Solo Performance to Change the World

Finding a Director/Coach

2012-01-25T15:29:00.000-08:00

OK..right off the top. Full disclosure. I am a director/coach who specializes in solo shows. Yes, I know you know. I just want to put out there that this could just be interpreted as a self promoting discourse so you hire me. Well, maybe that IS partially true. Yes, I am being glib. But here's the deal. You must not do a solo performance without a director.

It takes many people to create an excellent one person show. Almost all the greats develop their material closely with a collaborator/partner/coach (I am thinking Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Mike Daisey...all directed by their partners/wives)

Solo performances are the most likely of ANY forms of theater, in my opinion to fail. That's right, I said it. Why? Because of the self indulgence problem. Because one works in too small a container and one is generally too attached to the story. Because one believes that a story, their story is enough to be art. Because they love their own story.

Please do not, do not, do not fall into this trap. A good story must transcend the storyteller. A story must find the the pathos, the Universality, the belly laughs, the irony, the perspective, the Silver Lining, the loopy characters, the mystery, the poignancy, the connection to the bigger world.

So, who are you searching for when you are on your quest for a director? Traditional theater director? Someone with a back-ground in improvisation? A writer? Another solo performer?

There really is no formula. However, there are things to look for in a person you are considering working with.

#1. Have a conversation with the person. Do you like her energy? Is she a good listener? Most importantly, does she ash you interesting, provocative questions about your story/vision? Do you leave the conversation more inspired? If you do, that is a very good thing.

#2 Talk to other actors he/she has worked with before.

#3 Does she have a script or video of her own work as a solo artist or of another script she has worked on?

It's important that she resonate with your vision. This is about chemistry and synergy and it is an un-predicatable quality. Like a new lover or friend, you need to feel that there is a creative connection between you. I would say avoid anyone who seems rigid, domineering, or controlling. Ultimately, this is your show and it is important that you are working with someone who is there to support you. In other words, avoid big egos.

Some coaches/directors whose work I recommend (besides my own of course) are (in NYC: Cheryl King at Stage Left Studios, Jo Bonney, Jean Michele Gregory, Theresa Giambacorrta)

Remember that unlike a conventional director, you are actually writing and developing a script with someone. This is a much more complex process and in my experience, it is super important that your director both has a good sense as a writer/editor and of compelling storytelling/acting.

It's a big job and the right person can make or break your show. In the end, make sure that they have your back. Then you are safe to go onstage and really SHINE!

Your First Show...Where do I begin?

2012-01-21T14:46:00.001-08:00

I get a lot of phone calls from people who want to do their first show. Very frequently, people tell me "I've wanted to do a show for (ever!) 5 years or 10 years or for as long as I can remember but I have never known where to begin."

Before I did "Honeymoon in India" (Top 10 Shows of the Year, 1995, Santa Fe Reporter) I carried that longing with me for eleven years. From the time I saw my first show, that longing was intense. But, it is such an undertaking. And generally one's first solo show (unless one is already a t.v. star and someone else will do the producing/promoting for you) involves writing, performing and producing/promoting. This can all be overwhelming and daunting.

So where do you begin. Just to get the energy really moving. Well, to begin with I think that on a creative level, writing, writing and more writing is a great place to begin. When I got on that journey toward my first show, I had almost no comfort level as a writer. Especially writing for the stage. I began working with 2 books that shifted the course of my life. One was "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg. The other was "The Artists Way" by Julia Cameron. This was 21 years ago and I had just moved to New Mexico. Both of these writers live in Santa Fe, but their work scopes way beyond "local" into the Universal. Basically, Julia gave me permission to claim myself as an artist and Natalie taught me how to write in a way that was true and authentic to me. In a way, her work offered me my "Voice"

This is essential when working on a show and it must be uncovered/discovered either before the process or during it to have something that is worthy of being put up onstage. Every artist who is creating original material that involves writing, must come to know and rely upon the voice that is uniquely their own.

Then I would suggest seeing/reading as many solo shows as possible. There are certain structures that "work", certain rules that "work"....just like in any other art form. And one can only be free to break the rules once one knows what works. Specificity works in my experience, both in the writing and performing of a piece. Will you incorporate characters in your show to bring the piece alive? How do you become embodied in the work? What is your point of view overall for the piece. Also, a show must have movement, just like dance or a piece of music to take the audience on a journey. What journey are you taking them on? Is it internal, external or both? What is the moment of reckoning? Is there a transformational element in the individual characters or the overall story.

Once you become comfortable in your voice, these are the kinds of questions you can begin to pose for yourself in your first draft.

After this you will need a coach/director and to put together a production plan. As I am heading out for the evening and I don't want to overwhelm you, I will cover these issues in my next post or two.

In the meantime, write, write, write. On paper, on the computer or by playing around on a tape recorder. But getting the stories out, is the place to begin.

Mike Daisey, the clear heir of Spalding Gray...Changing the World with his Solo Show

2012-01-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

There is a reason that Mike Daisey has been called heir apparent to the late, great Spalding Gray. He sits at a desk and shares engaging,funny stories of life and the human condition. He has a strong and compelling voice. Both men's voices are/ were unique, ironic and specific. Both came from New England and are/were very smart. Spalding, a Gemini and Mike, an Aquarius are both air signs. O.K, dis-regard the last comment. I've just lived in Santa Fe too long.

I think that both men changed the world in very unique ways through their artistry. For me, Spalding gave many of us permission, through his modeling, to speak intimately onstage of our lives. This was way before The Moth, and monologue slams and Fringe Festivals. He was really a revolutionary, sharing the details of his life in a way that was "speaking the unspeakable" especially for the culture at the time. This was the Reagan 80's after all and authenticity was not the word of the day. In the society at large or in art. But it was always Spalding's way.

He was also a deeply troubled man. Wounded and neurotic. His shows all were about him, his life, his process. He foreshadowed his death and talked about his suicidal ideations. He struggled with addiction and deep pain from his mother's suicide. In the end, he took his own life on a frigid New York day eight years ago now.

It was a horrible day. He left a legacy in his two sons and of course, in the shows. He also left a different kind of legacy in the theater. He created, almost single handedly, a new kind of storytelling. A breaking of taboos onstage. Not shock value taboos like performance artist Karen Finley who appeared onstage naked around the same time, portraying Eva Braun or having the audience examine her clitoris with a magnifying glass. Or Holly...oh what was her last name? "Dress Suits for Hire" woman. East Village. Challenging Gender stereotypes with feminist theater.

I always found Spalding's work much more intimate. His intimacy came from a deep revelation of emotional truth that ran deeper than the mind. It was edgy, yet warm, something lacking in some of the other solo shows coming forward at that time. He is a legend for a reason.

Mike Daisey is very much his own man and performer, yet building on that legend and this art form. Mike's new show about the horrible conditions in factories that make Apple products in China is taking the form to a higher level. Like Spalding before him, Mike presents as warm, funny and razor smart. He also shares some neurosis pretty freely onstage. But, unlike Spalding, Mike's focus is not just on himself. This is the last in a string of shows including "The Last Cargo Cult" where he uses his art to bring attention to an injustice. In "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" he calls out one of the most popular and successful corporations in the world. He had his opening at The Public Theater right as the man himself was dying. While most of the world was offering Steve Jobs sainthood, Mike was telling stories of the Apple factories in China that he visited in disguise and the appalling conditions that he found. Mike has been getting a lot of well deserved attention for this show and now, the issues he brought up are being highlighted in the news almost daily.

This is an act of courage and inspiration and this is how Solo Performance at it's best really can change the world. I love how Mike is taking huge issues and making them very accessible and intimate through his gift of embodied storytelling as a monologue. Both these men are inspirations to me and assist me in deepening my understanding of the tru invitation of this work.

FYI: You can listen to a good chunk of "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" on This American Life.

The "Business" of Acting and Finding YOUR own way..

2012-01-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

This week-end my fourteen year old daughter Chloe was in NYC for a teen Broadway Intensive workshop. There were days scheduled with casting directors, acting teachers, vocal coaches, dance instructors and even a Master Class with some of the Broadway cast of "STOMP"She attended with her best friend since kindergarten, who is a singer.

Both girls study at the New Mexico School for the Arts high school. Chloe in acting and Sam in singing. NYC was different. Chloe reported experiences with cutthroat stage mothers, casting directors who were mostly concerned about "type" over originality and that intense vibe that one only gets to experience in NYC studios.

The experience was good for Chloe. She has more information on which to base her choices of what kind of actor she wants to be, what kind of path she wants to forge. And the various costs of various paths...Because we all pay in one way or another for our choices.

Her whole experience made me reflect on my own training, my own dreams of youth and how some of them played and some of them did not. And how some of them changed.

When I saw Meryl Streep in the t.v movie "The Holocaust" when I too was 14, I decided that I wanted to be an actor. Her performance rocked me to the core of my humanity. I asked my mother to sign me up for acting lessons in the DC suburbs which she did.

My first teachers were wonderful. I felt "seen" and "whole" for the first time in my life as I embarked upon the deep emotional journey of an actor. I thrived playing in the deep end of the ocean and my happiest times were spent in rehearsals for shows in a darkened theater. I instantly loved Shakespeare, Albee, Williams, O'Neal..I was cast in show after show and attended a summer camp for the Arts during high school at Goucher Collge where I studied with a truly amazing teacher, Pat Vitalglian.

My experiences in college was mixed in terms of teachers. I had a great one, Matthew Vakey at Carnegie Mellon and another great, Ron Jenkins at Emerson. Both continued to instill my love of the art. Both were deeply supportive in terms of developing my craft.

But the ugly shadow of competitive, one size fits all acting had also begun to creep in. At Carnegie Mellon, I had a female teacher who "went after" all the Freshman and Sophmore girls who were vulnerable in any way. She told one girl, Diana that she couldn't stand the sight of her and to get out of her classroom until she lost some weight. She told another girl that she would never work because of the size of her nose.

And one day, she pulled me aside and said that I was too unattractive to be an ingenue and too pretty to be a character actor. And so that at 18, I might as well give up on a career now. Because there was not a "place" for me. And I did give up for a while. Her words penetrated my deepest fears and deepest wounds. I began to get suicidally depressed. By summer I decided that I wasn't going back to school the next year. I went to NYC for a year and began to study with the late, great Bill Hickey at HB Studios. Bill confided at me that he would never teach at any of "the League' drama schools because they were all this way when I told him the story. I got into an abusive relationship to validate my worth and attractiveness.

I was running my life based on the thought that I was not good enough to have my dream even though I knew that I was talented as an actor. The "business" of acting already felt brutal to me and I had barely begun.

Then I decided to go back to school in Boston.And I met Spalding Gray...a man who was creating his shows and touring with them. A man who had stepped entirely out of the system. From the moment I walked out of the theater after seeing him, I knew what my new dream was. To create and perform solo shows. In time the dream also included helping others create.

Deb Margolin, an early and well known solo performer who also teaches at Yale called solo performance "Outsiders Theater'. I agree with her wholeheartedly. No matter how the culture sees us, those of us who are drawn to solo theater, in some way, identify as outsiders.

I do not know what my daughter's path will be. An insiders path or an outsiders. Or an in-between. As artists, we all find our own way. And pain and failures along the journey can even lead to our deeper calling. That is what happened with me.

I met some amazing people and just kept following an inner voice over an outer voice. Isn't that what outsiders are here to do?

You can have your art. You can have your career. Do it the way you want to.

Article Published in Backstage on Solo Shows

2011-12-29T15:33:00.000-08:00

This is an article I had published on solo shows in Backstage Magazine a few years ago!

One Person Show Article/ Backstage Mag.

This article was published in "Backstage" lastspring....by moi!

How You Can Express Essence through Writing and Performing a One Person Show

By: Tanya Taylor Rubinstein

Every actor has a secret dream……as do many non-actors who have creative souls. The secret dream is to write and perform a one person show.

Why do so many creative people have this dream yet relatively few act upon it? Perhaps because they are asking themselves these questions:

How can I get started? How can I bring out the most essential stories and characters that I want to express in an interesting and theatrical way? How will I find the courage to break the fourth wall and speak to the audience intimately and authentically? I’m not a writer; how can I turn my life stories into a viable script? I’m not a producer; how will I get people in the seats to see my show?

These are the questions that I have been exploring for the past 25 years. Trained as an actor at Carnegie Mellon University,Emerson College and HB Studios in NYC, I have devoted my professional life to the inner and outer aspects of one person shows and monologues. I have explored them from every possible angle; as an actor, director, producer, and facilitator for other performers. I have been involved in a primary role (performer, director, producer and facilitator) in over sixty solo and monologue shows in theaters in NYC, L.A., San Diego, Dallas, and Santa Fe, N.M. where I reside)

When I was a nineteen years old acting student in Boston, my professor took out class to see the famed monologist, Spalding Gray at the Brattle Street Playhouse in Cambridge. That night, Spalding performed one of his earlier works, “Travels Through New England.” He sat behind a desk and told us a story from his life. He was honest and forthright. To this day, it makes me laugh to think of him sharing his experience of masturbating at Walden Pond so that he could feel closer to the spirit of Thoreau!

At nineteen, after studying for five years to becoming a classical stage actor, it was a revelation. The raw intimacy and truth telling that I had been craving my whole life, was freely offered in his show. I left the theater thinking “you can get away with this on stage?”…..even perhaps “I can get away with this on stage?” “ I can claim, as an actor, my full voice, my passions, my stories…….my life?”

India

” which was named in the “Top 10 Shows of the Year in the Santa Fe Reporter”, I never looked back. The experience was so much bigger than anything I had experienced as an actor before. I was able to offer my audience an original show that I was passionate about from my core. I have gone on to write and perform many shows as well as facilitate hundreds of others in the process I have developed.

In the beginning it was quite a bumpy ride. That’s why it took me eleven years from the night the seed of solo performance was planted in me to the opening night of my first original show. Like every first time solo performer who I’ve worked with, I didn’t know

how to begin.

How does a non-playwright create a script? Will anyone care about my story? How

can I make it intensely personal without falling into the trap of self-indulgence?

How can I integrate characters that were part of my story into the script? How can I show up with full presence in my show? Where is the transformational arc in my script that will take my audience on a meaningful journey?

Through trial and error, I learned, through my direct experience, the components of a life-changing show for both performer and audience. In this book, the first half will reveal all of my discoveries from the last thirteen years in the process of creating a one person show….step by step.

In my experience, one has to discover what one most essentially wants to say before one can create the one person show of their dreams. I have learned to guide people through creative exercises designed to jump start and unblock their flow, move them through the obstacle of overwhelm that comes up when creating a solo script, address questions of topics, themes and break down the five basic artistic structures that the most well known performers utilize. Anna Deveare Smith, Sarah Jones, Eve Ensler, Danny Hoch, Chazz Palmeteri, Spalding Gray and others have all used these basic forms as “containers” for their stories and characters.

There are also performance qualities necessary for delivery and presentation. Some of these include authenticity, breaking the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience, making deep connection with oneself and the audience and the balance of drama and humor.

The Theater of Presence:

Solo performance has the possibility of bringing healing and transformation to the world in a way no other form of theater has can offer.

By revealing our deepest self as both writer and performer onstage, we take off the mask of ego and instead have the possibility of leading both ourselves and our audiences into an experience of timeless Soul. Ironically, when we reveal our most authentic stories, obstacles and transformations we have the possibility of moving beyond the story, into the realm of the sacred. In our courageous act of revealing the truth of ourselves, our lives and our world, we open the door to the experience of the Universal. The audience responds in kind.

Unlike traditional theater, we become the actor in our own story. Even if we include characters in our shows, they are based on people from our own experience. We drop the artifice and let go the perceived safety of the fourth wall. In other words, we have no place to hide. This can be both a terrifying and exhilarating experience for the actor. It can lead him or her past fears of deep connection and offer the audience more than a brilliant theater experience. In it’s purest incarnation, it can lead the audience member into a deeper experience of his or her own Self. By speaking the unspeakable, claiming our own voice, standing in our vulnerability, and by being willing to be completely seen, we break convention and are led deeply into the mystery of who we really are.

At it’s heart, solo performance is about awakening fully to one’s essence or soul.

Solo Performance, is the new paradigm of theater. As our culture has offered more and more artificial forms of “entertainment” the craving for this level of truth and connection is greater than ever. Our world is shifting radically. Old systems are crumbling in every sector of our society. Giant corporations are going bankrupt. Socially and environmentally sustainable businesses are growing. Farmers markets and eating local and organic has moved beyond the “fringe” into the mainstream. “Fringe festivals” on the margin of theater society used to be one of the few places to see solo performance. Now, Julia Sweeney and John Leguizamo have had HBO specials. If you pick up the New Yorker any given week, it may have twenty or thirty solo shows listed. This is for both economic reasons and artistic/spiritual reasons. We know that we are in a time paradigm shifting on every level of society. Solo performance is the emerging theater for our new world. It’s time is happening now and many, many people have the desire to create their own shows and need a guide. Both performers and audiences want to see transformational theater that breaks through old structures and limitations yet is still accessible and engaging (unlike the radical or avante garde). This book is the ultimate guide to creating high quality and transformational one person shows. It will support the trend that is already happening and take it to a new level. This book has the possibility of being the definitive guide to solo performance at this amazing time in our ever expanding collective consciousness.

I have yet to perform or produce a solo show that does not lead the audience to a standing ovation. My audiences stay for up to an hour after the productions because they feel so moved by what they have seen that they want to stay and connect with the monologist personally. I have seen people laugh and cry in recognition. When a solo performer steps out onstage, trusting that their own presence is enough, they have stepped onto the stage of the soul. They are walking through their very own Hero’s journey. The show becomes a metaphor for their life and the audiences recognize this energetically. And so they are carried along on the journey with them, all the while finding themselves in the mirroring process that is always present when people connect in a group with their deep humanity.

The Genius of Spalding Gray

2011-12-27T22:13:00.000-08:00

The Genius of Spalding Gray

Brattleborough Theater, Cambridge, Ma. 1985

Spalding was completly riviting that evening. His autobiographical monologue entitled "Travels Throgh New England" was so intimate. He shared stories from his life about his mothers suicide and her odd Christian Scientist ways. He spoke of going to Walden Pond and of masturbating there to feel closer to Thoreau! He was outrageous, he was funny and above all he was real. The character he was choosing to portray was himself. His script came from his life.

After the show he sat on the edge of the stage and had a beer and answered some questions and comments from our acting class. He was friends with our professor, Ron Jenkins. This was all before 'Swimming to Cambodia"..at least 6 or 7 years before he started to become famous. I don't remember saying anything to him except "thank-you" but I left the theater that night and knew that the course of my life had been altered. I didn't know how and when I was going to get there but I knew that what he was offering was a path that I too would follow.

I had been craving this simplicity of expression without even knowing it. The combination of authentic and brilliant writing based on his direct experiences delivered to a live audience blew my mind. I understood immiediatly ad intuitivly the enormous possibilities for performers and audience members alike.

As a teacher of solo performance and solo performer myself I have come to understand many of the componants of solo performances that inspire an audience and those that don't. One of Spalding's great talents was his ability to completly embody his material. He made every word a visceral experience for himself and his audience. One of the amazing things about this was that he never moved. He sat at his desk in every performance I ever saw (except in one brief moment when he danced across the stage with a boom box in Morning, Noon and Night- what a joy!!!) and yet he filled the theater with his presence.

For me, the undertaking of a solo show is about 90% about presence. Yes, the story is important. The writing is very important. But what makes it or breaks it for me is the performers presence. Are they willing to take us beyond a "reading of a work" into a "feeling of their work"? Are they willing to show up with every emotion available to them and every cell in their body willing to re-experience the events they are sharing about?If they are, they can take their audience on a journey like no other.

At it's best solo performance connects us so deeply with one individual and their humanity that it connects the audience with themselves and their own deepest humanity. It takes a bedrock of courage to expose so much;not just in the writing of our stories, but in the embodiment of them for the audeince.

Spalding had the knack.

Your Unique Point of View in Solo Shows

2011-12-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

As much as we would like for it to be, creating a solo show is not a linear process. Sure, it would be nice to just sit down and write a kick ass script in a week-end, then go into production.

My first show essentially took me eleven years to write. The second show took 6 weeks. The third show took about a months

O.K....Let's go back to the first show. First, I wrote a pretty bad 5 woman show. I didn't know what I was doing, but basically just copied the structure of "For Colored Girls...who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf"...And tried to fill it in with white girl stories, white girl from a suburban home stories, umm...white girl from a suburban, dysfunctional home stories...In other words. UGGGH.

"For Colored Girls...." is a brilliant show, and back when I was 26, I was lamenting the fact that I wasn't black, or ethnic of some kind, or "interesting"

I actually was interesting, but I didn't know it yet.

Very few events are very unique, or original. There is very little new ground to break in terms of stories, adventures, home life etc....We have all heard a million alcoholic home stories, adoption stories, love stories, abuse of all kinds stories etc..

If you are out to break another taboo in our culture, good luck with that. I think between Oprah and Jerry Springer, that has all been covered.

But do not despair! What you have, that is unique to you is known as "point of view"...It is your unique, quirky, funny, absurd, poignant, authentic lens. It is the way you see and hear and interpret the world. It is the way you bring your characters to life, it is how you choose to focus your story.

For lack of a better cliche, it is YOUR VOICE...

This is what one needs in a solo show. Your voice, your way of seeing, feeling, coping and enduring. Your way of gleaning, extracting and transforming. Your way of separating the what from the chafe.

Not everybody will like or appreciate your point of view. If you get mixed reviews, you are doing your job. Think of some of the most successful solo performers of our time:

Spalding Gray...those of us who loved his shows might say: brilliantly neurotic, funny, absurd and more. His detractors might say: self-indulgant and annoyingly neurotic.

Margaret Cho: outrageous, brilliant, raunchy and fearless OR disgusting, crude, crass, nasty

David Sedaris: sharp, cutting, clever and poignant OR mean-spirited, whiny, petty.

See...it doesn't matter. Nothing will kill your show more than BORING your audience. How do you avoid this? Take a Point of View and go for it! All the strongest performers exhibit confidence and are behind themselves and have a point of view on their material. At it's best we get to experience another's adventures through their lens for an hour or so.

And like it or not, you will have a strong place from which to work...

2011-12-23T10:11:00.000-08:00

Next month I am bringing Lauren Weedman to Santa Fe. Lauren Weedman is pretty much the Holy Grail of solo performers in my opinion. I am not sure if she claims this title, but when I saw her tape of BUST (check it out online) I knew that I was in the (virtual) presence of a master of this genre.

And, I work with, produce, direct, teach and see hundreds of solo shows a year. So, when I say this, I am saying something.

She is hilarious and transcendent and her point of view is sharp, dark, absurd and deeply compassionate. Not an easy combination to pull off. Only a most brilliant mind and embodied actor can offer such an enormous range. She just got a rave in the Washington Post. She deserves it.

She is humble enough to come to our little town of Santa Fe and offer her amazing talent for not much of a financial guarantee. That is because I produce these amazing shows on a shoestring. This is a mom and pop solo show operation. As in, her husband will be running the lights and my child will be babysitting her child. And I will be picking them up from the airport. Glamorous life...this one of live theater, huh?

And yet, when one hits the ball all around the park with performers like Lauren Weedman, Ann Marie Houghtailing, Ann Randolph all of whom I have presented or am presenting this year...the experience is like not other for me. It is a moment of shining glory, shining humanity actually.

This past year, I presented Doug Vincent at the first Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival. Doug had been working on the script for his show for several years when he got in touch with me a few years ago. He and I slowly worked on it together for a few more years. He presented it at this years festival. The show, which was called "Dad" and was brilliant, poignant and hilarious. It was about his Dad's suicide when he was a freshman in college, him coming to terms with it, and the birth of his own daughter. Doug was tender, warm, funny as hell and outrageous. As I watched him simultaneously claim the story, release it, and transform it...walking it out like a shaman in front of the tribe of audience, I could not stop crying.

The best solo shows will do that to you. You will not be able to stop crying, or laughing, or both simultaneously, or getting goosebumps. Solo performance is not meant as an intellectual exercise; leave that for the ministers and politicians. It is not meant to be self indulgent though many inexperienced solo performers can fall into that trap. One has to walk through a mine field of the Self to find the gold. But when mined, it is the most brilliant gold on the planet.

This is why I do the work I do. This is why I keep exploring it, teaching it and offering it. It has given me some of the richest moments of my life....Happy Holidays Friends!

New Year's resolution...get with your creativity!

2011-12-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

I like the end of the year. For me it is a time of "putting to bed" certain projects. I've had a lot of shows go up in the last 4 months( directing and producing) that I have been in different stages of process with.

As artists, it is a good time to shake things up and decide what we want to create in the New Year. So much of my devotion has been to supporting others in their solo journey in the last ten years, that I have somewhat neglected my own. This year, my intention is to get a show up that I have written (and re-written) over the last 3 years. It is called "Scorpio Rising; the Journey Erotic"...It's funny... About 18 months ago, I attempted to get the show up. I had a director and a composer on board with the project. Both bailed on me for various reasons that I believe had to do with fear. Their fear. My fear. Of being so "out there" with myself, my sexuality, my spiritual journey and intimate relationships. I know that in this piece, I am attempting to "get" at raw truth and transparency in a way that is rarely offered without objectification and sensationalism in our culture.

Santa Fe is a small town. I cannot tell you how different it is to get a really intimate and risky piece up in a small town than in a bigger city. For all it's mystique, Santa Fe is essentially a small Catholic town in the desert. With pockets of new age-y visual artists and outlying communities of Native Americans who have built casinos in the middle of nowhere. This is an "arts" town, but not a theater town. Make no mistake. It is not there yet, though a few of us keep plugging away, attempting to make a real impact. My personal intention is to make Santa Fe a major solo performance destination....And, I'm only 47! :)

Sometimes I think, "I need a ME" here in Santa Fe...to hold deep space for me without flinching. That is mostly what I do for other solo performers... I am willing to take the journey all the way into the deep. The underworld does not frighten me. Consequences of truth do not frighten me. Characters who play in the "shadow" do not frighten me. I invite all parts of the Self to arrive in the studio with us..The more open one is to explore strange corners, weird voices and seemingly impossible stories, the more we have to work with for a show. Speaking the "unspeakable" is the artists job after all.

Denial of our full selves, being put in a category or box...now that frightens me. Being complacent in the face of abuse..now that frightens me...living around narcissists who always have to look good and never expose their vulnerabilities...all terrifying.

The long and the short of this is that even though I don't have a "Tanya" here in Santa Fe to help me get this show up this year, I am finding a way to do it. I may have to travel elsewhere, the way people travel to me often to get their shows up.

I cannot do it alone. May 2012 be a breakthrough year for us all...This show is my gift to myself this coming year....

Solo Performance Offerings in 2012

2011-12-18T15:42:00.000-08:00

Hi All....

I have just worked out my schedule for 2012.

I am offering classes and workshops in Santa Fe and Albuquerque in 2012. Also, I will be accepting submissions for the Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival.

There is a StoryHealers Therapeutic Monologue Training beginning in April for those who want to professionally facilitate this process for healing in their communities.

Lastly, for solo performers from everywhere: If you can get yourself out to Santa Fe, New Mexico for 4 days with me, you will have a stage worthy script ready to go into production at theaters, Fringe Festivals and conferences. I have worked with hundreds of actors and writers who have gone on to do shows all over the world!

Here are some more details for the upcoming year...Love, Tanya

January, 2012 "Solo Performance Intensive" a 3day weekend INTENSIVE inAlbuquerque, N.M. for writing and performing a 10 minute original monologue.

Details: Tanya Taylor Rubinstein,Artistic Director, Project Life Stories and The Santa Fe Solo PerformanceFestival will be partnering up with The Filling Station Theater to offer anintensive for actors and other creative people to explore the writing andperforming of original monologues. Participants in the workshop will be givenconsideration for The Filling Station’s 2012 SoloFest and the 2012 Santa FeSolo Performance Festival in terms

Dates: January 27( 6:00-8:30), 28 (10:00-4:00)and 29 10:00-4:00 and 8:00-9:30 p.m.)

Place: The Filling Station

Cost: $295 (includes performance)

Class limited to ten. Receive a 10%discount for signing by December 30,2011

 "Tanyacombines an impressive range of proficient theater skills with the deepesthumanity for your personal story. With easy going grace Tanya gets it, andhelps you fully embody your truth so that ultimately- the audience getsit." - DougVincent, playwright and performer of "Dad"

E-mail Tanya@ProjectLifeStories.org for information and registration

January, 2012 "Create Your One Person Show" 4-6 MonthProcess with New Mexico Students. Shows from this process will be underfirst consideration for the September, 2012 Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival.

This one on one process with TanyaTaylor Rubinstein is intended as an exploration of stories, characters andthemes through improvisation and guided writing. The process is designed forthe performer to create an embodied script ready to go into production.

A quote from one of Tanya’s SoloPerformance Bootcamp clients:

“Afterresearching various workshop options around the country, I decided that a oneon one intensive program was the right platform for me to complete my one womanshow. I was interested in creating a high quality product. The creative processis extremely personal and writing your own story to present to the world is aneven more complicated business. If you make the decision that you want to putyour story in a form that can be successfully delivered to an audience, thenTanya Taylor Rubinstein is who you should be working with. Tanya is supportiveand creates a safe environment for an artist to express and shape their work,but more importantly she is a highly competent with form and structure andstory telling, to ensure that your work is represented in the highest and bestlight. Tanya provides guidance around shaping, editing, crafting and deliveringyour work so you are supported throughout the entire process. I highlyrecommend Tanya if you are serious about creating a one person show. What everis standing in your way can easily be overcome with the Tanya's guidance andtalent. Even good writers require the trained eye of an expert. Tanya'sexpertise will help you move from idea to reality. I did Tanya's bootcamp inMarch of 2011 and in September of 2011 I performed my one woman show RenegadePrincess and it's the best gift I've given myself in a decade.”- Ann MarieHoughtailing

Solo Performance Bootcamps: 4 Day Oneon One Intensive for out of state actors and writers who want to create ascript for performance at a theater, conference and/or festival. SoloPerformance Bootcamp clients will also be under first consideration for theSanta Fe Solo Performance Festival.

Note: Create Your One Person Show AND Solo Performance Bootcampsare scheduled individually. Cost of each process which included aprox. 24 hoursone on one “in person” time with Tanya plus up to 10 hours online/phone followup time is $2,600 all inclusive.

April 2012, “StoryHealersFacilitation Program” 3 weeks; April, June and July

Description

Professional Training to become a Therapeutic Monologue Facilitator/StoryHealer

The Invitation:

After eleven years creating and working in a wholly original, therapeutic/artistic process, Tanya Taylor Rubinstein will be, for the second time, offering a training (4 weeks, M-Fr., in 2011-2012) in Santa Fe, New Mexico for ten people to become Professional Therapeutic Monologue Facilitators. The three weeks will cover all aspects of supporting others in writing and performing their original monologues This is experienced in a group modality in a way that supports integration and healing of trauma, loss, change or illness.

Week One: Participants will be taken through the process they will eventually offer to others. You will write and perform an original monologue in a workshop setting and offer it to a live audience in a theater. As a group, we will deconstruct the process as a first step in learning how to lead a group and produce shows.

Week Two In the second week we will cover sacred space, holding the container, how to deal meet trauma in this modality, improvisational listening and feedback, focus and surrender, your role in healing, dealing with conflict, role playing , direction and production basics/ We also cover business and non profit financial models to support the process in your community.

Week 3: For you last week you will come to New Mexico and co-facilitate and co-direct a Therapeutic Monologue Performance with a group of 6-8 participants. Every aspect of the process will be supervised by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein and you will have daily discussions with her about the experience. By the time this week is over, you will have been offered all the skills necessary to run a successful therapeutic monologue business/non-profit in your neck of the woods.

Dates will be weeks in April, June and July 2012…When we have the ten participants signed up, we will choose weeks that best work with schedules.

Package Price $3,500

Training Groups limited to 10 people

Follow Up for Year Long Participants: You will have support after the training by being added as a facilitator in good standing on the Project Life Stories website, you will have access to monthly phone sessions with Tanya and be able to e-mail any questions related to the process for the first year to her. Additionally, we are setting up a closed part of the website for message/discussion boards for the facilitators who have taken the year long training to share their ongoing experiences with each other.

Tanya Taylor is the originator of the Therapeutic Monologue Process ™ She studied acting professionally at Carnegie Mellon University, Emerson College and HB Studios in NY. Spalding Gray was an inspiration and mentor and she began performing her own monologue shows in 1995. Since then she has worked with people all over the world to heal trauma and to address the psycho/spiritual effects of life challenging illness and/or loss. When she was at her lowest point in her own life after losing her husband to a schizophrenic break with a small child to support, she prayed and asked to be shown her life’s work and purpose. That night she had a dream and saw the words “The Cancer Monologues” floating over Lincoln Center in NYC. She knew that she was being guided to utilize her training as a solo performer, writer and facilitator to offer workshops to people as a healing experience. From humble beginning in Santa Fe, “The Cancer Monologues” became a phenomenon and shows and workshops were performed with local participants in NYC, LA, San Diego, Boston, Dallas and more. A collection of monologues from the performances was published by MacAdam Cage and her book was featured in over fifty publications including “O” Magazine and on the CBS Early Show.

After working with over one hundred people who had experienced cancer through the writing and performing of their stories, Tanya suspected that this process would work for other populations who had experienced trauma and/or illness. That is how “The AIDS Monologues” were born. She partnered with organizations, began receiving funding and many other shows were to follow. Next came “The Mothering Monologues” and “Birth: The Monologues” as a celebration/validation for mothers to process the experiences of becoming a mom in an open and life affirming way.

Tanya next became interested in utilizing the Therapeutic Monologue Process as a way to support reconciliation when 2 opposing sides were in conflict by allowing both to tell their personal stories when she worked with Palestinian and Israeli teens in 2 shows entitled “Peace: The Monologues” and “The Soul of Peace” In both shows, the participants shared deeply and were brought together in the 4 day process that culminated in public performances.

Tanya has gone on to facilitate and produce over one hundred productions including shows with the survivor’s of sexual abuse, monologues with people who have mental illness and/or addictions, gay, lesbian and transgender monologues, shows with veterans from Iraq, the Gulf War and Vietnam, Hospice Monologues for those who recently lost a loved one, caregivers and more.

The amazing thing about this process is that if done with clarity and integrity, it translates into all realms of possibility. There is no group that Tanya has worked with who have not had a life-changing experience around the process regardless of the life issue being addressed.

Since, 2000, Tanya has partnered with organizations including Cabrini Hospital,(NYC) Odyssey Hospice,(Dallas and Ca.) Gilda’s Club, Creativity for Peace, Southwest Cares, New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities, College of Santa Fe, The Writers Guild Theater, Wellness Community (Southern Cal.), Second Stage Theater(NYC), Lensic Theater, Temple Beth Shalom, National Alliance for Mental Illness(NAMI), Mothering Magazine, Veterans for Peace, Many Mothers, United World College, Water Tower Theater (Dallas), San Diego Rep Theater, Santa Fe Performing Arts, Theaterwork, Railyard Performance Space and Dana Farber Cancer Center (Boston)to support people going through challenging life issues of all kinds to write and perform their stories and experience psycho/social/emotional healing and empowerment through the act of sharing their stories in a theatrical setting.

Mission Monologue: “Since the very first performance of “The Cancer Monologues” at the Santa Fe Playhouse in 2000, when I thought the roof might blow off the theater because the energy was so powerful and transformative that night for both audience members and performers alike, I have wanted to see Therapeutic Monologues take their rightful place beside other forms of healing all over the world. The monologues are a gift for humanity and they will support you as you offer them to others. I have has the privilege of walking people into their deepest fears and walking back into the light to share the stories and wisdom found in the shadows of life. I have has the opportunity to explore my own darkness and light as I have offered this process to others. The monologues have become my path to my own Soul. There is no greater devotion that could offer my life to. It is a blessing beyond even the stories. It is the path of the StoryHealer. If these words resonate with your Soul as well….I offer you my hand”

Tanya Taylor Rubinstein

e-mail Tanya@ProjectLifeStories.org

Owning My Clarity

2011-12-15T20:07:00.001-08:00

This is what I am learning about solo performance AND life....

Owning one's clarity is essential. Moving past ambiguity and vagueness is the only way to move into what you want.

As a creative small business owner/ director/coach/writer/producer and mother I often play numerous roles for many people. As in the tradition of most theater related work, professional and personal relationships frequently overlap.

I am chewing on this issue...It does not work for me to have friends/clients overlap without owning my clarity...Meaning, clear communication about expectations, time given, help received and financial matters drawn up in very precise details.

It's interesting for me to see how much resistance I have to allowing this much order into my life. Because, as I am always saying to my clients/students "structure is your friend" in creative endeavors. Solo performance that is enlivening, exciting, funny, poignant, powerful and more adheres to certain "rules"...As in all art forms, once rules are mastered, they may be broken. Spalding Gray broke the rules. Mike Daisey breaks the rules.

Do not think that you are Spalding or Mike prematurely.

Understand what works in a good solo piece: presence, a stage-worthy story (no...your alcoholic family story is not enough-that's what Alanon is for, unless you're John Leguizamo...see, another example of one who has earned the right to break the rules..have you seen him "do" his mother?)...it has to be a big enough topic and more importantly, it needs to be seen through an interesting and unique point of view. As a matter of fact, your point of view is just about everything. In the hands of a master a simple story of a year abroad becomes a masterful, engaging and compelling tale. In the hands of a smaller point of view, it becomes nothing more than a travelogue..

Don't get me started tonight, because I am in a feisty mood.

I am ready to produce high quality work in all areas of my life with consistency. I am bored with vagueness. I am bored with clients who do not pay me in a respectful and timely manner. I am bored with people who don't memorize their lines. I am bored with myself for all the times I have stood for it.

2012, my commitment to myself is to rise to a higher level of love and self care.

This work is a devotion for me. I will do it as a devotion with people who are devoted. That doesn't mean perfect. But folks who are willing to show up and live their clarity along with me. On and off the stage.

It is going to be a fantastic year.

2011 in Solo Performance/Santa Fe

2011-12-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

Wow...It is the end of 2011 already and I am looking back on this year with a lot of awe and gratitude for this continuing examination into life, stories, theater and deep human expression/connection.

These are the qualities that keep me in devotion to the art of solo performance. Often, I say to my clients and students that I believe audiences love seeing one person shows because we are all looking to each others as models for how to live.We get a bird's eye view into the solo performer's life, point of view, humor, pathos and ability to transform and transcend circumstances and utilize them as a basis for art.

This year, I began the year by offering the first, ever StoryHealers training to a group of 7 individuals. I am ending the year with 4 people still in process with me which I consider a pretty excellent accomplishment. These amazing and creative people are learning to utilize solo performance/personal monologues in a therapeutic context for individuals and groups who have experienced trauma, loss, illness and transition (who hasn't, right?) This is a process I began developing in 2002 with The Cancer Monologues and went on to utilize with nearly 100 groups. Deep thanks go out to Ariane Mahmoud-Ghazi, a dear friend and gifted trauma therapist for assisting in the training process. There is deep satisfaction in knowing that this therapeutic monologue process will be shared in more communities to serve, heal and inspire.

A new training will begin in April 2012. Please e-mail Tanya@ProjectLifeStories.org for more information if you are considering attending.

This year had many "firsts". Aside from the StoryHealers training, Project LifeStories produced the first annual Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival. This is a yearly curated festival of solo shows. For our first season we had 12 performances of 6 shows with selected solo artists from the U.S. and Canada. (www.SantaFeSoloPerfomanceFest.com) Our plans for 2012 are to at least double the number of shows next year. As we continue to establish Santa Fe, NM as an actual solo performance destination, we are grateful to all the audiences, performers and support. Several of our first festival performers are going on to runs in NYC and Toronto including Tracey Erin Smith, Stacey Bernstein and Ann Marie Houghtailing who premiers her brilliant show, "Renegade Princess" at Stage Left Studios in Manhattan this Spring. (www.StageLeftStudios.com) Do not miss this show if you are in NYC

The Solo Performance Festival is also continuing to bring great solo performers on tour through Santa Fe at the Lodge. This winter, we are bringing out the amazingly talented Lauren Weedman (BUST, Comedy Central) and Ann Randolph (Squeeze Box, Off-Broadway run) withe their new shows. I'll also be directing Santa Fe favorites, Debrianna Mansini and Jane Lancaster in their upcoming solo shows in March.

A New Year is almost upon us...It is always a great time for a new creative beginning. Haven't you waited long enough? Make this year the year YOU write and perform you one person show or get trained to facilitate the StoryHealers Therapeutic Monologue Process in your community!

I offer writing/performance opportunities all year round. Creative Solo Blessings...to be continued...

Class last night

2011-09-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

Every Thursday night, I teach a solo performance class here in Santa Fe. This year I have a beautiful and sensitive group who are all doing great work in terms of exploring and developing their shows.

Last night we had a reading of one of the shows. After I gave feedback on one of the shows, the performer felt emotional and began to cry a bit. I knew she was taking personally my critique about what was not yet working on her show.

Feedback can feel tough when we are working with such deep, raw and intimate material. In my experience, you have to have a coach/director you can trust to have your back. You have to have a director willing to say everything she sees, then encourages you to go on, continue the process and sink down deeper into your journey.

It is a fine balance. In the first part of the year with my students, I am encouraging of all kinds of exploration.

But when we move into working on the script, I get tougher. Because, like any art form, this form has things that work to bring the audience in closer, and things that will push them away.

For me, it is very important that I keep the performer safe onstage, even while (especially) while she is revealing her intimate stories and/or characters she has created herself. Stories need to be titrated like doses of medicine. They need to flow and have highs and lows, be multi-dimensional, find the humor and joy even in the midst of grief, challenge the audience without alienating them. This is not an easy journey or process.

It takes people into the depths of themselves and demands deep personal honesty about everything.

If you are embarking on this process make sure you find a director who is always striving to find the balance between deep creative support and finding structure that works...And one who will tell you the whole truth while holding the space for your success and completion of your show.

In short, one who loves you and loves the audience and has your back.

First Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival

2011-09-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

This is a big week for me. Solo Performances continue to blossom out here in the high desert.

The very first Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival is gearing up to kick off with 6 great performers doing their solo shows as well as some kick ass workshops.

The line up is: Tracey Erin Smith from Toronto with her world premier of "snug harbor", Ann Marie Houghtailing from San Diego with "Renegade Princess", Deb Heikes from Santa Fe with "White Trash Monologues", Stacey Bernstein , also from Toronto with "Everything I Never Knew I Wanted", Gray from Oakland with "Self-ish" and Doug Vincent from Boulder with "Dad"

I have had the good fortune to help these performers create their material and I have directed some of the shows.

Right now I am really excited to be continuing to ground my own work in Santa Fe while finding more and more ways to support other performers by helping them create and produce their work to audiences here.

I really hope whomever is reading this (does anybody read this???) will come out and see these great shows if you are in Santa Fe from Sept 21-24...

website is www.SantaFeSoloPerformanceFest.com

Finding Your Calling/Asking for help...

2011-06-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, I heard the speaker Marianne Williamson talk about how, after she had a spiritual awakening, she wondered what she would do for a living. It hit her one day that she was not going to find God's calling for her in the help wanted ads of her local newspaper! She asked God what S/he wanted her to do and she got a clear message. Go speak. She did not know who would show up in her audience, but she knew she had to do it. Of course at the beginning, it must have felt like a huge risk. But she rented a hall in NYC and began to give weekly talks on a by-donation-basis....and went on the become one of the foremost spiritual speakers of our time.

In 1999, I had a similar experience. I was thirty three years old and although I had begun developing my own solo performance shows, I still wondered where it would take me in terms of the bigger picture in my life. Also, I had a 2 year old daughter and at the time was only performing a few times a year and assumed that I would mostly be a stay at home mom until my daughter entered kindergarten...Then one day, everything changed. My daughters father called me from a business trip and said that he wanted a divorce. No discussion. It was over.

After a few hours of sobbing hysterically, some of the emotion wore off and stone cold sobriety set in. I had no way to support myself and my daughter. What would I do for money? Because I had a theater background, had not worked a conventional job in 10 years, and lived in a small town in the middle of the country, it would have been easy to collapse entirely. And that night, I did. But on my way down, I called on my faith. I think my prayer was simply "Show Me, Please, please, please show me" before I fell asleep.

The next morning I awoke from a very vivid dream. I saw the words "The Cancer Monologues" floating over Lincoln Center in NYC..It was very clear to me that I was to offer autobiographical monologue workshops to people with cancer. Which I did. In the beginning I was so uninformed and naive about business that I didn't even try to follow a regular model...I just showed up at our local Cancer Center and said that I wanted to do this. A small grant of $2,000 from the city of Santa Fe, provided the seed money for these free workshops....10 people signed up to write with me to share their amazing, devastating, poignant, funny, loving, angry and hopeful stories of living with cancer to an audience of friends, family and community member who were laughing and crying all night right along with them. The theater was so filled with light that night that I felt that the building might lift itself right off it's foundation and float up into the heavens.

When the audience rose in a unanimous standing ovation and the monologue participants took their bow, I was shaking all over. I was crying uncontrollably again, but not from fear, or desperation. From love and the knowledge that I had clearly been given my path. It was a gift, one that I could have never dreamed up on my own. It continues to bring together what I love the most...theater, healing, transformation, deep intimacy, connection and new ways of looking at a situation. I've gone on to do this process with people with HIV, mental illness, new mothers, Veterans and more....The road has taken me on many scenic by-ways and continues to shift and evolve. Right now, I am about to begin the journey of training others in this work.

For me, the answers to my big questions come from the depth of my connection to a spiritual presence beyond myself. It has given me everything really, and a creative life that does support me and my daughter in our financial needs as well as giving me the great gift of having a greater purpose to follow in this world...The gift of creative service and deep, fulfilling personal expression.

There is a miracle waiting around the next corner for each one of us. If you are wondering what your purpose is, I encourage you to write daily and ask for answers. Ask for a dream, then be willing to receive the answer. Follow signs, energy and messages that resonate. Then be prepared to receive the greatest gift possible...your authentic life that cannot be found in any help wanted ad, but is already written on your own heart.

Why it Took Me Eleven Years to Write my First Show

2011-06-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

Honey Moon In India Story…( or why it took me 11 years to write my first solo show)

From the time I met Spalding when I was nineteen I wanted to write and perform a one woman show, but not only did I have no idea in terms of where to begin, I was utterly terrified. For the next ten years I worked in the theater quite a bit. I was living in New Mexico getting cast in productions back to back. In a four year cycle, I was cast in a revival of Hair, Edward Albee’s Seascape, Win Lose, Draw and one of the first Rep Production of ‘ The Kentucky Cycle” after it won the Pulitzer. I was in a few original, well-written plays by local New Mexican play writes. I had some interesting parts and I was doing work that I had once been passionate about, I got some good reviews and started to establish my reputation as a strong local actor, but something in me continued to long for more….

I spent a few years teaching myself to write. In the beginning, I wrote very poorly, but a commitment to show up at the page no matter what began to shift that. Inspired by Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way” and Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones”….I practiced doing morning pages daily (the drivel of one’s life…3 pages a day, no matter what) and free writes (compiling a list of topics and writing on one at a time, with a timer.) This process, of writing on things like” I remember”, “home”,” the first time”, “at 2:00 in the morning” etc. without stopping to pause, think or edit opened up my “voice” for me.

I wrote a play for 5 woman modeled loosely on the structure of Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf”….This structure is basically one of individual monologues strung together. Pre-maturely, I showed it to a New York producer who basically trashed it. I went into a lot of angst, doubting my talent. But thanks to Julia Cameron who said to keep walking as an artist no matter what, I did not collapse into a pit of despondency. I continued to write and write some more.

And somewhere along this journey., I fell in love…I fell in love with a man named Steven and I fell in love with a spiritual teacher named Gangaji. Life led me to begin living the story that would become fodder for my first show.

India itself was not what I expected nor was the guru. We arrived and he was talking about how woman could not get enlightened because they got their periods. Not exactly the bastion of enlightenment that we’d traveled thousands of miles to see….I remember getting off the plane and smelling shit. This smell permeated through the entire country. We left the guru, struck out on our own and got sicker and sicker and more and more desperate. A miserable honeymoon, A good story.

It fit the model of the hero’s journey beautifully. The hero’s journey is the “call to adventure”, the obstacles, pitfalls , stops and starts along the road. The overcoming obstacles to continue walking on the path…In the end the hero will have to do what she knows she cannot do. And from this place of courage, defeat and failure, she will be forced to deepen her resources and transform. Transform to meet whatever challenge is in front of her…To gain perspective on whatever is in front of her. And gain the faith and help, both internal and external to move on.

Honeymoon in India followed this structure to a tee. As I lived it, I was unaware that it would become my first show. We are all living epic journey’s. Archetypal. All of us. When someone comes to and says they do not have enough material, I say “look at your own life”…Where have you known the call to adventure? Where have you had an obstacle to overcome? How did you do it? Where were you/ are you a hero? It is actually enough and share your own story. That is a secret . You are already enough. Your show already lives inside of you.

With that said, one must be fearless in the telling of the story. One has to slow time down, choose material that has drama to it and is big enough for the stage. I have worked with someone who is a twenty year AIDS survivor, an actor who’s dad was a small time Mafioso, a young account executive in San Francisco who is bi-polar and had a break with reality. I have worked with a mom who told a very funny story of the first year of her life after her child’s birth and a 10 year old woman who based her solo show on an interview with a friend who had a stroke. She went on to write and perform that character in a wheelchair, presenting her friend’s story in first person.

What does it mean to “slow down time”?

You must take us moment by moment through your story. It is like painting a picture. We want the details…we want to know what that moment felt like, smelled like, tasted like to you.

The reverse is also true….If you give us a wide sweeping overview….if you generalize, we wont get it. It will mean nothing to us.

“Pregnant Pause”

The story of Pregnant Pause was the story of my pregnancy with my daughter told through the people around me. They were the inspiration for the characters that told my tale. There was my neurotic Beverly Hills Jewish Mother in Law”Bubbie Bobbie”, My Waspy Connecticut Uber Consevative grandmother “Nanny”, There was my Birkenstock wearing Mid-wife “Yoda”, My working class Rochester based second cousin “Rusty” and my New Agey acupuncturst ex-husband “the husband”…I wove together an autobiographical story, but told in by creating characters and telling the story through their eyes. The story became funnier and more outrageous as I married my autobiographical journey of pregnancy, birth and delivery and told it through the voices of the characters around me. This is where it rose from a mundane story into a theatrical voyage of wit and discovery.

“A Woman’s Work”

One day in 1999, a fellow performer called me up and said she had been thinking about an idea for a show based on the Studs Terkel song “Working”. Her concept was that three of us, all female solo performers, write a show of monologues about the back story of woman and work. I utilized characters and experiences from my own life and wove them into “fictional” characters. The first one was Barbie, as in a Barbie doll. She was speaking at the Barbie Convention and began to unravel onstage..She had a nervous breakdown in front of the audience. The second monologue I wrote was one of a woman receiveing an Academy Award for best actress. In her speech she is thanking the Academy profusely and begins to wander into a story about what a miracle it is that she is actually here..how just a few years ago, she escaped from a physically abusive marriage with an alcoholic. She goes into the story of how she escaped with her son and how dreams do come true…Then, abrubptly, she begins to take off her gown and starts to scream “don’t come up here Honey. I’ll be right down, yes, dinner’s almost ready” The audience realizes in that moment that she was in a fantasy of the Academy Awards. She is the woman who is still being beaten by her husband.

3 woman, doing 3 monologues each around a theme worked wonderfully. We were each strong as writers and performers in our own right and were able to hold our own with each other. That is very important if you are thinking about collaborating on a monologue show with other people.

Professional Trainings beginning this summer...

2011-05-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

When I was fourteen years old, I discovered the joys and richness of being an actor. The gift revealed itself to me on a strange day. It was the day my grandfather died.

Despite the loss and grief my family was experiencing, I insisted that my mother drive me to the first of my Saturday classes in a funky old building on a side-street in Bethesda, Maryland. The place was the Maryland Academy for the Dramatic Arts....a fancy name for what looked like a rather run down and rather marginal place. My teacher there was Ralph Tabikin, a former Vaudevillian with a perpetual eye twitch who chewed on his pipe non stop.

This particular day, he handed me a piece of paper and said "look this over and meet us in by the stage." I looked down and there was a monologue on the page. It was the character Lucrece, from the Greeks, contemplating suicide in a rather Hamlet-esqe monologue.

Although I had not contemplated committing suicide, and although Lucrece's story was different from mine, I intuitively understood our human similarities of deep, painful feelings and the desire to be free.

When it was my turn to share my monologue with the class, I stood up on the tiny home-made stage and channelled all my passion, confusion and raw grief into Lucrece's words and allowed that impulse to lead me into her life.

I looked up and the small class of seven or eight people plus Ralph were wildly applauding. Intuitively, I understood something in that moment although it would be years and years before I would be able to put it into words and integrate the meaning of that experience. Fortunately, for me, I had discovered that in the act of sharing my vulnerability and emotional truth onstage, I had the power to move others and heal myself. An alchemical reaction happened that day. It was as if my own molecules had re-arranged themselves in the moment of self-revelation. When I walked out of the theater that day, there was a different quality to my grief. It was still fresh and raw, but it had transformed. I had transformed and I knew that I was bigger than when I walked in. There was more space inside of me. The grief wasn't so scary. It was just present.

And I knew that I was not alone in it. There was meaning in my grief and that was the ability to share it with others and allow us to all know, for a moment in time that none of us are alone.

This was a seminal experience for me that put me on the path of actor, storyteller and director for these last 32 years. It was a day of tremendous grace.

Holistic Theater

2011-04-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

There is a great movement underway in the theater and simultaneously in the healing community. It has been a long time coming, yet in essence returns us to our deepest community roots from our ancestral egalitarian societies. We are reclaiming our roles as storytellers, as Hero’s on a journey home, as social justice commentators, as jesters and shamans. In the contemporary theater, we are doing this through the vehicle of “The Solo Show”.

The Solo Show that I am speaking of is the one person show that is conceived of, written by and performed by one man or one woman. It is a show that is the most holistic form of theater as it is born and manifested from one person’s deepest vision. It goes beyond conventional theater in terms of intimacy because the story, experience and perspective is created by the performer.

For me, it has been the richest and most empowering journey I have taken in my lifetime and I have devoted my lifetime to the exploration of this form. I have written and performed my own shows, directed and produced countless other solo shows and been a teacher and coach in the development of solo shows. There is no form that I have found that has the possibility of being a more powerful testament to the human spirit that the solo show. On a profound level, it is about the willingness to show up onstage and reveal our humanity to one another.

It's All About the Soul....

2011-04-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was reading a post from the wonderful Los Angeles based writing and acting coach, Sea Glassman. Sea and I have a lot of crossovers in our work. We are both long time students of a Course in Miracles and we both approach our creative work as a devotion...as spiritual practice.

Here is what I want to ask of you, as you ponder creating your solo show: "What does your Soul want to say? What does it want to say to you? What does it want to say to Life? What does it want to say to this world, others, God? What story does your Soul need to tell for your awakening? Because following any other pass is a lesser path...Following your mind, ego, a clever concept without taking into account the Soul's longings is like fast food, temporarily satisfying but ultimately empty.

I have been pondering my own creative work lately. It has been several years since I have performed my own solo show. My time has been spent teaching others as well as directing and producing.

Last year, my mind started pressuring me and I almost put up a show that just wasn't quite right. I knew that it was a viable concept. I knew that the script I had written was strong. But, something inside of me just didn't want to do it. In retrospect, I see that it wasn't a creative avoidance. It just wasn't what my Soul wanted me to have an attachment to and an association with at this time in my life. (It was called Scorpio Rising: a monologue of sex and death)...Nothing at all wrong with that and those are not topics I shy away from. It just wasn't the right timing and the energy behind it was murky.

Now my Soul is rested and emerging with a new personal vision for me in my personal art. It is a 7 year project with one performance a year. The performances will be monologues that are much more improvisational in nature (terrifying to my ego) and freer than the tightly written scripts that were hallmarks of my style in my younger years.

I am 46 years old. My memory is not razor sharp as it was. I cannot live my life with as much "pushing" intensity and my performance...my Soul's performance would like me to reflect this...And so, I move into a new time in my work, letting go of lots of character driven pieces, sharp and sometimes biting humor, perfectionism around every scripted word... into a new realm. A softer story wants to be told that, yes, will include sex and death...but also the quieter realms that I used to have no patience to explore. And a new kindness that I never used to show myself will be embodied.

Also, I am looking to develop a new, inclusive relationship with my audience as we go on a journey together..one that will, if my vision unfolds, be different every night. As I open to trust my body, Soul, memory and the poetry that lives inside my every cell to show up new, fresh each night, a once only show has the opportunity to unfold....

What is your Soul calling you to share? Go deep....deeper still.....Find it in Silence....and bring it back to this world as a story....

Training Therapeutic Monologue Facilitators and Solo Performance Coaches

2011-04-24T15:29:00.001-07:00

Wow! It has been such a long time since I've been on this blog that I almost forgot that it existed.

I just wrapped up several shows, including working with Deb Heikes on her one woman show "White Trash Monologues. It was a humorous and poignant look at growing up in a very wounded family. It was the classic "Hero's Journey" as Deb opened that world for us to have a look inside. As she embodies her racist father who was also a WW 2 Vet, who helped free the prisoners at Aushwitz, and her Bible thumping mother who beat the kids but also( we learn in the show) had to dance on the table as "entertainment" for her step-father when she was 4 years old we learn about the emotional complexity of the world she grew up in. When she speaks in first person monologues we were able to see through the eyes of a girl growing up in a factory town with-out much hope or vision. Deb herself broke free from the family story and left factory work at age 30 first, got sober and then become a therapist herself who helps recovering addicts here in Santa Fe. (www.TheWhiteTrashMonologue.com)

Currently, I am about to embark on an entirely new journey to support others in becoming facilitators and coaches/directors. This summer, I will be beginning offering trainings for others to learn to make a living through Professional Therapeutic Monologue Facilitation and in Solo Performance Coaching and Directing. This process has been a long time coming for me and I am thrilled and excited. Since I performed my first one woman show, and then directed others in the first performance of "The Cancer Monologues", I have known that it was my destiny to support others in taking this process to other communities to serve growth, passion, expression, vision and love....

Launching a Solo Performance Festival

2010-07-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has come for me to produce the first Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival. 4 days this December...Wow. This is a culmination of a dream...and the beginning of a new dream. For years I have said that my mission is to make Santa Fe the Performance Capital of the World..San Francisco may laugh at me. NYC may shake their heads in pity and Edinburough may not have even heard of Santa Fe..but mark my words...they will! All in good time.

I don't simply want to produce shows here in quantity, but in quality. And, continue to explore ways that monologues can serve a greater purpose for healing on the planet. I intend to continue to facilitate and train others in working as solo performance coaches, directors and performers in their communities and the world at large.

Additionally, I want to engage with more mainstream organizations such as cancer centers, hospitals, woman's and children's organizations, organizations dealing with peacemaking as well as those on the front lines of trauma. In my experience with all of these populations, writing and performing one's story in an authentic and engaging way can be one of the most empowering, life changing experiences for audience and performer alike.

This rocks the foundations of the world. It is shaman's work, therapist's work, artist's work, human's work.

Inviting others in from all over the globe creates an energy and sets a stage for us to ground the work here in Santa Fe...and let it lead itself wherever it can serve.

Sure hope you will be here with us participating in the festival and beyond! All love, Tanya

website coming soon!

I worked on 18 shows last year!

2010-06-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

I worked on 18 solo shows in 2009!

2009 One Person Shows in Conjunction with Project Life StoriesI worked with 18 people on their solo shows in 2009 (whew!) Some came out of a year long solo performance class with me, some flew in for script consultation from out of state and with a few people we created the scripts one on one from the ground up. Some were re-writes of previously performed work. They are all amazingly heroic people, some seasoned professional actors, some first time performers......all dreamers, visionaries and creators offering their lives in service to this great art-form of solo performance. Some notable shows that I worked on were: "Maternal Dreamer", written and performed by Ramona King, directed by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, performed in Santa Fe (at Wise Fool) and in Albuquerque at South Broadway Cultural Center and at the New Mexico Conference on Domestic Violence," MobiusTrip" written and performed by Linda Durham at the Railyard performance space in Santa Fe, developed with and directed by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein "Even if the Mountains Burn", written and performed by James Koskinas at the Railyard Performance Space in Santa Fe and The Filling Station in Albuquerque "Other Arrangements" written and performed by Maida Rogerson, developed with and directed by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, performed at Santa Fe Center for Spiritual Living and on Prince Edward Island, Canada "Swimming With the Polar Bears," written and performed by Mel England, directed by Jill Andre, dramaturge; Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, performed Off Broadway at the Bleeker Street Playhouse and in Copenhagen at the first International Conference on Climate Change,"Digging Up Dad," written and performed by Cris D'Annunzio at the Ruskin Theater Group in Los Angeles, script consulting with Tanya Taylor Rubinstein," BURST", written and performed by Shannon deJong, developed with and directed by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, performed at the Railyard Performance Space in Santa Fe and in Phoenix and "Sole Survivors" written and performed by Michelle Vest, in 2008 and 2009 it had two runs in NYC at Stage Left Theater, performed at Armory for the Arts in Santa Fe and South Broadway Cultural Center in Alb.

Material for a One Person Show

2010-06-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

Material for a One Person Show!

This year, I have worked with many actors and other creative people developing their one person shows for performance.

One of the stories was about a man who grew up with a small time Mafioso for a father and the mystery that surrounded his death. One was a woman who interviewed a friend who had a stroke and created her character based on her friend’s experience. One was a Vietnam Veteran who went back forty years to create his show which was ultimately as much a coming of age story as a story about war. Another is of a woman who was given up to a foster family....there was domestic abuse and mental illness throughout her lineage and she used her story and the story of her ancestors as the basis for her show....Michelle, a former student, based her show on an interview she did with a Mexican housekeeper. I had given her solo performance class an assignment to interview someone who they knew as an acquaintance and find out about their life. They were to turn the interview into a monologue and embody the character for the class. Michelle embodied her character, Rosa to a tee...chomping away on a breakfast burrito and telling us the intimate and heartbreaking story of a woman who had left her life and child inMexico to reach for a better life across the border. She spoke of almost dying in the desert and having to take water from the bag of a dead man....This interview with a woman who knew uncovered a powerful story and unearthed an unspoken story in our culture. Who are these new immigrants who work in our kitchens and in the back of restaurants and live among us? This powerful uncovering set Michelle on a journey of interviewing others who had crossed the border into this country, some legally and some illegally to share, in her show, the contemporary immigrants journey..

So where is your show hiding? Where is your material? I would say, it’s in plain site. Look a little closer at your own life, your own stories, the people who live among you. There are stories everywhere, waiting to be told. Waiting for you to tell them… Pay attention today to your life. It's where your themes, topics, passions, dramas, possibilities already exist.

Facilitating Group Monologue Shows

2010-06-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

I had written and performed three solo shows when I decided to offer a workshop for woman who wanted to write and perform 10 minute mini-solo shows. From there I began to develop curriculum to offer to people living with cancer, both patients, and their family members. After the Cancer Monologues I realized that this process was actually Universal. Every person has a story. No one escapes the experience of humanity which brings with it pain, loss, grief as well as opportunities to meet the challenges and overcome the obstacles. In this human movement of being presented with a challenge and meeting it fully, we come to be more and more comfortable with the process of living. We learn to embrace the present moment more fully, slow down and savor the moments of our life and trust that all will be well, no matter what obstacle we are facing either internally or externally. We come to know that there is something bigger than any challenge we are faced with. That is the human spirit. We move from the human obstacle into an awareness of the larger playground of Soul. When we claim the gifts held in the realm of Soul we are able to re-frame our experience as a necessary movement away from the temporal to the unmoving, unchanging domain of the eternal. Our stories have deep meaning as we examine them and share them through this lens. This is where we are able to see ourselves and the pain and gifts from our lives as compost to claim ourselves as Hero’s headed home “trailing clouds of glory from which we came”. The process, as a Universal one has been used effectively with people living with cancer, Hospice caregivers, The HIV and AIDS community, veterans suffering from PTSD, Palestinian and Israel communities of teen-agers who live in fear and have experienced varying degrees of trauma, people experiencing divorce, new mothers sharing their birth stories, mothers who experienced the death of a child, people who have been adopted, members of the National Alliance of Mental Illness…both those suffering mental illness and family members, sexual abuse survivors. The only necessary component for the process to work is for the participants stay through the entire experience and work with-in the structure. There are important reasons for the structure and the way it is laid out from start to finish. There are tools for the facilitators to utilize for participants experiencing resistance. We will get into these later because resistance will arise for some people as they write about their often painful or traumatic experiences. It is actually very important that they be led through the entire process with the necessary facilitator support once it is embarked upon. Otherwise, it has the potential to do harm which must be avoided at all cost. If the deeper issues get activated in the writing without the experience of re-framing that happens when one shares the monologue onstage, it can be psychologically damaging. The facilitator needs to have strong boundaries and inner strength to guide people through even when their resistance or even anger arises and gets projected onto the facilitator.

Backstage Magazine Article

2010-06-10T17:57:00.000-07:00

One Person Show Article/ Backstage Mag.

This article was published in "Backstage" lastspring....by moi!

How You Can Express Essence through Writing and Performing a One Person Show

By: Tanya Taylor Rubinstein

Every actor has a secret dream……as do many non-actors who have creative souls. The secret dream is to write and perform a one person show.

Why do so many creative people have this dream yet relatively few act upon it? Perhaps because they are asking themselves these questions:

From the day I saw Spalding Gray perform, my own desire to be a commercial actress evaporated. However, it took me another eleven years of performing in other people’s plays before I was able to take the leap into solo performance. From the opening night of my first show, “Honeymoon in India” which was named in the “Top 10 Shows of the Year in the Santa Fe Reporter”, I never looked back. The experience was so much bigger than anything I had experienced as an actor before. I was able to offer my audience an original show that I was passionate about from my core. I have gone on to write and perform many shows as well as facilitate hundreds of others in the process I have developed.

how to begin.

How does a non-playwright create a script? Will anyone care about my story? How

can I make it intensely personal without falling into the trap of self-indulgence?

The Theater of Presence:

Solo performance has the possibility of bringing healing and transformation to the world in a way no other form of theater has can offer.

At it’s heart, solo performance is about awakening fully to one’s essence or soul.

The Transformational Monologue Process

2007-08-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

After writing and performing my own solo shows for several years, I needed to find a way to support myself and daughter. I was going through a divorce at the time and she was little and I wanted to find a way to make money doing something related to what I loved and what I ws good at.

I decided to start a class at the Center for Contemporary Art, here in Santa Fe for people to come and write stories from their lives and perform them. I had 6 woman in that first class and I just decided to work with them the same way I worked to create my own solo shows.

When people are given a sacred space where you really listen to their stories, without interruption, critisism, or an attempt to "fix them or their problems" the whole inner world of a person opens up. I understood that this was (and is) my primary job in working with people and their stories.

If I hadn't been in therapy or twelve step programs for many years, I would not have been able to do this work and offer it to others in a successful way. I created it organically from what had been modeled to me in others sacred space.

I'll never forget that first group and the first "group monologue" performance. There were about 40 people who showed up, all friends of the performers basically.
One woman told a story of growing up as a lesbian in the South and her mother's horrendous cooking of such 70's recipes as canned fruit chicken! (Yuck) Another woman told of her experiences in Afica before she became a mother and the HIV infected children singing on the banks of a river with such joy. There was a woman who was the youngest of 14 children in Detroit. She never had her own bed and her dad ran a sex shop.

And on and on..... The stories just spilled out and the audience was rivited. My experience in doing solo shows was that I went into rehearsal for a month. But, we did this in two weekends and even though the performance was not polished, the stories were so intimate and raw and human. We were all laughing and crying and getting goosebumps.

It was perfect and it gave me the inspiration to do all my subsequent shows. Around this time, I has a dream where I saw the words The Cancer Monologues floating over Lincon Center in NYC. I decided to focus the work, initailly just for cancer survivers. I invited groups of 8-10 people to write and perform their authentic stories of the experiences of having cancer. And, from there I've done numerous shows with groups of people writing and performing their authentic experiences to audiences around the country. I can tell you that it's the most amazing work I have been given and I carry it in my heart and work to deepen and honor it everyday.

I've done these group monologue shows with mothers sharing their birth stories, hospice caregivers who share about losing a loved one, Palestinian and Israeli teens working to understand each other and create peace, Veterans working to heal and create peace, sexual abuse survivers, people with AIDS and more.

I have become not only a storyteller but a storygatherer and I carry each story that I have helped facilitate and present to audeinces in my bones. It works on me in an alchemical way and has made me stronger and more fierce than I would have imagined.

Creating Original Characters in a Solo Show

2007-07-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

A Woman's Work.........(performed Feb. 2000)

I did nine performances of an original monologue show that I worked on with two other Santa Fe woman. The inspration behind the show was from a Studs Terkel song about working. The concept of the show was that we would each write three , 10 minute monolgues exploring female characters at work and their personal stories.

All three of the charcters were based on my personal life experience but I put them into the context of different voices. The first character that I created was based on Barbie (the doll) She was giving a speech at the annual "Barbie Convention" being her ususal "perfect" self when she starts to have a bit of a nervous breakdown onstage. She gets carried away and speaks of her longtime lust for G. I Joe and what it's like to be put into an arranged marriage with that "unic", Ken. She speaks about what it'slike to smell food, but only to be allowed to snack on celery sticks and have to manage about 30 different "careers" and the "Malibu beach house" all the time with an insipid smile plastered on her face. She speaks about the emptiness of never aging and getting "laugh lines' from really never having lived.

When I created this piece, I found that I was able to publicaly present some of my own political views in a clever and humerous way. It would have been "preachy" if I had given a speech about these topics, but as I incorperated them into an original character and showed the juxtaposition about how she was forced to live as an "image" rather than from a place of authenticity, these views were received in an open and positive way by the audience.

When I teach solo performance classes now, if someone is attached to "making a point", I encourage them to do it through a character. In my experience, when we're speaking on stage as ourselves, it only works if we stick to our own experience. In other words, our own stories from our lives and the insights that arise from our experience. I challenge my students to cut all opinions, judgements (good or bad) and metaphors out of their own story. Onstage, opinions and judgements will distance the audience from you. It takes the audience out of their own experince and into their intellects. Does this mean that you as a performer don't have opinions or judgements or a point of view? No. All strong artists do have a point of view. Your point of view comes across by what stories from your life you choose to share, the tone, your body movements, energy and presence. But, for me nothing is worse than going to a one person show where somebody starts to preach at me. Even if I agree with them!

However, the one way I've found to get around this is through creating original characters. You can take a point of view and show it through a character. For example, rather than saying "war is bad", create a character of a veteran whose child has died from birth defects related to his exposure to depleted uranium. Have this charcter tell his story.This will make your point much more powerfully and effectively than saying "war is bad".

Instead of saying "I hate the values of Hollywood and everybody's shallow there", I created a second character based on someone I knew who was an L.A.party planner. I had her entire monologue on the phone calling various people for an event she was planning. I didn't talk about narcissism being unpleasent to people; rather I portryed how her curt and bitchy with every person she spoke to. I also added a surprising vulnerability to her last phone call which was with her dad who didn't (and obviously hadn't ver)had time for her. Instead of preaching about how people can become mean and self centered by lack of parental involvement, I painted that picteuer, through Staci's(the chahrcters) interactions.

To sum my point up, if you are working on a solo show
a) if you are working in a storytelling format, stick to your story. Eliminate rants, and statements of judgement or opinion.

b) create original characters based on people you know or have interviewed. They can be and say anything that you want them to as long as they feel true to themselves.

c) To begin to create original charcters, begin with people who have strong personalities who you know well. In my female students, I notice that their mothers and grandmothers are endless goldmines in terms of material. That is because these people literally "live inside" us. When you are developing original characters for the first time it is good to work initially with what we know (same with beginning writing- no coincidence)

The Genius of Spalding Gray

2007-07-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

Spalding was completly riviting that evening. His autobiographical monologue entitled "Travels Throgh New England" was so intimate. He shared stories from his life about his mothers suicide and her odd Christian Scientist ways. He spoke of going to Walden Pond and of masturbating there to feel closer to Thoreau! He was outrageous, he was funny and above all he was real. The character he was choosing to portray was himself. His script came from his life.

After the show he sat on the edge of the stage and had a beer and answered some questions and comments from our class. I don't remember saying anything to him except "thank-you" but I left the theater that night and knew that the course of my life had been altered. I didn't know how and when I was going to get there but I knew that what he was offering was a path that I too would follow.

I had been craving this simplicity of expression without even knowing it. The combination of authentic and brilliant writing based on his direct experiences delivered to a live audience blew my mind. I understood immiediatly ad intuitivly the enormous possibilities for performers and audience members alike.

As a teacher of solo performance and solo performer myself I have come to understand many of the componants of solo performances that inspire an audience and those that don't. One of Spalding's great talents was his ability to completly embody his material. He made every word a visceral experience for himself and his audience. One of the amazing things about this was that he never moved. He sat at his desk in every performance I ever saw (except in one brief moment when he danced across the stage with a boom box in Morning, Noon and Night- what a joy!!!) and yet he filled the theater with his presence.

For me, the undertaking of a solo show is about 90% about presence. Yes, the story is important. The writing is very important. But what makes it or breaks it for me is the performers presence. Are they willing to take us beyond a "reading of a work" into a "feeling of their work"? Are they willing to show up with every emotion available to them and every cell in their body willing to re-experience the events they are sharing about?If they are, they can take their audience on a journey like no other.

At it's best solo performance connects us so deeply with one individual and their humanity that it connects the audience with themselves and their own deepest humanity. It takes a bedrock of courage to expose so much;not just in the writing of our stories, but in the embodiment of them for the audeince.

Spalding had the knack.

My Love Affair With The Art of Storytelling

2007-07-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

My love affair with storytelling began in Boston in 1985. I ws twenty one years old and an acting major at Emerson College.......

Since I was fourteen years old, theater had been the major focus of my life. I had also stidied in Pittsburgh at Carnegie- Mellon and had a year with Bill Hickey (the Godfather in "Prizzi's Honor) at HB Studios. My immersion at all the places I had trained had been both tradional and contemporary theater. By the time I was nineteen, I had performerd in at least 50 plays and scenes including classics such as Macbeth and The Rivals. And contemporary classics by such playwrites as Tenessee Williams, Harold Pinter and my personal favorite, Edward Albee. I had done monologues by the Greeks and studied theater history in great depth.

In a way, I felt my focus in theater saved my life and gave me a much needed focus in my adolescence away from my suburban Maryland upbringing.

My first theater class had been the day my grandfather died. It was at an afterschool studio with the teacher being an old vaudvillian named Ralph Tabikin. When my mother came into my room to tell me that my grandfather had died (the second death in my family in a month) she added "I'll cancel your acting class." Something in me screamed out "No" in such an adament way that she drove me there later that afternoon despite my families shell shocked grief. I had been immersed in the horrors of illness and death for the past three months and lost the only two men in my family during that time. It wasn't a callowness in me that drove me toward that acting class. Indeed, I felt laden down with a depth of grief that I had no idea how to begin to work with. It was an intuition for self preservation.

I was handed a scripted monologue seemingly well beyond my 14 years. It was about a woman contemplating suicide (rather Hamlet-esqe, but less existential in her reasonsing). I stood up on stage and read the monologue, pouring all my own grief, confusion and sense of loss into the reading. The vaudvillian sat up; the class stood and applauded. That was less important to me than how I felt. I would not have had the word for it but now I may say that I stumbled on the process of alchemy. I was able to spin gold from straw. I did not know how I did it but I had stumbled on the experience of transforming at least a tiny piece of my overwhelming grief into something else through the process of expressing my authentic feelings through the thoughts and words of a character. I remember feeling lighter when I left the theater despite the family drama that I knew I had to go home and face. There was a spark that had been lit in me. A light. Perhaps.....hope?

I continued on the path that began that day for many years. I auditioned for every play I could through high school both in and out of school. I loved the feeling of taking on a new charachter or role. Accessing my own emotional landscape and channeling it into a role had a profounf effect on me. In a way, theater was the only place where my lifelong "intensity" not only wasn't a problem; it was welcomed and even rewarded with some of the juciest roles. I felt that my life would be, as a serious New York stage actress and that was the path I was pursuing until one February night in 1985.......

My acting professor at Emerson, Ron Jenkins invited my class to a special theater at a tiny theater in Cambridge called The Brattle Street Playhouse. He told us it would be a "one man show" by an alumni of Emerson and old friend of his. I imagined something like "Krapps Last Tape" by Pinter, the only one person show I had ever heard of. (It's about an old man alone, recording and playing back pieces about his life)

The name of the show was "Travels Through New England". No curtain came up. There were no clever stes or costumes or any of the artifice I had become accustomed to in the theater. Just one man coming onstage with a heavy looking manuscipt and sitting behind a desk. he was wearing a red flannel shirt and that evening, he would change the course of my life forever. His name was Spalding Grey.