MATERNAL DREAMER in Transition with Director Tanya Taylor Rubinstein of ProjectLifestories

Early last year I submitted my show Maternal Dreamer to the Los Angeles Women's Theater Festival. It was not accepted. The committee was impressed with my performance and suggested I work on the writing of the transitions between stories. This was totally ironic for me because the show was about Women in Transition and Transformation so YES...I definitely needed to work the connections between the 4 stories in the show so that there were CLEAR TRANSITIONS. Rewriting the show then became metaphorical for me on what the show and the experiences for women are all about.

I later met with an acting coach... I told him about the show and being the intuitive spirit he was...he listened intently and then asked me the question, "What is transition and transformation to you?"
I said in short "Life and Death are the same. We ARE. Because GOD IS who said 'I AM'" or something like that. He sat back and said, "I don't know that you're telling the whole story". He then shared how he was inappropriately handled by an adult as a child and spoke of abuse. Whoa, I thought...how did he go there from my story?

A few months later I go to work with Tanya Rubinstein of Project Lifestories to see if she could assist me with Maternal Dreamer which was quickly becoming something different from the original script (MAJOR TRANSFORMATION). Something else was brewing for me...regarding the concept of Maternal Dreamer. As I talked more about the story and the heart of what I wanted to really tell...the story of my grandmother came out and my mother and myself. Before long I was telling a story about abandonment, sexual and physical abuse and how a secret infested and affected generations. It's a story that keeps growing and growing with new truths for each generation. At that point I decided Maternal Dreamer would be a series of performances about creating the "purposeful life". It hadn't occurred to me that sexual abuse and abandonment would be a part of this story and yet it is.

Taking a place of empowerment and ownership of this vessel (our bodies) brings the woman's story to a whole new level of active space and creation. I believe there is no power in victimhood but total power in active resolve. I believe once we release our experiences to what they are and move through a life of what can be...what we choose will be such a meaningful place. This I believe is so for women in particular ... and for men I have no doubt the story is the same.