On Wednesday, Oct 21, the UNI Interpreters Theatre presented “Tales of You and I: An Alumni Storytelling Performance Event.” The event showcased performances by UNI alumni from over the years sharing their story or a moment that they remembered at UNI.

The show began with the hosts, Doug Shaw, UNI professor at the Mathematics department, and Karen Mitchell, UNI professor at the Communications Department, welcoming the performers and the audience to the Zoom event. Shaw began by explaining the importance of stories and how everyone has a generational story in their life that completely changes everything. Shaw explained that all through his life, he tried to figure out what his generational story was.

“I was born right after the Kennedy assasination,” said Shaw. “Everyone older than me had a story about the assassination, where they were and who they were with, all that stuff.”

Shaw explains that he always felt deprived, in a weird way. He also felt that people would always force a moment on their generation like when the challenger exploded.

“I remember when the challenger exploded and everybody was like, yes this is everybody’s Kennedy moment,” said Shaw. “But it always felt forced and it always felt like they were trying so hard. Until Sept. 11 happened.”

The viewers were then given a Youtube link to a compiled video of everyone’s story performance that is still up on the Interpreters Theatre’s Youtube page. Everyone was instructed to click the link at the same time so that the audience could all feel like they were in the same room watching this event.

The video showed UNI alums Brian Davis, masters graduate from 2002, Jorge De Leon, masters graduate from 2013 , Jenn Freitag, masters graduate from 2006, Ali Horsted undergraduate from 2010 and Dawne McClure, masters graduate from 2016. All of them were invited by Professor Karen to share their UNI story. The video started with all the performers remarking about how much the Interpreters Theatre means to them and the support they received.

After the video, the audience was brought back to the meeting for a Q&A session where the viewers got to ask the performers some questions. Questions ranged from, “How did the performers come up with the story?” To , “Have their stories changed over the years?” Song writer Jenn Freitag was also asked about how she came up with her ending song and performer Jorge De Leon was asked about his reasons for keeping the audience in the dark for his story.