Specialty: Intellectual Storytelling & Fringe Pieces
http://www.storytelling.org/niemi/
Loren Niemi is an innovative storyteller of philosophically and emotionally complex stories with a 37-year history of performing for audiences of all ages in a wide variety of urban and rural settings. Stories that matter manifest in all manner of forms have been the lifelong focus of his work. He has been the ringmaster of a traveling circus, the Humanities Scholar in Residence for Northern Minnesota and since 1995 has performed or directed shows in 22 Fringe Festivals in the USA and Canada. For 25 years (1983-2008), he was 1/3 of the iconic performance art trio, BAD JAZZ, with storyteller Kevin Kling and multi-media artist, Michael Sommers, providing good stories, odd music, and very bad tap dancing. Loren is the author of the award winning “The New Book of Plots” on potent narrative forms for use by storytellers and writers, and co-author with Elizabeth Ellis of the critically acclaimed “Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories” on the value and necessity of stories that are hard to hear and harder to tell. He is also a published poet. He teaches Storytelling in the Theater program at Metro State University as well as Storytelling in organizational culture, mission and brand for the University of St. Thomas Executive and Nonprofit Leadership Institutes. He is also the producer of the award winning Two Chairs Telling (a monthly spoken word) series at the Bryant Lake Bowl Cabaret in Minneapolis.