Tanya is passionate about her role in bringing personal stories to the public that might otherwise remain in the shadows or in silence.

Tanya recently returned to her roots and started working again with individuals who want to develop full-length solo shows.

Mental illness is usually so confusing and so unpredictable that it’s impossible to respond in the same logical way we deal with other problems.

Giving Voice to Our Stories:

Tanya Taylor Rubenstein and Project Life Stories

by Rosemary Zibart

anya Taylor Rubenstein, the bright, vibrant creator of Project Life Stories, is currently helping another often-neglected group of people give voice to their deep feelings — their anger, pain, fear, shame, confusion and endless hope. This time the subject is mental illness, and the monologues she’s directing come from individuals diagnosed with chronic illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disease, depression and anxiety disorder, as well as from their family members.

As always, Tanya is passionate about her role in bringing personal stories to the public that might otherwise remain silent or in the shadows. In the past she’s worked with groups like Veterans for Peace, cancer survivors, hospice care workers and individuals with AIDS. But in the case of mental illness, she feels a particularly strong need to remove the stigma that afflicts the condition. “The more people fear and misunderstand mental illness,” says Tanya, “the more important it is to bring it into the public arena.” The performance, cosponsored by the Santa Fe affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is called Minds Interrupted: Stories of Lives Affected by Mental Illness and will be held on March 15 at the Santa Fe Armory for the Arts.

In addition to working with groups, Tanya also works with individuals, helping each craft his or her own story. “I feel that our cultural disconnect from our own life stories and family stories have created a deep pain that runs through this society at this time in history,” she contends. “Personal storytelling is a way to examine our lives and pull the disparate pieces together for ourselves and the public.”

For Tanya, one-person shows are a key form of dramatic art, yet that’s not how she started out. Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area, she was well-versed in conventional drama like Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and Molière, and planned to become a Broadway actress. She studied at Carnegie Mellon University and also took acting courses at H B Studios in Greenwich Village.

Her life took a dramatic turn, however, the first time she was introduced to a solo performance. At a little theater in Boston, she watched as a man in a plaid shirt came on stage; he sat down on a chair and took out a story to read. The man was Spalding Gray, and Tanya was astounded by the impact of his personal trajectory. “For me, the performance represented intimacy without artifice; he was authentic in a way we’re all craving,” she asserts. From then on, at age 19, she knew that she wanted to do solo works, but she had no idea how to go about it.

In 1991, after “listening to her inner voices,” Tanya decided to try out New Mexico. She sold most of her furniture and left the rest on the street in New York, arriving out West with $2,000 in her pocket. Friends from the city claimed she’d surely be back in six months. But they were wrong, she proudly announces — 16 years later, she’s still in Santa Fe.

From her first days here, Tanya started writing, both on her own and in workshops. She wrote a number of scripts, some of which, she admits, were very bad. Shortly after her arrival, a good friend died of AIDS, and wanting to find ways to connect with the gay community, Tanya became a founding board member of Kitchen Angels.

Finally, at age 31, she created a one-woman show called Honeymoon in India and performed it at the Railyard Performance Space. “The show was based on my experience of going on a spiritual quest to India and meeting with a guru who said no woman could become ‘enlightened’ because they had periods,” explains Tanya. Though the experience was excruciating at the time, it later seemed quite funny to the young actress. Her show was extremely very well received — the Santa Fe Reporter nominated Honeymoon in India as one of the city’s “top ten shows of year,” right up there with the Opera and Santa Fe Stages. Since that success, Tanya has never done conventional theater again. “Monologues are both scarier and more exciting for me,” she maintains.

For several years, she continued to do her own autobiographical dramatic pieces, but after having a daughter and going through a divorce, she realized she had to find a way to pay the bills. She began offering weekend-long workshops for women who wanted to do one-person shows. At the end of the brief sessions, each participant performed a 10-minute personal story. “I saw how powerful it is for people to tap into their lives in a way they’d never done before,” Tanya declares.

Soon thereafter, she dreamed that a giant banner reading “Cancer Monologues” was floating over the famed Lincoln Center in New York City, and she decided to offer the monologue process to people who had experienced cancer: some had been healed, some were in remission, others were still actively battling the disease. All had extremely poignant perspectives on their illnesses and the journeys they’d traveled as a result of being diagnosed with cancer. The monologues were filled with pain, embarrassment, humor, anger, regret, inspiration. There were few dry eyes in the Santa Fe theater after each performance.

The tremendous success of that project (which resulted in repeat productions and a book), both for the individuals participating and for the audience, spurred Tanya to use the same process in working with people with AIDS, with mothers telling stories of pregnancy and childbirth, with Veterans For Peace, with hospice caregivers, and with individuals who’ve experienced sexual or domestic abuse. For several years, she traveled to cities all over the country offering workshops.

But after a long stretch of doing what she calls “therapeutic monologues,” Tanya recently returned to her roots and started working again with individuals who want to develop full-length solo shows. At present, she offers a yearlong workshop for eight men and women. “It’s extremely creative and open-ended,” she says. “People may end up with a show they perform for the public or not. They can draw upon experiences in their own lives or create fictional characters. The content is limited only by one’s imagination.” She compares the popularity of one-person shows to the increased attention being given to memoirs and autobiographies.

At a recent performance staged at the Armory of the Arts, two of her students participated: Susana Guillaume and Michele Vest. Susana’s production consisted of an entertaining, often very funny autobiographical piece about growing up in a Jewish family in England and moving to the United States, with a few lively detours along the way. Michele’s show was based on interviews she’d done with several Central American immigrants, with her playing the parts of the men and women she’d learned about. As Tanya points out, Michele gave voice to people who usually remain voiceless. “These performances do not rely on any contrivance or so-called production values,” she maintains. “They’re powerful because of their simplicity.”

Tanya finds her work with the therapeutic monologues and with the one-person shows equally enriching and rewarding. Both incorporate a transformational process for the participants. “It’s so important for people to get a chance to tell their story, whatever the story is,” she says, pointing to the deep experience working with Palestinian and Israeli teenagers who were in Santa Fe several years ago for the Creativity for Peace Camp. Sharing stories with the public can be healing, she maintains. “It offers comfort to people who have gone through grief and trauma to stand on a stage and be seen and heard by a compassionate audience.” And yes, she claims, the audiences are compassionate — that’s the sort of people attracted to such performances. “The audiences are so moved and so respectful,” she observes. “They don’t like to leave the theater because after this kind of heart-opening experience, they want to connect with the performers. Often they hang around for an hour or more.”

The current project about mental illness is especially meaningful for Tanya because she’s had family members with undiagnosed illness and a former partner who was hospitalized for a time. “Mental illness is usually so confusing and so unpredictable that it’s impossible to respond in the same logical way we deal with other problems,” she says. “It’s devastating for family members and for the person going through the experience.” In addition, she thinks the conventional media presents mental illness in a superficial way, whereas, in truth, each case is extremely complex.

For Project Life Stories, Tanya works with a group in a two-weekend process. The first is a full weekend spent in soul-searching writing activities. “We are not looking for a chronological description of what happened,” she asserts. “We’re trying to dig into the deepest layer of felt experience — the rage, the helplessness, the acceptance – those emotions that lead, one hopes, to gaining wisdom.” At the second weekend session, participants hone their writing and shape their pieces for the performance; each monologue runs about 10 to 12 minutes. Of the seven participants in Minds Interrupted, several are well known in the community, like U.S. Representative Tom Udall, who has a brother with schizophrenia and who will introduce the program.

Tanya’s hoping this production will bring compassion to the different parties and will explore the many different faces of mental illness. She observes, “With a death, you suffer loss one time, but with mental illness, you often lose a person again and again. It’s a shattering experience.”




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	A group of Arab Israeli, Palestinian and Jewish Israeli teens performing monologues on peace.

Tanya is passionate about her role in bringing personal stories to the public that might otherwise remain in the shadows or in silence. Tanya recently returned to her roots and started working again with individuals who want to develop full-length solo shows. Mental illness is usually so confusing and so unpredictable that it’s impossible to respond in the same logical way we deal with other problems. Giving Voice to Our Stories: Tanya Taylor Rubenstein and Project Life Stories by Rosemary Zibart anya Taylor Rubenstein, the bright, vibrant creator of Project Life Stories, is currently helping another often-neglected group of people give voice to their deep feelings — their anger, pain, fear, shame, confusion and endless hope. This time the subject is mental illness, and the monologues she’s directing come from individuals diagnosed with chronic illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disease, depression and anxiety disorder, as well as from their family members. As always, Tanya is passionate about her role in bringing personal stories to the public that might otherwise remain silent or in the shadows. In the past she’s worked with groups like Veterans for Peace, cancer survivors, hospice care workers and individuals with AIDS. But in the case of mental illness, she feels a particularly strong need to remove the stigma that afflicts the condition. “The more people fear and misunderstand mental illness,” says Tanya, “the more important it is to bring it into the public arena.” The performance, cosponsored by the Santa Fe affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is called Minds Interrupted: Stories of Lives Affected by Mental Illness and will be held on March 15 at the Santa Fe Armory for the Arts. In addition to working with groups, Tanya also works with individuals, helping each craft his or her own story. “I feel that our cultural disconnect from our own life stories and family stories have created a deep pain that runs through this society at this time in history,” she contends. “Personal storytelling is a way to examine our lives and pull the disparate pieces together for ourselves and the public.” For Tanya, one-person shows are a key form of dramatic art, yet that’s not how she started out. Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area, she was well-versed in conventional drama like Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and Molière, and planned to become a Broadway actress. She studied at Carnegie Mellon University and also took acting courses at H B Studios in Greenwich Village. Her life took a dramatic turn, however, the first time she was introduced to a solo performance. At a little theater in Boston, she watched as a man in a plaid shirt came on stage; he sat down on a chair and took out a story to read. The man was Spalding Gray, and Tanya was astounded by the impact of his personal trajectory. “For me, the performance represented intimacy without artifice; he was authentic in a way we’re all craving,” she asserts. From then on, at age 19, she knew that she wanted to do solo works, but she had no idea how to go about it. In 1991, after “listening to her inner voices,” Tanya decided to try out New Mexico. She sold most of her furniture and left the rest on the street in New York, arriving out West with $2,000 in her pocket. Friends from the city claimed she’d surely be back in six months. But they were wrong, she proudly announces — 16 years later, she’s still in Santa Fe. From her first days here, Tanya started writing, both on her own and in workshops. She wrote a number of scripts, some of which, she admits, were very bad. Shortly after her arrival, a good friend died of AIDS, and wanting to find ways to connect with the gay community, Tanya became a founding board member of Kitchen Angels. Finally, at age 31, she created a one-woman show called Honeymoon in India and performed it at the Railyard Performance Space. “The show was based on my experience of going on a spiritual quest to India and meeting with a guru who said no woman could become ‘enlightened’ because they had periods,” explains Tanya. Though the experience was excruciating at the time, it later seemed quite funny to the young actress. Her show was extremely very well received — the Santa Fe Reporter nominated Honeymoon in India as one of the city’s “top ten shows of year,” right up there with the Opera and Santa Fe Stages. Since that success, Tanya has never done conventional theater again. “Monologues are both scarier and more exciting for me,” she maintains. For several years, she continued to do her own autobiographical dramatic pieces, but after having a daughter and going through a divorce, she realized she had to find a way to pay the bills. She began offering weekend-long workshops for women who wanted to do one-person shows. At the end of the brief sessions, each participant performed a 10-minute personal story. “I saw how powerful it is for people to tap into their lives in a way they’d never done before,” Tanya declares. Soon thereafter, she dreamed that a giant banner reading “Cancer Monologues” was floating over the famed Lincoln Center in New York City, and she decided to offer the monologue process to people who had experienced cancer: some had been healed, some were in remission, others were still actively battling the disease. All had extremely poignant perspectives on their illnesses and the journeys they’d traveled as a result of being diagnosed with cancer. The monologues were filled with pain, embarrassment, humor, anger, regret, inspiration. There were few dry eyes in the Santa Fe theater after each performance. The tremendous success of that project (which resulted in repeat productions and a book), both for the individuals participating and for the audience, spurred Tanya to use the same process in working with people with AIDS, with mothers telling stories of pregnancy and childbirth, with Veterans For Peace, with hospice caregivers, and with individuals who’ve experienced sexual or domestic abuse. For several years, she traveled to cities all over the country offering workshops. But after a long stretch of doing what she calls “therapeutic monologues,” Tanya recently returned to her roots and started working again with individuals who want to develop full-length solo shows. At present, she offers a yearlong workshop for eight men and women. “It’s extremely creative and open-ended,” she says. “People may end up with a show they perform for the public or not. They can draw upon experiences in their own lives or create fictional characters. The content is limited only by one’s imagination.” She compares the popularity of one-person shows to the increased attention being given to memoirs and autobiographies. At a recent performance staged at the Armory of the Arts, two of her students participated: Susana Guillaume and Michele Vest. Susana’s production consisted of an entertaining, often very funny autobiographical piece about growing up in a Jewish family in England and moving to the United States, with a few lively detours along the way. Michele’s show was based on interviews she’d done with several Central American immigrants, with her playing the parts of the men and women she’d learned about. As Tanya points out, Michele gave voice to people who usually remain voiceless. “These performances do not rely on any contrivance or so-called production values,” she maintains. “They’re powerful because of their simplicity.” Tanya finds her work with the therapeutic monologues and with the one-person shows equally enriching and rewarding. Both incorporate a transformational process for the participants. “It’s so important for people to get a chance to tell their story, whatever the story is,” she says, pointing to the deep experience working with Palestinian and Israeli teenagers who were in Santa Fe several years ago for the Creativity for Peace Camp. Sharing stories with the public can be healing, she maintains. “It offers comfort to people who have gone through grief and trauma to stand on a stage and be seen and heard by a compassionate audience.” And yes, she claims, the audiences are compassionate — that’s the sort of people attracted to such performances. “The audiences are so moved and so respectful,” she observes. “They don’t like to leave the theater because after this kind of heart-opening experience, they want to connect with the performers. Often they hang around for an hour or more.” The current project about mental illness is especially meaningful for Tanya because she’s had family members with undiagnosed illness and a former partner who was hospitalized for a time. “Mental illness is usually so confusing and so unpredictable that it’s impossible to respond in the same logical way we deal with other problems,” she says. “It’s devastating for family members and for the person going through the experience.” In addition, she thinks the conventional media presents mental illness in a superficial way, whereas, in truth, each case is extremely complex. For Project Life Stories, Tanya works with a group in a two-weekend process. The first is a full weekend spent in soul-searching writing activities. “We are not looking for a chronological description of what happened,” she asserts. “We’re trying to dig into the deepest layer of felt experience — the rage, the helplessness, the acceptance – those emotions that lead, one hopes, to gaining wisdom.” At the second weekend session, participants hone their writing and shape their pieces for the performance; each monologue runs about 10 to 12 minutes. Of the seven participants in Minds Interrupted, several are well known in the community, like U.S. Representative Tom Udall, who has a brother with schizophrenia and who will introduce the program. Tanya’s hoping this production will bring compassion to the different parties and will explore the many different faces of mental illness. She observes, “With a death, you suffer loss one time, but with mental illness, you often lose a person again and again. It’s a shattering experience.”

		Tanya Taylor Rubenstein Photo by Jennifer Esperanza © 2007


	Minds Interrupted: Stories of Lives Affected by Mental Illness will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday March 15 at the Armory for the Arts Theater, 1050 Old Pecos Trail. For information or reservations, contact Michele Herling at Compassionatetouch@hotmail.com or by calling 982-9804. Tickets cost $15 or $50 and can be purchased in advance or at the door. To contact Tanya Taylor Rubenstein and Project Life Stories, go to www.ProjectLifeStories.org or Tanya@projectlifestories.org, or call 470-5267.