Taking Our Life
Suicide, Ecocide, and Daring to Live
By Shoshana Alexander
Successful launch of
“Taking Our Life”
We did it! Great thanks to all of you who helped make the launch of my play, “Taking Our Life” possible. The actors and musicians lent their skills in uplifting and profound performances. All three shows were very well-attended, with engaged audiences in tears and laughter. Many stayed after for the follow-up discussions. To the right you can find a taste of the production.
May each and every one of you answer your unique call during the coming year. All hands are needed “on deck” as we steer the current ship of Life through some turbulent waters.
Warm regards and happy spring!
~Shoshana
About "Taking Our Life"
Taking Our Life is a new play that deals with themes of suicide and ecocide. It was launched with a staged reading on November 17th, 18th, and 19th in Ashland, Oregon.
Monologues revealing my story of losing my sister Carol are interwoven with the stories of Chad, a homeless marine veteran, and Lily, a Native American woman who answers when he calls into a suicide hotline. Live songs from an original score run through the play. This play asks us to take our life and live it, to do what we are uniquely called to do, for the sake of life itself.
The staged reading featured Barrett O'Brien (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Dog Theatre Company), LaVonne Andrews (Days of Our Lives, Westworld), musician and actor Elias Alexander, and myself.
We are now working to take the project to the next level.
In the past 50 years—during my own lifetime--the rate of suicide around the world has gone up 60%. Every 40 seconds someone ends their own life. My sister Carol was one of them.
During those same 50 years, the rate of temperature increase on Earth has nearly doubled. Are suicide and ecocide connected? Why are we killing ourselves here on planet Earth?
Suicide is among the leading causes of death among young people worldwide. We lose 22 veterans a day to suicide. Native Americans have the highest rate of any group. More people kill themselves every year on planet Earth than die by war, murder, and natural disasters combined. As we watch the primary characters in this piece dare to choose life, my hope is that we each can more firmly resolve to take our own lives and live them for the sake of Life, for the sake of those yet to come, and dare to live the life that is uniquely ours. This play is my response to that call.
Audience Response:
“Taking Our Life is a remarkable work—fierce, visceral, gripping, with magnificent language, unexpected humor, and perfect timing . . . a potent and moving experience.”
--Siyanda E.
“The weaving of stories—of the military veteran, of the Native American elder, of your sister and your experience of her suicide—along with statistics about what’s happening to the planet punctuated brilliantly and powerfully the harsh reality of suicide and ecocide.”
--Liz M.
“People in the audience were weeping profusely. As I walked back to my car afterwards I felt swept clean inside, how one might feel the day after a huge storm. I had a sense of how necessary communal ritual is, and how loving and safe the container had been to accomplish such a feat. Thank you, for all of us!”
--Norma B.
“A favorite moment was the way two/three conversations overlapped and entwined near the end; it gave the same deep feeling I get from effective counterpoint in a Bach piece—and it so well conveyed urgency in the story. There is a place for urgency in our world now, perhaps for anger even.”
--Tristan C.
“ . . . agonizing, wrenching, cathartic, inspiring, transformational . . . and so much more.
--Carol H.
