MARTHA ROLLINS: I arrived in this town and I was exhausted and I was delirious, but determined because I was going to find my boyfriend.

AIDA ZILELIAN: When you love someone as much as I loved my father, you wonder what was the right thing to do.

JEZRIE MARCANO-COURTNEY: I am a good girl who gets good grades and makes good decisions.

So I'm going to join a sorority.

(audience laughter) THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "What I Did for Love."

Love makes fools of us all, and honestly, we wouldn't have it any other way.

It drives us towards these grand romantic gestures and towards grave miscalculations.

Love invites us to be brave.

It invites us to be reckless, it invites us to reach for things that sometimes feel just outside of our grasp.

Now, tonight's storytellers are sharing these moments of tenderness and outrageousness all along their path towards the pursuit of love.

♪ ♪ MARCANO-COURTNEY: I'm Jezrie Marcano-Courtney, I'm from New Haven, Connecticut.

I am a personal experience storyteller.

I also tutor children in reading, and I am the president of Northeast Storytelling.

Can you tell me a bit about how you found your way into storytelling?

I was in the process of grieving my father's death.

Um, in 2008, um, he died from complications with diabetes, and I spent the next seven years without the ability to use my voice.

So, I started to look for creative outlets, and found a story share event, and the first story I told was about the night that my dad died.

So, some people tell stories and it's like, one time, they do it one time, and others keep coming back the way that you have.

Yeah.

So, what keeps bringing you back?

to storytelling?

Learning-- learning more about myself, the things that I've been through, even the things that are absolutely cringe, they have lessons in them.

And the other part is learning about the listeners, learning about the audience.

It's always a shock to me when I have listeners come up, um, especially if they don't look like me, if they don't have the life experience I have, and be able to say "I was able to see myself in what you went through."

So, especially considering the multiple layers of your identity, can you talk a bit about inclusion in storytelling and why part of your work, as I understand it, is to create more inclusion in the storytelling scene?

Inclusion is so important in storytelling, because often voices like mine are overlooked, and it's very important for me to own my narrative.

And for the babies behind me coming up, it's important for them to know, nobody else tells your story.

You tell your story.

It's fall 2002, and I'm a sophomore in college, finding my way in the world.

I mean, it's time.

All I know is what my parents tell me.

I am a good girl who gets good grades and makes good decisions.

So I'm going to join a sorority.

(audience laughter) This is because I'm obsessed with Sorority Life on MTV and the reality TV show follows six girls on their journey to full-fledged sisterhood.

I don't remember the name of the sorority, but I do remember the feeling of yearning to know myself in the way that these girls know themselves.

And those letters.

I could just see myself in them.

Well, one day art becomes life.

And I go into my English composition class.

I sit next to Stephanie and Stephanie is wearing a navy blue t-shirt with Greek letters printed on the upper left side.

And so I ask her, "Hey, is that a sorority t-shirt?"

Knowing full well that it is.

Stephanie takes the bait and starts to talk to me about her membership to the Kappa Kappa Delta sorority.

And as I pepper her with more questions, she simply says to me, "Jez, come see for yourself."

Two days later, I walk into the student center.

I meet up with Stephanie and she leads me into a large room full of young women that all look like her.

With their hair flat ironed straight, and pretty design manicures, and they're all white.

(audience chuckling) Now, this isn't something that makes me nervous because I'm very familiar with this kind of experience, but I am worried that being Afro-Puerto Rican with a curly pixie cut and baggy street wear might not be the look that they're going for.

So I'm relieved when I get invited to pledge.

And being a member of the Gamma Delta class of Kappa Kappa Delta means that I get to meet with my pledge sisters regularly, and we get to learn about the history of our sorority, and we even get to learn how to recite our Greek alphabet in song.

(audience laughter) ♪ Alpha, beta, gamma, delta ♪ ♪ Epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota ♪ ♪ Kappa, lambda ♪ ♪ Mu, nu, psi, omicron, pi, rho ♪ ♪ Sigma, tau, epsilon, phi, kai ♪ ♪ Psi, omega!

♪ (cheers and applause) But there are other things we have to do, like carry rocks in our bags along with our school books and our personal items, and use honorifics when we see the sisters on campus, and even stupid things like not walking on the grass when we're on campus.

But these are all things we have to do in order to show our love and commitment to the sorority.

At home, my parents tell me I am making a mistake.

And I wish that they would understand that becoming a member of Kappa Kappa Delta means that I am getting to know myself.

Well, that all gets tested at hell night.

Full of challenges to prove our worthiness for initiation-- and the worst happens in the bathroom.

I'm blindfolded, and I can hear a few voices of the sisters, one of them I recognize as the president, and she says to me, "Jez, "so far you've shown me you have what it takes to be "a member of this family.

"But sometimes being a member of a family means you have to take crap."

I plunge my hand into that icy cold water because I'm willing to do anything for these letters.

And quickly finger something, I pull it out, and when the blindfold is lifted off of my eyes, I look down to see... ...a broken boiled egg!

Hoo!

Relief and excitement course through me, although I am grossed out to say I stuck my bare hand into a literal toilet.

At initiation a couple of weeks later I am gifted with my own letters and this is when I begin to learn what it means to love them.

At a pre-Thanksgiving dinner, I am enjoying a turkey wing, and one of my sisters is looking at me with her mouth gaped open.

And I look up and I see her and I'm like, "Oh, that's weird," but then I just keep eating the turkey wing because at home this piece is competitively coveted.

(audience laughter) But then I get my invitation to the Kappa Kappa Delta luncheon.

And I've been telling my parents everything that I've been experiencing all along, but I still want them to come because I want to show them why these letters are important to me.

And they don't want no kinds of parts of it!

And they ask me, "Jez, "why would you have us sit in a room with people who treat our daughter less than who we know she is?"

It's true.

I don't really like the way that my sisters treat me, but isn't that because they don't know me?

I mean, do I even really know myself?

Am I who my parents say I am?

In the end, I resign my membership to Kappa Kappa Delta.

The pressure is just too much.

I don't want to be told who I am, but I also don't want to be seen through someone else's eyes, so maybe I am getting to know myself.

When I hand the letters to the president, she says to me, "Jez, keep them, you've earned them."

But in my heart, I know I cannot wear them.

I'm looking for something much bigger.

And one day, without the letters, and even without my parents, I will find it.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ ROLLINS: My name is Martha Rollins.

I am a Boston resident of almost 30 years, and I've worked, had many different jobs in my life: teacher, health food worker, puppeteer, delivering balloon-o-grams, but now I actually have a very normal job of a real estate agent.

Comedy and humor has started to play a pretty big role in your performance arts.

Can you talk about finding your voice in comedy?

I come from a huge family.

I have over 50 cousins.

I have eight siblings.

My father was one of 11.

So, you know, once we had family gatherings, you really had to find your voice.

So I think that's where I honed my comedy skills way back, yeah.

So I understand that this is your first time telling a story on stage.

What drew you to this?

Well, I like to challenge myself.

I've done improv, plays, stand-up comedy, but I've really never done storytelling.

And I didn't realize this was actually what it was going to be.

I thought it was just going to be a one-night, little storytelling, I didn't, I didn't realize it was, um, so, you know, to start off (chuckling): at this level is slightly intimidating, but I'm not afraid, um, and I, yeah, again, like, I like a challenge.

I like to challenge myself.

It was 1985 and I was 24 years old.

I had just gotten hired to be a professional puppeteer.

And this was directly after I had spent one whole year delivering balloon-o-grams.

And I would go into bars, bar mitzvahs, weddings, barbecues, banks and bring in giant bouquets of helium balloons and I would sing, dance and play the kazoo about six to ten times a day.

(audience laughter) Uh, so getting hired as a puppeteer seemed like a real step forward.

(audience laughter) And it was a great job; there were a small crew of us, all of them recent college grads with different types of art degrees.

And we just immersed ourselves in the world of puppetry, we were surrounded by just, like, years and years of puppets in the studio, we were given pretty much free rein.

We traveled around, we performed in different venues, we did artist-in-residencies in schools, it was, it was pretty great.

Well, one of the other puppeteers, one of the primary other puppeteers was a beautiful man who was probably the most creative man I've ever met in my life.

He was the primary maker and designer of the puppets and he was extremely attractive.

(audience laughter) And...

I found myself really hoping he found me attractive, which he did, and so luckily we became boyfriend and girlfriend.

And this was kind of a very magical time.

We, you know, we had like hundreds of puppets looking down on us in our, in our madness in the puppet studio and, um, it was pretty great.

But about a year into our relationship, he announced to me that he needed to go on a solo journey to Italy to discover his familial roots, and to go to a puppetry festival in France.

Now when you're in love with someone for the first time, as we both were, you know, your whole day is filled with that person.

You, you know, if they disappear, like, what are you supposed to do?

I was devastated.

I, I just-- I mean, I was supportive and I said, "Of course, you should go to France and Italy and do all those things."

But inside, I was just, I was very hurt.

But we said our goodbyes.

And soon afterwards, I got a brilliant idea.

I thought I would just go to France and surprise him at the puppetry festival.

And I, I, I did-- I, well, I tried to anyway.

I, I bought a ticket to London.

Now, I'd never traveled by myself in my life.

And so I flew to London.

I found myself a way to get to the boat.

There was no Chunnel.

And I took a horrific boat ride across the English Channel.

And then I got on a train and I trained it all the way to this little town in northern France for, it took hours and hours.

And I, I arrived in this town and I was exhausted and I was delirious, but determined because I was going to find my boyfriend.

And I knew that he was going to be camping.

Um, so I started asking around.

Luckily, there was just one campground in this town.

So I, I found myself at the campground.

And I started looking around at the campground, and I saw a two-man orange tent.

I knew he had a two-man orange tent.

And as I got closer, I saw his shoes outside the tent.

Now I was, like, frantically, like just not, I had no plan.

I, I showed up there, I came all of this way with this passion to, to reunite with my boyfriend.

But, like, I'm actually here now and I don't know what to do.

Um, at the last minute before I left, I stuffed one of our puppets into my backpack.

And these were squishy puppets with very like, they were made of foam and we would, some of them and not all of them, but this type of puppet I brought, you glue it onto a shirt.

And so what you would do is you put your hand over your head into the head of the puppet and then you bring the shirt down over you and you put your arm into the sleeve of the character.

So, you know, you were only seen from the, the hips down.

And so I put the puppet on and I, and I go up to his tent and I, I say, uh, (gruffly): "Hey, uh, who's in that tent there?

"Ah, come out here right now.

You better come out here.

I'm warning you!"

Oh, God.

I'm having some serious self-doubt right now.

I, up to this very moment, I had never considered the fact that he might not want to see me, actually.

Like, that I am busted in on his parade.

Like, what if he doesn't want to see me?

But at that moment, I'm having all this self-doubt.

I see the zipper coming up on the tent.

And I, I'm kind of frozen there with my little puppet on.

And out pops his head.

And he's looking at a puppet that he made.

(audience laughter) And that he did not bring to France.

So the look on his face was just utter shock.

And so I took my moment and I ran.

(audience laughter) I ran.

I had this notion of just, I'll just, I'll just run through these trees, and then I'll outrun him, and I'll just run out of the campground.

I'll grab my backpack and I'll, he'll never know who it was.

(audience laughter) It'll be... ...it'll be awesome.

But unfortunately, um, it's very dark inside the puppet.

So no sooner had I started to run and then I fell flat on my face.

Yeah, and, and he was like right behind me.

And so he's pulling up the puppet, you know, and I'm just inside like cringing like, "Ugh, it's me."

Like, this is so awkward.

Oh, I'm just apologizing.

And he's just like, "What, what, how?

Did you-- what?"

He's kind of speechless.

He can't even get a sentence out.

And I'm just like, "I know.

I know it's terrible.

I know it's weird, right?

I'm so sorry."

And we, we get up and we brush ourselves off and, and we kind of get ourselves together.

I, I am mortified at this point.

I, I, and then we spend a few days together at this festival.

We, I'm jammed into his little two-man tent.

He's forced to spend time with me and we meet amazing people from all over the world and we see amazing shows.

But in my heart, I, I think I should not be here.

So I tell him I'm leaving and I, and I left, and I have no memory of traveling back home.

I don't really even remember it.

And he would write me letters and beautiful cards and illustrations and I still have them actually.

And he came back a few months later but our relationship was really never the same after that.

But as time has a way of doing it, it softens things and we both moved on.

And he still makes puppets to this day.

We've always wished each other well on our birthdays, and as for me, I've gotten slightly less impulsive.

(audience laughter) And maybe a tiny bit more self-reflective.

You know, but I miss the, I miss the wildness of that time, you know?

I miss the spontaneity and the creativity and the freedom that I had to do such a crazy thing, but I also in my older years realized like these, these memorable moments are always seem to be the moments of, kind of, sometimes, the messiest decisions.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ ZILELIAN: My name is Aida Zilelian.

I'm a first-generation American-Armenian writer, educator and storyteller from Queens, New York.

Through your work as a writer, what are you hoping that people come to understand and learn about Armenian culture and families?

ZILELIAN: It really is about understanding that taboo needs to be talked about.

For example, a lot of the students that I teach come from these cultures and therapy is not encouraged.

Mental health is not-- even though it seems like a sort of like a stigma, it very much exists.

So when I write these novels it's not to just uncover Armenian culture.

It's to uncover cultures that are very traditional and maybe just very protective of the family reputation.

What pushed you into telling stories on stage when you began from telling the story on paper?

When you're telling a story, it just comes out, and it's there, and it's immediate and it's in the air and it's received and you get to do it live and you're not waiting, for anything, because you get to just talk and I love that.

♪ ♪ I'm standing in front of L.I.J.

Hospital with my sister and we're waiting for my father and stepmother's daughter to arrive.

She had flown all the way from Los Angeles to New York and we probably had the worst news to tell her that you could tell anybody.

Her mother had had a brain aneurysm and was being kept alive on life support.

We see her walking towards us, and my stomach is turning.

We go upstairs and the doctors sit us down, and they tell us that once we take her mother off oxygen, she'll live for another hour or two.

And as we are comforting her, I know that there is a much darker reality ahead.

And that is the fact that we have to tell our father.

Our father had had a stroke 15 years prior.

His entire left-hand side was paralyzed, and he'd never recovered.

Prior to that, he'd had many, many health complications leading to his stroke, and his wife had taken care of him with such attentiveness and care that we all knew that he had lived as long as he had because of her.

And the love between them was so abiding and so beautiful and you would see it.

You know, she would make dinner, bring it to him where he was sitting, feed him sometimes.

He would grab the top of her hand and kiss it and they hugged all the time.

There was so much, so much love between them.

And so we knew, or we feared, that upon telling him the truth, we would be burying two people, not one.

That he surely would die of the shock and of a broken heart.

So we decided to tell him about her failing health in increments.

Meanwhile, we took her off life support and she died 45 minutes later.

I knew my dad was at home and he was waiting.

There was an aide there and he was very worried.

And I got in the car, I drove over there, with my sisters, and me being the eldest, I knew they were depending on me to deliver the news.

And all I said to him, and he just looked at me, he goes, "What's going on?

I'm so worried about her, is she gonna be okay?"

I said, "Dad, she's in stable condition right now, but we don't really know what's gonna happen."

Um, and he looked at me, and he goes, "I can't live without my wife," and I said, "I know that, Dad."

We bury her.

We have the hokejash, which is the traditional Armenian meal you have after the funeral.

And I'm sitting around and I'm looking, and the family is there, our friends are there, and I'm thinking the one person who should be there is not.

And I'm starting to wonder if this is the right decision.

I continue visiting my dad, as do my sisters, throughout the weeks, and, you know, he says, "How is she doing?"

I said, "Dad, she's not any better."

"Please tell her I love her.

Please tell her I miss her."

And every time I leave, I'm feeling this terrible guilt.

And now the karasoonk comes.

The karasoonk is the 40-day service that we do at the church after the burial.

Once again, our family members are there, and our friends, and, I'm like, "This is not right.

"He's not here, and he thinks she's alive, "and it doesn't make a difference anymore if we tell him today or we tell him a week from today."

And I look at my sisters, and I tell them, "We can't do this."

And I'm the eldest, and they're depending on me, and they say, "Okay, Aida.

Can you tell him?"

I said, "I will."

So I get in the car, and I'm driving, and I'm gripping the steering wheel going, "How am I going to do this?"

This is the man who taught me how to ride the scariest roller coaster.

He didn't just teach me how to ride a bike.

He taught me how to ride it as fast as possible.

He said to me, "You, in this life, can do anything.

"You have all the courage and bravery you need to accomplish whatever you want in life."

And I have to look at him and tell him this.

So I walk into his room.

And he's kind of propped up.

He's leaned over, you know, he's got the pillows.

He's got the rolling desk, the Bible, the cross, his little spectacles.

And he's just sitting there with his head bent.

I looked at him.

I said, "Dad," I said, "I have some news to tell you.

She's, she's not with us anymore."

He hung his head and he shook it.

He didn't ask, you know, about the funeral arrangements, nothing, because for him, she was, she was gone.

He fell into a very deep depression afterwards.

And for two years, we had him on antidepressants and very slowly his health started to slip.

His body was fighting some infection.

He had to be taken to the hospital.

And a week later, he died.

It's been ten years.

Ten years since my dad's been with me.

And when you love someone as much as I loved my father, you wonder what was the most merciful thing or was the right thing to do.

And even ten years later, I don't know if I did the right thing.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪