When Story Becomes Performance: Existence is Resistance

This podcast explores folklore not as something preserved but as something lived and carried forward. Over fifteen years, I worked closely with a Holocaust survivor who escaped into the woods, joined the resistance, and rebuilt her life through fragments of song, food, and story. By the time she died in 2026 at 99, her story had become part of my own life and the performers I worked with to bring the story to life. 

What she left behind was not just narrative but something that had to be performed, and through that performance the lived experience of folklore came to life. In this series, I speak with the musicians and puppeteers who helped bring her world to the stage. Through music, objects, and performance, they stepped inside memory and carried it forward in real time.

Together, we explore what it means to translate, embody, and sustain someone else’s history, and how folklore continues to move, change, and live through those who refuse to let it disappear.

Episode Credits

• Producer – Samantha Goldberg Blackthorn

___________________________

The Folklorist Next Door Series Credits

• Technical Producer – Lamont Jack Pearley
• Executive Producer – Jeannelle Ramirez