Twitter.

Our next live event in Denver takes place at Buntport Theater on May 20, 2015 at 8:00pm. The theme of the evening will be “Nature vs. Nurture.” See you there!

Special thanks to Josh Johnson with engineering help on this episode. Our theme music is by our friend Whalehawk (aka the Grammy-nominated musician Jake Sanders).

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The Narrators turned five years old in March, so I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge that milestone—and all of you, for being such loyal fans of this show. Thanks to Buntport Theater, all of our generous sponsors, and all of the crazy talented organizations with whom we’ve collaborated over the last five years.

Last summer, Robert Rutherford moved to San Diego and I took his place as co-host of the show. Andrew Orvedahl’s television series, “Those Who Can’t,” was picked up by TruTV, so he will be spending a lot more time in Los Angeles now and has stepped away from daily involvement with The Narrators.

So that leaves me and my new co-host, Erin Rollman, holding the reigns here in Denver. Erin is a founding member of Buntport Theater, our home venue, and she’s one of the most brilliant, creative minds I’ve ever encountered. We’re totally lucky to have her.

Robert is launching a new chapter of The Narrators in San Diego, which should debut this year, with his partner Mary Robertson. We now have a syndicated series with Audible.com and Rooftop Media that you can listen to for free on Spotify. We’re applying for grants and bouncing around big, crazy ideas like comic books and vinyl records and festivals and we just wrapped a special production where we told stories with a 35-piece orchestra.

With everything happening in the three-dimensional world, I felt like I wanted to do something special for the podcast too. Listeners like you have been a big reason why this show is a success—you share with your friends, you retell the stories you hear, you remind us that there are people out there, beyond the iron gates of Denver, that love our style of storytelling too. You deserve the best.

So, without further ado, I’m proud to announce season two of The Narrators podcast. Yes, the first season was 60 episodes long.

In this new season, we’re going to bring you stories to you every week instead of twice a month. Sometimes we’ll share just one story, sometimes two. Stories may come from places other than live performances. Maybe we’ll do a full hour-long episode once in a while, maybe we’ll pull old stories out of the archives. I don’t know! Tell me what you like, tell me what you want.

Thanks,

Ron S. Doyle