THe lux and the brag of bing an artist is that you don’t and shouldn’t adjust your direction based on the desire of anything but your GUT
My GUT drives in a zig-zag.
My GUT, SHe likes to turn right before she turns left because it’s fun.
why would I want to MISS a mistake just because I know it’s wrong?
Where is the FUN in That?
When I was 9 years old I was taken on the most world win vacation ever. My family and our family friends all packed up and took that EUROPEAN VACATION everyone saw in the movies. We had a layover in London for a few hours and we went to see Starlight Express! The we continued on to Italy and France and we pulled and pushed 11 pieces of UN-WHEELED luggage with us on trains on Gondolas and up and down cobble pavements. I honestly don’t know how my parents made this treck but they did. OUt of the 8 of us that went that year 5 of us are still living on this earth.
I am one of the living.
I must have clocked Starlight express because I knew from that moment on I wanted to not only be an actress but I wanted to be in LONDON!
I ended up training as an actor from then on – I attended an art school since the 5th grade and I ended my studies with a Post Graduate Degree from the World Reknowled but often unheard of school for classical theater. Webber Douglas Academy
I attended this school because I was informed that the original teachers from RADA and LAMDA had moved there and this was the TRUE TRUE LONDON training.
I was thrilled to be one of 12 students and even more thrilled to be the only American. I trained there for a year and I was put through it like nobodies business. Their approach to acting was external rather than internal and it was completely foreign to me until I began to mimic people and base my characters on them and that somehow gave me a doorway into this approach.
I went on to work in theater for the next 30 years and teach fitness and movement classes eventually becoming a solid artist with a great body of work and my own method of approaching works.
My personal like is full. I have raised two boys and have been married for 23 years! Nearly a quarter of a century I have been working on becoming and although I thought I was there…it wasn’t until I returned to LONDON with my HUSBAND a few weeks ago did ai actually know KNOW.
WE spent a week in London just the two of us. We pranced around the city and had an amazing time dropping into the rhythm of the LONDONERS.
We immediately walked past my school and the place I lived and the Church we had class in and the PUB we performed above ( i think)
The city has changed but I felt the history of my younger self still roaming the streets. I thought I took her home last time i visited by myself but this was different. This was the version of me that had set my hopes on a man I had fallen deeply in love with coming to visit me.
I was devastated when he chose the more wise decision to NOT visit me and not continue to try and make it work. I was beyond broken. I didn’t try and change his mind.. I just about faced.
Figuring out the best place to pull it free from and then doing allows things to that you have been living with, and around, make SOOO MUCH MORE SENSE.
I chose to follow my original idea and get married to stay in London and although I did, non of it lasted and I eventually ended up back in the arms of this LOVE and back in Miami and safe and secure and in LOVE.
So meeting my ghost of myself on the park bench outside Buckingham Palace was gut wrenching. I had to hold my ghost and allow her to sit on lap and have Steve tell her to her face…it was HIS choice not to come visit. Not anyone else’s.
I spent 25 year blaming his family for not fully accepting me but in the end the person who was the one that deserved the anger was the man i built an entire life with. My ghost had her guts spilt and the ENGLISH passer-byers weren’t sure what to do with this RAW AMERICAN EMOTION being spewed on this grounds.
“It was me.” ” I choose not to come”
Why would you do that? Doubled over in pain
I thought it would be too hard to do this. For us to do this.
The TRUE HURTS
THE TRUTH RINGS TRUE
and in that my ghost evaporated and left me there in my physical form to recalibrate.
I had created a life with a person who didn’t originally bet on me. I created a life with just enough of an ounce of a lack of faith in me that i would always feel off and this aligned with so much of my thread of a story of not being good enough that I must have attracted it and liked it and there… on that bench and the LONG walk and the SWAN we met after..there in the unravelling of this ghost story.
F
I know that there are alternative versions of my life being lived and I hope that the version of me who stayed in LONDON is now freer for me letting her go GO.
I feel freer for letting her GO GO
I See myself and life with more details and I feel so seen by MESELF
A film on a mirror is JUST like a ghost from your past..
At a time in the United States and the world, I have found it important to speak from my heart and be a light in the quest to alleviate the lack of information about being a Jewish woman.
Finding your artistic voice is an unspoken journey for every creative who chooses their way over the highway—the tiny tip of a number two pencil is the goal. What exactly are you saying? How exactly are you saying it? And, as importantly, who are you saying it to?
I am a fifty-year-old actress living in a pocket of Miami that attracts travelers who need a nondescript place to relax. There isn’t any group of people in my neighborhood; it is filled with people who enjoy a simple vibe, lots of trees, and quiet walks at 4 a.m., guarded by the local cops, who take pride in keeping the area very safe.
On the beach during my morning dances with the universe, I felt a rush of emotion and a vision. I saw myself wearing a white silk robe with a sun on it, which reminded me of the Egg costume I wear in my solo show, JEWBANA.
I am making rugelach and answering phone messages with a voice recording.
I think, is this the second act? Am I doing Jewbana and taking it to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh again with all my amazing reviews, videos, and marketing material? I was in it; I was in the surf of the emotion of the vision I was seeing. I felt the silk fabric, I felt the rugelach on the table being spread out. I heard the sound of people calling and asking me for my opinion on their situation, and I saw myself on a stage, rolling the dough, answering the questions, wearing the silk garb and feeling all of it.
I reached out to my contact from my previous time in Edinburgh, and he offered his wise and unsettling wisdom.
“You can’t take Jewbana to Edinburgh. It isn’t going to work. The anti-Semitism is too high there.” In those words, in a Facebook message, I heard the cold steel clanging of a metal garage door creak, slide, and shut.
DONE.
I was free in a way to turn my head and see that as I traveled around Miami and attended events to reacquaint myself with the community after a few months in the Northeast, I started to learn that Miami is where one million Jewish people are. One million people. And that it is among the safest places in the world to be a Jew, and that the Mayor of Miami claimed it is because the Cuban Catholics demanded it be safe for the Jews.
My show, Jewbana, which is about a Jewish woman and her Cuban Catholic family, was met with the sound of silverware on crystal. I heard it….
I have been slowly allowing the sound to chime through my body. I auditioned for the show at the JCC after my Jewish mystic Reiki chiropractor told me she thought I should be in their shows. I was aghast, and yet I turned on my toes and auditioned for the role I wanted at the callback, then rescinded my audition for a larger, more popular theater. I sat in this newfound awareness.
I found what I want to say, how I want to say it, and who I want to say it to.
I want to share my show, Jewbana, with its people. I want to celebrate the relationship between the Cubans and the Jews in this beautiful and vibrant city of Miami.
I will.
I shall.
So it is.
we met once or twice I think. You and me, Patience. You have a nasty little sneer every time I get near you.
you little patience you.
I’m just going to put this pen down and whisper sweet nothings into the air. See if the tipping point effect of aerosol rings true with wishing as it does with infections.
I am a laying here. a waiting
for you
I never said I’d do it quietly and no one said in order to have grace you had to shut up but all we have to mirror GRACE is silent noir films so of course I have assumed SILENCE is my only option.
So I HUSH UP bc how can one scream or laugh gracefully and those are my favorite passings of times.
My poor hubby is rarely aware of the type of day he’s going to be jolted with once I pop up out of my slumber and into the fresh morning DEW.
I feel wise when I bargain with time.. bargain with the signs that they are closer than they are…
I feel the space I know it’s time away but I just need a BONE to chew Hold me down while the clouds pass by.
Acting Ever changing beliefs HEALTH Marriage
After the show at the JCC community theater, I was so thrilled and in LOVE with the process of creating art. I saw in others how they so desperately wanted to be good at what they were doing and how much they cared about telling a story. I fell in love with my ART FORM all over again, but this time…from pure JOY…PURE bliss.
I love acting, the art form of it…I loved watching people become actors and I loved seeing how important it was for me NOT to worry about other people but to focus on my own little job.
A few things came from this experience.
1) I was able to be around Jewish people.
2) I was able to be aware of other people without feeling it was my duty to heal them.
3) Ending ANY PLAY causes me to downward spiral.
4) Professional actors must return to the community theater as part healing and part nurturing the art form.
5) I still love my acting and have the utmost respect for the professional elements of it and why they are in place.
6) I never felt ANY OF IT was beneath me
I feel I fear things mostly because of what that experience will reveal about my current truths.
I am here- blogging after the show. Trying to pack for a winter experience in NYC, seeing GREAT THEATER with my family. I am trying to stop the endless loop of dopamine drops while my poor husband dodges or rather, attempts to dodge, my fireballs of blame for feeling so DOWN. MY EGO HAS THE NEED TO GRASP FOR BREATH ONE LAST TIME BEFORE THIS VERSION OF HER DIES.
A dramatic exit as always.
I take a shower I pop a medical hybrid gummy- I try again to get into my blog so I can bitch to myself about what my mother just called and told me I write so well about….. “growing Pains”
Evolving hurts…on the way in and on the way out…and you’d think I would be better at handling the feeling I always get…
But what I do now is…
!)I go at it harder so I let go of it quicker
2) I DO NOT bite my tongue Rather I let her flare up and shred anyone or anything that dares to step infront of me.
I dismantle my hive dive.
shaking convulsing if need be
GET THE FUCK out of the way I need to ……
SPALSH INTO IT
and I am BACK
FLOWstate
S
I never realized how gross that sounded till just a few weeks ago. I was asked if I was in the next show at the Jewish Community Center and I cringed. Me??? MOI! stand down and kiss my feet. I am THEE I am MEEE SUSIE K TAYLOR. and in that thought a screeching sound broke my EGO as my Maiden name KREITMAN fell to the floor letter by letter.
I am closing a show about a brooklyn Jewish Family in the late 70s and at the JCC in AVENTURA and i FEEL so happy.
Being in a Jewish community AT LAST. I kept saying how lonely I have felt and nothing would fill that slice of parched spirit UNTIL i returned to my Jewish ROOTS.
I grew up at the JCC in South Miami. I went to a youth group there and met my first Boy Friend who I would have some very meaningful first times with. I would also join the B’nai Brith youth group and meet my best friends to this day. I would work out there all the time after hard long rehearsal days in High School and For some-reason I just LOST that connection and eventually like most things people let go of and yearn to return to, I decided I had no feeling toward it. I bar mitvahed my boys and I was done…
Actually i was in need of finding my jewish self again. I felt lost and cold since the 10/7 act that brought me and my connection to myself and others in my Jewish community to the front Burner.
I am writting this as I listen to the live streamed Shabbat services from Central Synagouge on the tail of finding that my eldest has an internship in NYC this summer and my younger son is getting into colleges and even getting scholarships.
I am surly heading to NYC next year maybe as early as this summer and I look forward to saying from the JCC to NYC in one singel bounce.
love SUZELLA
As a secular Jewish woman married to a Catholic man, I’ve raised my two sons as Jews, complete with Bar Mitzvahs and all the traditions. I’ve always felt connected to my Jewish identity, but I’m not the type to stay in Israel during a conflict. I’m the kind of Jewish person who will hug you tight, scream on your behalf, and make sure my kids know the Torah—but fighting? That’s just not me!
I adore Israel—not for any political reasons, but because when I first stepped off the plane, it felt like the earth welcomed me home. My feet sank into the ground, and I felt an overwhelming connection to the land that has always held a special place in my heart.
This past year has been a rollercoaster of emotions—dealing with rising self-hatred and confronting anti-Semitism has been tough. It bubbled up inside me, filling me with anger, fear, and sadness. Looking around, I realized I was mostly surrounded by non-Jews, which made my experience feel a bit isolating. Without a temple or a rabbi guiding me, I was at home, watching others cope with the conflict in their own ways. Meanwhile, my family carried on with their lives.
I began to focus my prayers on a small boy named Elon, who was one of the first to be released. It gave me a sense of purpose. Then, I found myself deeply connecting with the spirit of Sinwar, crying for hours as I walked through my neighborhood, feeling his anger and pain.
Soon enough, I discovered that some people I knew—people I worked with—were posting things that felt against me. I became confused, cold, and scared, feeling injustice from those I thought were allies. I realized there was a deep-seated need within me to feel protected.
It was such a profound need that I struggled to untangle myself from it. Safe at home, I silently screamed, “Protect me… from everything!”
Then, I stumbled upon a book mentioned by NPR that spoke to me just from its title. I ordered Bad Jews, and it unraveled my fears, challenging me to confront them head-on.
I felt freer! I wasn’t a victim; I learned that I’m a Jew who has found ways to survive, part of a lineage that chose safety and security over aggression.
My family was in the U.S. during the Holocaust, among those who left earlier, drawn by the call of America—a place where we could believe and live freely.
Anti-Semitism has certainly shown its face, and I’ve navigated a year filled with turmoil, moving from shock to fear to anger to acceptance. It’s been a classic mourning process.
But what was I really mourning?
I’ve come to realize that I was mourning the death of my own self-hatred. It was buried deep within me, rooted in my faith. The pain of being hated, along with centuries of feeling attacked, wasn’t just mine; it was woven into the memories of my people.
As much freedom as I enjoy, I can never be truly free if the core of my memories is based on pain, fear, or hatred. I’ve learned from my experiences as an actor that these emotions can create a wounded warrior at best.
For the past 15 years, I’ve been working to let go of anger and hate. I once asked my aunt why, after all this self-work, I still felt anger. She told me it’s just like my grandmother’s feelings, and I accepted that some things in our memory bank take a lifetime to resolve. But after October 7th, I was given a real chance to release that lineage.
It took me a year, and now I’m realizing that I’ve been hesitant to take action. Much of my character was built on the need to act. But now, I choose love. Love in all its forms! I no longer let anger anchor me down. I feel revealed and stripped bare, embracing the idea of love, which doesn’t demand action unless you want to share it.
Pause…
But first I want to recap my last year in the life of a performance artist. It began with me flying out my co-creator of Jewbana to the Berkshires. We spent a week re-writing the play we wrote in 2019 and what I took to Edinburgh and then to Miami Design District and then to South Beach’s Soho house.
We spent a time resting it and then we were hosted in NYC by my Bestie Daria and we read the script…had people read it. Then I was part of the United Solo Festival in Late September and we were able to celebrate with my entire family attending and my sister and mom join us…even though there were unresolved family matters I felt nothing to do with. We ate a large dinner with everyone at Josephina’s –
I then remounted the play with the help of Dawn again and Steve rewrote his scene and I performed it again in NYC and this time we filmed it and we sold out nearly and two wonderful theater producers and a NYC theater attended and we had a fancy gathering upstairs with drinks and some bites and my hair was now purple and I was so thrilled with the piece and especially how Jaeden’s piece came out…the original music by my friend NIKA and MOOG were amazing aditions.
Each time I presented the show it morphed. I returned to Miami and attended the very next day the Miami Web Fest where my assistant I hired was able to create a short of the OG Jewbana and I won my first on screen award… Audience Choice..
I got home and decided to do Jewbana one more time in Miami – and I produced the show myself and hired people and the show was amazing but in the end- I realized how much I DO NOT want to be a producer of my or anyone else’s work ever again. The electricity went half out, and the sound cues were all messed up. Prob due to special party gifts.
I went to Italy with the family over xmas and it was a dream come true…I am still amazed we went.
THEN
I spent Jan and Feb getting my branding up and clean. In March I started working with a Miami Dance company and taught them my SURF process…which totally helped them and then we used the same process to created a piece called The Thinker’s Thoughts and presented it at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens and then I started working on the writing for Bunny Yeager and in April I went to NYC and spent four days developing the piece and performed it in the city to a VIP audience – filmed it – (holding it)- and I was recorded in my first ever DRAG piece and artist Bio video in NYC at THE CELL THEATRE.
I came back to Miami and in June we will be remounting THE THINKER’S THOUGHTS at the Locust Projects Gallery.
SO yeah
PAUSE
PAUSE
PAUSE
PAUSE
I plan to stay home ALL summer…
but for business $$$
I am PAUSING…
BEING HERE
ReCHARGING
and mostly ….
hangin with TIPPS
How EGG-axtly does one bury their past. So many ways to be buried these days. In a coffin, In a mosleum, in a tarp in a forest, in ashes made in to jewlery to hang around the neck of your beloved… how does someone truly bury the past- especially if the vessle that held the past has not indeed past on yet. The vessle is still here but the person the role the character that has passed…well…where do we bury THEM?
I have found that to bury a post story you must act fully on several levels. The molecular and the metaphysical and everywhere in-between. I came to this blog to bury myself…place a tombstone on my website and shut it down. Remove it from the ethernet…the ether…the words of how I became ME- SUSIE – And then the SUSIE who is sitting here.
A scoldfoldng that was built on my inside like I learned the great DUOMO of Florense was suspected to…from the inside out and then..the architect burned the playbook and pnly sketches of a young child maybe are left…a young child named …devinchi or michelangelo..
SO i pronounce me the scafolding I built to maintain my marriage and my security in this upcoming to be movie about a middle aged women trying to accept her age and rewritting her original sotry to have the lead NOT a 20 somehting but f=rahter a fast becoming 50 something…
A women who spent time developing an art form in her home town that crosses reality theater and influencers of social media…a woman whoes inner theigsh are so fierce they can clasp the two universes beten themmbecasue of the structure…the ruless the beams that protect the house from hurricanes that casue her tall male fmaily members to DUCK and yet…they say…tight in the bees home…warm in her honey…
They neutralize each other in hopes of killing their own egos –
We can’t fully see ourselves from within. We need to be pulled out and in that pulling..that cracking out…we gain a wisdom of an entirely new opposite mode of living.
THe crack makes us realize there are options in how to behave in situations and who we can become all based on the simple choice of how we ACT-
Our programing was downloaded by our lineage and our environment and our TIME. But as they all change..so can we.
We can just delete a program and upload a new one.
Both take time
both require care
but
it is possible
and joy filled
seeing the world anew
YES
you won’t be YOU…
YES
you will be YOU 2.0
and guess what…
everyone will say.
YES!
WOW… you changed and you
The new you won’t know what they are talking about
unless you made a video diary to remind yourself.
bc the new version exists on the SOLE given that the old solution is obsolete and therefor.
Null and Void.
Any attention to that version mean you are NOT truly your NEW self fully and there are indeed BUGS to work out.
no one’s EGO wants to truly change
bc they know that their EGO self will have to be put to sleep forever- or so they fear,
and a new EGO self shell will emerge.. and grow until SHE too will need to be sentenced.
BUt the ego is constant…she is here to inspire and protect and create…
she thrives on freshness and is most usefull with newness
so how do we know…
WHEN is it TIME
WHEN THE SHIT HITS THE FAN… is prob a day late and a dollar short but still
you get what I mean.
xox
SUSIE
