This week I am sooooo...busy, but all with some amazing monologue shows I am directing.

I have a year long class that meets in Santa Fe. The class begins every January and is called "How to Create a One Person Show"....In December, the whole class performs excerpts from their complete solo scripts that they have written and embodied during the year. This year I had 7 amazing students, all of whom are performing in the showcase on Dec 5 and 6 at the Railyard Performance Space.

Let me share a little about their upcoming shows, which are as diverse, eclectic and amazing as all of them....

Maida Rogerson, an incredible actor from Toronto has put together a show about a woman who has a stroke....She plays 3 characters in this show....The woman who has had the stroke who is in a rehab unit, her Type-A daughter...who has many issues with her mother and Wally, her flamboyant gay best friend of many years who adds some levity to the character's story. Maida has fleshed out these characters and offers a stunning intimacy into the world of a human being who has always been "in control" losing control of her body and the life she knew.

Kathleen Fonatin: Kathleen is unlike any other student I have ever worked with. I told her the other day she is a superstar and I meant it....Kathleen has energy the way John Leguzamo has energy...the way Whoopie Goldberg at her best has energy...she is completly embodied and alive in her work. She has a background in stand up comedy...but in the show she is doing.....she is offering depth, vulnerability and dare I say genius. This piece starts out as a wired, searching, questioning performance art piece and evolves into the most intimate personal story of her bottoming out as an addict (all the while, living in L.A. and performing) and her rise into wholeness.

Uma Jill Marcus is a dreamweaver, dream retrever and a visual artist who draws her dreams. In her show, the story of a four year period of her life, she literally draws her dreams to retrive memories that have lived in her body and soul. She dives into the deep end of the ocean. The piece, at once psycologically revealing is ultimatly the story of personal transendence. To boot, we are gifted with a slide show of her drawings from this time period, that take this multi-media performance piece to a whole new realm.

More on the other shows tomorrow.....I'm off to direct and rehearse.

To contact me about solo performance coaching in and out of state, e-mail me at tanya@projectlifestories.org