When Katherine Eid Wild was young, her father would sit at the dining room table and tell her stories about Lebanon, the country he left in the 1970s. It was a place she knew only through his memories, yet one that stirred in her a deep creative longing.
“I only knew Lebanon through those stories,” she said. “But it was a place that held a lot of intrigue for me, a lot of deep connection in a way that I didn’t quite know how to talk about.”
That quiet spark has since grown into Wild’s show, “Miroth: A Night of Ancestral Storytelling,” which is a one-woman performance that blends myth, memory, and ancestral narrative. Wild will bring “Miroth” to Longmont Public Media on June 20. The event runs from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and is hosted by Cosmos Cooperative and Longmont Public Media. The next day, Wild will host a storytelling workshop called The Story of Your Voice in the same space. The performance comes in conjunction with Wild’s international tour, “Wild Storytelling Tour,” which will last until October.
The show centers on Wild’s grandmother and great-grandfather, both shaped by war, displacement, and resilience. But creating it has also helped Wild reclaim her own sense of belonging.
“When I got to Lebanon, I actually laced myself into the story as someone who belonged on this land for the first time,” she said. “Standing in those shoes as a storyteller has helped me find my place in a lineage that at one time was distant and only an idea.”
Wild first documented her family’s story in a film class, returning to Lebanon with her father to trace their roots. They visited the burial site of her great-grandfather, which no longer existed due to his refugee status.
“I recorded, through that documentary, the process of building a memorial where his grave had once been,” she said. The film later screened in both the U.S. and Lebanon.
Wild eventually returned to writing and performing the stories live. “The written story started to live in my body,” she said. “Now I get to lift the words off of the page and tell them from the heart.”
A central thread is her grandmother’s quiet strength in the refugee quarters of Lebanon. “It’s a story about a woman who saw a storm coming that no one else could see,” Wild said. “I believe many women throughout history have held that.”
She also tells the story of her great-grandfather, orphaned as a child, who escaped a war camp by swimming to Lebanon. “It echoes so many stories being lived today — people finding their way as refugees and integrating into cultures not their own.”
Marco V Morelli, co-creator of Cosmos Cooperative, said Wild’s work resonated with his own family history.
“I’m also the son of immigrants,” he said. “My father was from Italy and my mother from El Salvador. What Katherine is doing is helping us reconnect to our roots. Everybody really has these stories if they dig into them.”
Morelli first hosted Wild at a Cosmos event last fall, where her short performance left a deep impression. “People who watched the video told me they were weeping,” he said. “When someone pours their heart into their work, it creates a sense of magic. It shows us what it means to be human.”
As a member of Longmont Public Media, Morelli coordinated the space and a volunteer crew to professionally record the performance. “It’s a really comfortable venue, and it allows us to open the door for her to lead a workshop the next day,” he said.
Wild’s workshop on June 21 is open to anyone looking to reconnect with their creative voice — writers, artists, or anyone who’s struggled to express themselves.
“It’s for anyone who’s ever felt wounded or inhibited in expressing themselves,” she said. “We’ll explore how those wounds can actually be doorways to creative gifts.”
Morelli believes this kind of event offers something rare: “We live in a time that’s really chaotic. With the speed of everything, we can lose a sense of who we really are,” he said. “Katherine’s storytelling weaves a kind of magic spell. She creates a mirror for who we all are. That’s what makes her work so powerful.”
Tickets for both the performance and workshop are available on a sliding scale. “Storytelling is for everyone,” Wild said. “And I hope this reminds people that we’re all living through a big, long story — one that stretches across time — and that we each have a place in it.”
