High School Senior in Tellin' Tales Theatre's Hands Up! Faith

"Maybe each of us creates our idea of God in our image, using ourselves to understand God, and using God to understand ourselves," said 17-year-old Lee Buell of Skokie. They are one of 10 performers in Tellin' Tales Theatre presents: Hands Up! Faith which runs Virtually on Vimeo March 18-27. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased through the Tellin' Tales website www.tellintales.org.

Hands Up! Faith tackles the sometimes fiery disagreements around faith through personal stories by a diverse group of performers of different ages, experiences and sexual orientation. Each explore their identity as it relates to religion, relationships, and faith in these individual narratives. The players come from the city of Chicago, the suburbs and from a small Illinois town on the Mississippi River.

Lee Buell is a senior at Niles North High School. They have worked with Tellin Tales for about seven years, and have done writing, performing, crew, assistant directing, visual directing, and ambassadors work with the organization. After a wonderful experience with Hands Up! Gender last year, Buell was very excited to be a part of Hands Up! Faith and can't wait to see how Tellin' Tales continues to evolve.

“Hands Up presentations were developed by Tellin’ Tales Theatre in the last few years to provide adults from a diversity of backgrounds, with and without disabilities, a forum to explore controversial issues through writing, development, and performance of their personal stories,” explained Tellin’ Tales program director Stephen Donart. “Our goal is to reverse the lens through which controversial issues are too often viewed. By highlighting our core, shared humanity, we are better able to understand the beliefs, positions, and circumstances of those with whom we may not agree, or whom we view as ‘other.’

This year, Tellin' Tales Theatre is celebrating its 25th Anniversary. The mission of Tellin' Tales Theatre is to shatter barriers between the disabled and non-disabled worlds through the transformative power of sharing personal narratives. To see the complete list of Tellin' Tales productions for 2022, visit www.tellintales.org.