Exploring intimacy, identity and ocd on the stage with Tana Sirois

Welcome to episode 212 with Tana Sirois, who is an actor, theatre maker and coach who is currently touring a one woman show called UnTethered, an autobiographical comedy that follows a queer, demi sexual woman with obsessive compulsive disorder as she attempts to transcend her fears so that she may finally experience what it’s like to feel safe and loved.

Tana is originally from the States but it was while studying acting at university in Liverpool that she first started to experience problems with her mental health.  Despite struggling for many years, she didn’t receive an official diagnosis of OCD until the age of 32.

In this episode I chat to Tana about her love of acting, her time here in Liverpool, what was going on in her life when she first started to experience mental illness and how OCD has impacted her throughout her life.

We chat about the selfishness of recovery, updating your language as you get better and how mental illness impacts all aspects of identity.

We also chat about Tana’s show UnTethered, the vulnerability of exploring mental illness, intimacy and sexual identity in front of an audience and why that’s important.

Tana is getting ready for some dates in London and Brighton before taking the show to Edinburgh and you can learn more about the show @untethered_the_play.

I’m a big fan of mental illness being portrayed on the stage.  It’s a powerful way to bring the realities of this stuff to people’s attention and really connect and bring out the emotions and complexities of mental health so it was wonderful to explore all of that with Tana in this episode.

Her website is www.tanasirois.com

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Thanks for listening!