Franco-American Performer Brings One Man Show to ‘Berg
Franco-American performer Michael Parent brings his one man show, “Je me souviens: Memories of a Mainer with Quebec in his Veins” to Muhlenberg College’s Recital Hall on Monday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m.Thursday, April 7, 2011 11:45 AM
The event, co-sponsored by the Center for Ethics, Student Government and the French Club, is free and open to the public.
Parent’s performance will include excerpts from his one man shows as well as folk songs from the Franco-American tradition performed in both French and English. Dr. Eileen McEwan, assistant professor of French, says that “the whole show will be contextualized in the beginning with a theoretical framework about memory – memories of ancestors, of language, of a former culture – and its role in his own identity as Franco-American.”
From New England to New Zealand, and many places in between, Parent, a native Mainer of French-Canadian descent, has performed as a storyteller and singer, in both English and French, since 1977. He has been featured at many storytelling events, including hundreds of schools and libraries, the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, as well as international festivals in France, Austria, Ireland, England, Poland, Brazil, Costa Rica and New Zealand.
He also leads storytelling, storywriting, and performance workshops, and is known for his teaching abilities and a knack for creating a supportive workshop environment. He is a 1999 recipient of the National Storytelling Network's Circle of Excellence Award, and was a keynote speaker at the 2001 National Storytelling Conference in Providence, R.I. After living in Virginia for many years, Michael returned to his home state of Maine in 1998, and now lives in Portland.
Parent’s performance provides a preview for the Center for Ethics’ Fall of 2011 theme: Memory & Forgetting. All of the Center for Ethics’ upcoming events can be found at here.
