by Michelle Tocher | Sep 19, 2020
I love creating things that can be shared with an audience, but I struggle with the notion of performance. It’s hard to go out there and put myself on the stage. I’m not a natural extrovert, and I know I’m not the only performer who feels reluctant to leave the wings....
by Michelle Tocher | Aug 24, 2020
No story has gripped me more than the real-life “sleeping beauty” story that Oliver Sacks tells in his magnificent book, Awakenings. For years I have been fascinated by the symmetry between his experience of patients with encephalitis lethargica and the...
by Michelle Tocher | Jul 22, 2020
In mid-April, I held an online course called “THREADS” in collaboration with Storytelling Toronto. THREADS is an annual workshop series that invites participants to move into a single fairy tale and find their own threads of meaning. This year I chose...
by Michelle Tocher | Jun 4, 2020
On the first day of the first year of the new decade, I had a dream. I am walking through the grass in a garden. I look down and see a tiny feminine figure curled up in the midst of the green shoots. She has a blond bob with bangs and she’s a little bit plump. I think...
by Michelle Tocher | Feb 5, 2020
You dreamt of failing in a finishing school. You were never going to succeed at becoming a Lady. You submitted yourself to endless lessons in etiquette. You allowed every natural instinct to be critiqued, and eventually all the humiliations and tiny tortures silenced...
