Survival Story
Tania Katan's battle with cancer is subject of one-woman show
By Kim Stredney

Tania Katan’s one-woman show is billed as a comedy, but the subject matter is serious — surviving breast cancer, not once, but twice.

Saving Tania’s Privates will be staged from Sept. 16 to Oct. 10 at Phoenix Little Theatre.

Katan said theater is a way for her to escape through humor into an alternate reality.

“It’s highly personalized,� she said of the show during which she plays different characters. “I have a connection to these personal memories, but it’s not an open wound. It’s a constricted wound that has a bandage around it.�

When she was 6 years old, Katan’s family moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Phoenix. At age 21, while she was studying theater at Arizona State University, cancer struck.

Ten years later, just as she was about to be officially declared “cancer free,� cancer struck again.

The play is an adaptation of her memoir, My One Night Stand With Cancer, which deals wither poignant battle with cancer, losing both of her breasts, family antics and girlfriend drama.

Katan was working as a writer in California when she got the second diagnosis and remembered going to a bookstore to see if there were any cancer memoirs. “I didn’t find one that spoke to a queer, racy, young woman, so I thought ‘I can wait around for it to be written, or I can write it myself,’� she said.

The book was released in late 2005, about the time Katan was moving back to Phoenix.

Katan, 38, said it is important for her to perform the show herself. “I’m writing about a body that’s endured pain and it would not be fair to an audience to see a healthy body telling that story,� she said. “It is important for people to bear witness that I’m alive and have survived, like a lot of other people in the world.�

The play debuted in 2007 in Seattle, a city that Katan jokes is “the tits� as far as theater goes. She went international in 2008 to face the notoriously difficult critics at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“Famous people who would normally do really well critically get totally trashed in Edinburgh,� she said. “I was lucky enough to get really great reviews.�

The Phoenix production of the show is a homecoming of sorts. More than a decade ago, Katan was in Holiday? Schmoliday, a production she created with AJ Epstein, at the Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theatre.

Epstein also produced Saving Tania’s Privates and they thought the next step would be bringing the show to Phoenix. “That’s part of AJ’s fondness. AJ thought bringing it back to Arizona would be fun and sentimental.�

Katan said her favorite part of her journey has been “the beauty of being able to perform your work and engage with an audience. When I’m doing a live performance or reading, they tell me their stories and we engage in a dialogue. It’s the physical and energetic exchange that I love.�

Through it all, Katan has managed to keep her sense of humor. “My friend wrote the book, The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks, and she gets all these great e-mails from people asking her out,� she joked. “All I get are e-mails from people who are touched by my story.�

Katan lives with her “lady friend,� Angela Ellsworth, in central Phoenix.

VITAL STATISTICS

Saving Tania’s Privates 
Sept. 16-Oct. 10
The Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theatre
100 E. McDowell Road, Phoenix
Tickets: $22.50, students and seniors $15
602-254-2151; www.phoenixtheatre.com