Retired Baltimore City Homicide Detective Stephen Tabeling, co-author of the newly published Book of Cop memoir You Can’t Stop Murder, will tell his story 8 p.m. Monday night at Stoop Storytelling at Center Stage.

Six additional storytellers tell their tales
at annual Center Stage event Mon. at 8

SERIES BEGAN AT CREATIVE ALLIANCE
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
Stoop Storytelling premieres its eighth season Monday night at Center Stage with at least one octogenarian on the stoop — former Baltimore City homicide detective and current police consultant Stephen Tabeling, 84, who has been on a month-long local book tour promoting his Book of Cop memoir, You Can’t Stop Murder.

Co-written by WBFF Fox45-TV Investigative Producer Stephen Janis and published by Baltimore True Crime in association with Voice of Baltimore, the book forms the basis for Lieutenant Tabeling’s Center Stage performance.

Along with Janis, former Baltimore City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld 3rd preceded Tabeling as a Stoop Storyteller earlier this year.

Inspired by the telling of stories on Baltimore stoops, Stoop Storytelling began in 2006 at the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown — which is a co-sponsoring partner of the event — and moved to Center Stage in 2008.

Seven storytellers get seven minutes each to tell “true, personal tales” on a shared theme. In addition, three audience members are chosen to share their own impromptu three-minute stories.

The series is an homage to the Porchlight Storytelling Series in San Francisco that was founded in 2002, and features open-mic spoken-word performances by “regular people,” for a total of 10 storytellers at every event.

Porchlight, a Storytelling Series “was an inspiration for our series” in Baltimore, co-founding producer Laura Wexler told Voice of Baltimore in a telephone interview at week’s end.

Former Baltimore Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld was a Stoop Storyteller in March.

“We do roughly eight shows a year at different locations,” she explained, such as Turner Auditorium at the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus, the Columbia Festival of the Arts, University of Maryland College Park, and the Walters Art Museum, in collaboration with the Maryland Humanities Council.

Also included annually is Second Stoop, a bar show at the Windup Space, on North Avenue in the Station North Arts & Entertainment District.

According to Wexler, and co-founder/producer Jessica Henkin, “We usually sell out the house, or close to it.

“The capacity at Center Stage is 540,” Wexler said. As of Friday, over 300 advance-sale tickets had been sold.

On Monday, she said, “We’ve got a great soul band, Bosley, to warm up the crowd for the stories.”

Nearly 500 people have so far told their stories on the Stoop Storytelling stage, Wexler added in an email to VoB.

“And the storytellers [at Monday’s session] will tell tales about everything from haunted houses to unsolved homicides to the search for one’s mother — and the Poe Toaster” (an unofficial nickname given to the mysterious person or persons who, for over seven decades, paid an annual tribute to Edgar Allan Poe by visiting his grave at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground at West Fayette and North Greene Streets, adjacent to the University of Maryland School of Law, in the early morning hours of January 19th, Poe’s birthday).

The Center Stage event is titled, “It’s a mystery: Stories about the unanswered questions that haunt our city, our families, and ourselves.”

The lineup of performers and future mainstage shows may be found  by clicking here.

Storytellers in addition to Detective Tabeling — whose biography is included in previous VoB entries  (click here) — include Sujata Massey, former Baltimore Evening Sun reporter and author of 11 mystery and historical fiction novels; Maranda Kosten, actress, director, teacher and marketing executive; Catharine Robertson, information architect, producer, director and performer; Bruce Goldfarb, writer/editor of WelcomeToBaltimoreHon.com; Caroline Tufts, a forensic nurse at Mercy Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Hospital; and Susan Claiborne Mathews, a former teacher, torch singer and dancer who owns a rhinestone-studded Harley.

WBFF Fox45-TV’s Investigative Producer Stephen Janis told the story of serial murder at Stoop Storytelling last spring.

It’s a “long story,” she said.
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
To order Stoop Storytelling tickets  click here.

The show begins at 8 p.m. Monday; cocktails and live music from Bosley starts at 7. Advance tickets are recommended.

Laura Wexler is an author and senior editor at Style Magazine who teaches creative writing at Goucher College and Johns Hopkins University. Jessica Henkin is a special education liaison with the Baltimore City Public School System’s Early Learning Programs.

Listen to Lieutenant Tabeling’s co-author Stephen Janis’s Stoop Storytelling story (No. 87) at a previous mainstage event in March — plus 299 other storytellers — by clicking here.