Stories bring people together in shared humanity. Personal stories can uplift, move and connect. In 2025, Dmae Lo Roberts embarked on a statewide storytelling experience focusing on personal stories from both artists and community members. These stories are a form of living oral histories. The -Ism Storytellers Project was launched as a project of MediaRites with Dmae as the project director. Six storytelling events travelled to Astoria, Eugene, The Dalles and three were held in Portland with the theme of “Courage, Grace and Grit.” Each event featured a different host who curated stories from their immediate communities.

This first in this six-part series of stories focuses on Mixed-Race theater artists and community members. Recorded on July 27, 2025 at the North Portland Library and it was hosted by Dmae who is also mixed race.

You can see two of the storytellers (Victoria Alvarez-Chacon & Quesa D’Mondays/Alec Lugo) in a theatrical storytelling performance on April 26 at 2pm & 6pm at the Fuse Theatre as part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works.

Hosted by Dmae and featuring music by Joe Kye with theme music by Clark Salisbury, in this podcast you’ll hear…

Dmae beginning with her own story: “I heard from the back row of the school bus to the front, all the kids whispering “they’re Chinese.” Like it was a bad thing. And from that day on, we were treated differently.”

Subscribe and listen to Stage & Studio on: Apple and Spotify and hear past shows on the official Stage & Studio website. 

The storytellers in order of their stories are…

Michael Hammerstrom is a biracial, multidisciplinary performing artist and arts administrator raised in Beaverton. He holds a BFA in Musical Theatre and Liberal Arts from The Boston Conservatory and his career has taken him from Boston, NYC, DC and back to Portland in 2019, where he currently serves on the boards of Many Hats Collaboration and Theatre for Young Audiences/USA. He works as a full-time analyst for OPB.

“My biological mother is white. My biological father is Black. But I realized  that’s not how the world saw me. Some people might see me as light-skinned  but Black is going to be my identity and fair or not.”

Margaret Lieder is a biracial Japanese American and non-profit professional who is very grateful transplant to the Pacific NW after a childhood in Alabama.

“I was determined, good Japanese girl. My dad was white, but I identified very much like the little Japanese girl, obedient, good girl. Do everything I could to make my mother happy and I never could.”

Victoria Alvarez-Chacon has worked for Halcyon, Jackalope, Red Theater and Chicago Danz. She relocated to Portland to work with Oregon Adventure Theatre. Favorite roles include Officer BJ Steele from A Piece of My Heart, Bessie Coleman from Before Amelia and Prospero from The Tempest. Recent work includesThe Storyteller at Artist Repertory and Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous at Portland Playhouse.

“My grandma, who has some Native blood in her same valley, Siskiyou once known as the Strawberry Valley. She holds me, comforts me, and she also lets me know that this will be the rest of my life. That I will always be around people who don’t look like me because I’m unique and special.”


Dr. Eleanor Gil-Kashiwabara is a licensed psychologist whose work focuses on addressing service inequities and providing culturally responsive care to clients from underrepresented communities. She provides clinical supervision, training and consultation to mental health, educational, arts and other organizations related to providing services and programming from a trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens. Her own experiences of being in a multiracial and multicultural family inform her personal and professional lens. 

“My daughter had auditioned for a show where the character was Latina, but she phenotypically presents as Asian and people don’t know that she’s also Latina. I’ve always wanted her to identify with all of her backgrounds. She said, mom when I go into an audition room, I don’t even feel like I can claim that as my background because people don’t see me that way.  This sense of belonging or maybe lack of belonging, just feels like really important right now. There is a lot of fear.”

Quesa D’Mondays (aka Alec Lugo)is a Queer, mixed-race actor, singer, designer, and drag artist living in Portland, OR. Alec often performs as their drag persona, Quesa D’Mondays, which combines their eclectic background in theatre with their intersecting identities in new, authentic, and powerful way

“Being mixed and being queer and now being a drag performer has given me this wonderful perspective and understanding that the way that you are born and the person that you are is inevitable, but you get to make choices about how you wanna wear that on your sleeve.”

You can also watch the video of the whole event…

“The -Ism Storytellers Project” is presented with support from the Ronni S. Lacroute Fund through the Oregon Community Foundation and the Portland Arts and Culture Arts Access Fund.This oral history audio program is made possible in part by the Oregon Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the America 250 Oregon Commission.

This is a co-production of MediaRites and Oregon ArtsWatch. Find these stories and more at Oregon ArtsWatch at ORartswatch.org.

MediaRites is an award-winning nonprofit production organization in Portland, OR dedicated to telling the stories of diverse cultures and giving voice to the unheard through the arts, education and media projects. ore info: https://mediarites.org/