Michele Tannen (she/her)
Actor/Writer
Michele Tannen is an actress and solo-show writer from Los Angeles California. She has performed on Los Angeles stages for 25 years, including leading and supporting roles at the Stella Adler Theater Hollywood, Two Roads Theater, and The Secret Rose. Michele is a member of Towne Street Theatre, Los Angeles’ premier African American Theatre Company, and The Decameron Project. In November 2024, she traveled with Decameron to Tokyo Japan, where she performed in 10 plays in their audience favorite The One-Minute Play Festival along with performers from Japan and the United States. In 2023, she was awarded Best Actress by the New York Equity Library Festival for her portrayal of Abby in Felix Racelis’ My Shayna Punim. Michele has also appeared in numerous films, television shows and commercials.
Michele wrote her solo show, Surviving Mother’s Day, in Emmy-award winner Matt Hoverman’s Go Solo writing workshop. Stories of children of mentally ill parents are far rarer than those about parents of mentally ill children. Yet the NIH says that 2.7 million parents (3.8%) had a serious mental illness in 2017. Surviving Mother’s Day aims to bring the children of those parents out of the darkness so that they know they are not alone. The show also tells of a Jewish family that narrowly escaped the Holocaust by leaving 1930s Germany just before the US stopped accepting Jewish immigrants – a critical remembrance, as today’s leaders seem to have forgotten our nation’s role as a refuge for those under threat.
