Saving Tania’s Privates (photo by Joe Jankovsky)

Theatre magic doesn’t happen every day or in every show. Those instances when time stops and you are transported from every day life into the world of a writer or a performer are happening right now at the FRIGID New York festival in a basement theater called Under St. Marks. The mastermind behind all this power brought to the stage is Tania Katan with Saving Tania’s Privates. A personal, witty, no-nonsense recount of a Jewish lesbian’s challenge with cancer since the age of 21.

Saving Tania’s Privates featuring Tania Katan (Photo by Josiah Epstein)

The play starts with an invasive TSA airport pat down by a male security officer; Tania suggests the female security officer must be uncomfortable with the fact that she looks like a boy and has no breasts. Thus we are automatically introduced to the subject at hand and how it will be handled in the next 58min (give or take). Along the way we meet Tania’s bf gay, her colorful parents, her lump-spotting girlfriends, and the doctors and nurses who have affected her life over the course of a decade. Her  body has her living like she’s running a 10k marathon, with constant check ups,  training,  running and stopping to grasp air.  Each person in her life has given her a different perspective and obstacle as to how to live her life while always maintaining herself triumphant against a pesky body. I would hate to take away from the wonderful discoveries in this piece, so I will refrain from describing too much of what I hope you will go experience on your own.

Theatre has always welcomed stories of bravery, survival and struggle with dis-ease. There is a delicate balance between using the theatrical medium as a way of therapy while still conveying a message, and luckily Ms. Katan has created a raw personal comedy dealing with a serious subject matter with gusto and zero sentimentalism. She is here for the craft, not to replace the shrink’s couch. A lot of this success has to do with her crisp script and knack for storytelling. She has given us permission to laugh at her trials as we view before us not a cancer survivor, but a woman who has decided to grab life by the horns and ride that smelly  bull – and oh how wonderful it feels when you can stay on top even if only for small intervals. This is the magic of the play, this is the strength of Ms Katan.

Bravo Ms. Katan, bravo! If you only have a chance to see one show at the FRIGID this year, make Saving Tania’s Privates the one – you wont regret it. While you’re at it order her memoir My One-Night Stand With Cancer, I have!

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FRIGID New York Festival 2011 will run February 23-March 6 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1sr Ave and Ave A). Tickets ($10-$16) may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444. All shows runs 60 minutes long or less.

Related Posts:

• FRIGID New York Festival 2011 – Five Questions For: Saving Tania’s Privates
• Pretty-n-Papi, The Pickle To My Fluff? (FRIGID New York 2011)
• Inside Straight: The Twisty Path Of Personal Investigation In A Modern Age (FRIGID New York 2011)
• I Love You (We’re F*#ked) (FRIGID New York 2011)
• ONEymoon – Is ONE Enough? (FRIGID New York 2011)

Welcome back to another installment of FRIGID New York Festival 2011 Q&A!  We’ll be running these throughout February until the Festival starts, so be sure to check back to read all about the great shows that will be taking part in the festival.  Also – don’t miss the winner-take-all game of Rock Paper Scissors! Today’s Q&A is with Tania Katan who is the Writer/Performer of Saving Tania’s Privates

Funny, outrageous and true! This critically acclaimed comedy hit from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival will have you laughing till you weep. A show about far-out families, quirky girlfriends and boobs…but not necessarily in that order.

Saving Tania's Privates (Photo by Joe Jankovsky)

answers by Tania Katan Writer and Performer

Antonio Asks: What makes FRIGID such a warm and welcoming experience for your production?

Um… have you seen your website? Seriously, it’s like The Happiest Medium only hires super hot, totally accomplished, culturally astute people. The only thing that could make my Frigid experience a little warmer and more welcoming is if I could spoon with ALL of the Contributors at The Happiest Medium. And maybe I could be on the inside of the spoon, with K.B. dangerously close to the soft curve of my spine.  Or a t-shirt. I’m not sure what THM is offering as “official sponsors.”

Diánna Asks: What about this play do you feel most drawn to personally, and because of that, what message do you hope the audience walks away with?

Although I didn’t have me in mind to perform this one-woman play based on my life—DUH—I came to understand that if I am exploring the absurdity of the body, whether queer or ill or healthy or in motion, it’s my job to inhabit my body, perform live, and connect with an audience so I can say, “I’m here, I’m alive, this is my story, what’s yours?”

Hopefully, audiences will be reminded that they have an opportunity to live their lives with more urgency, humor and love. They will leave with a framework for finding the humor in awkward, vulnerable and shocking situations.

Karen Asks: That’s some title.  How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?

Saving Tania’s Privates. Well, I was sitting around thinking about my tits, and probably other people’s tits too, I’m a Professional Lesbian so it’s all part of the job, and I was missing all of the tits in my life, and also thinking about this word “survivor” and how it’s linked to both the breast cancer movement and veterans of war. Then there’s the fact that I seem to be losing private parts at breakneck speed, and at one point in the play Elmer Fudd offers me a wifle so I can bwow my way out of my sad cartoon cell. Fudd, battling surgeons who are ninjas, disco dancing around relationship land mines, lots of sex (with self and others), and running the ultimate race to find out why my body is waging war against me so I can have a shot at saving my life … Saving Tania’s Privates made sense. It was either that or Why Tania Can’t Go Swimming, but I’m saving that title for the after-school television special version.

Stephen Asks: You must have a favorite part of your show.  What makes it your favorite?

I love Nurse Fred. He brings a gay sensibility that makes me feel at home in the hospital. His fondness for Tales of The City is trumped by his fondness for Macabre Tales of The Hospital.

Nurse Fred: Only five doors down from us is a man with the flesh eating disease. Do you know how he got it? He was playing basketball, he goes to make one of those shots, what are they called? Come on, you’re a lesbian Tania. OH, a Lay Down! He falls, scrapes his ass, gets the flesh eating disease! He only has ONE BUTT CHEEK. Do you drink from water fountains, Tania?

(I shake my head somewhere between Yes and No.)

Nurse Fred: GOOD, because I like you. I can’t tell you how many germs are festering on the tip of a fountain.  You might as well give a stranger a rim job!

Lina Asks: How much of your show was inspired by true events?

100%. It is all true. Unless you ask my mother, and she’ll say, in a thick French accent, “Tania likes to use, how do you say, creative license.” My twin brother will say, “What is truth? Inspiration? Lina, have you heard of Food Not Bombs? Do you want to share a vegan meal and some information?” And my father will say, “Are you challenging my daughter? Huh? She’s a fucking genius! You know, when she was a baby I used to take her with me in my cab, and we’d drive around Manhattan, and you know what she would do? She would look out the window and smile. That is when I knew she was a fucking genius! Truth? What the fuck is that? Now The Rockettes, that’s where it’s at!”

THM Bonus Question: If you could play a virtual game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with another FRIGID Show which show would you take on?  And what would you throw?

Wonder Woman: A How To Guide For Little Jewish Girls. Because she looks littler and more Jewish than me! I firmly believe that marginalized groups should work hard to keep each other down, so that others don’t have an opportunity to do it to us first! SCISSORS, Wonder Yid! Let’s see what you got!

Thanks Saving Tania’s Privates – for participating in The Happiest Medium’s FRIGID New York Festival 2011 Q&A.  And for playing our game!  You’re officially SCISSORS.  So you may win TWICE.  Or, not at all.  This is how it works in the crazy world of the VIRTUAL ROCK PAPER SCISSORS TOURNAMENT! For the rest of you – don’t forget to check out Saving Tania’s Privates!

Related Posts:

• Women’s History Month: Celebrating Women In The Arts – Spotlight On Heidi Grumelot
• Saving Tania’s Privates, The Bravura of Ms. Katan (FRIGID New York 2011)
• A Kind Kind Man, So He Says (FRIGID New York 2011)
• FRIGID New York Festival 2011 – Five Questions For: The Bitter Poet: Looking For Love In All The Wrong Black Box Performance Spaces
• Paradise Lost, Insight Found (FRIGID New York 2011)