Inspired By ‘Selma’ Role, Atlanta Actress Creates One-Woman Show
Atlanta actress Tara Ochs is an accomplished stage and film performer. Along with a hodgepodge of client work like voicing radio spots and being a host at Home Depot events, Ochs is a staple at Dad’s Garage as an improviser and improv instructor. She also appeared as activist Viola Liuzzo in the acclaimed 2014 film “Selma,” and that role has led Ochs on quite a journey of introspection.
She’s currently developing a one-woman show called “White Woman in Progress,” which interweaves Ochs’ own life with Liuzzo’s.
Liuzzo was a martyr of the civil rights movement. A white woman and mother of five, she joined the freedom marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. At the end of the marches, she was shot and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Her death was a catalyst for change, helping encourage the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
In an interview with “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes, Ochs said it was not the details of her life that align with Liuzzo but a particular feeling. “What fit was that she had an inner calling to change things and had a sense of justice … I ended up with that same feeling,” she said.
She continued, though, that it took a lot of introspection to get there. “Could I actually be a Viola Liuzzo? At first, the answer was, no. I’m not that special, but then you realize … she was an everyday person, and she was able to affect change without having a super power.”
Another goal of the project is to show the similarities between improv and nonviolence.
“As I’m teaching improvisation, I’m teaching people to compromise and to listen to each other and to allow ideas that aren’t their own to exist in a positive way,” she said. “To fight back and to resist violently, doesn’t achieve anything. On the stage, to resist, to say no, to not allow others to be who they are, doesn’t achieve anything.”
“White Woman in Progress” is still in progress. Ochs received funding from the Idea Capital Grant, which she will use to finance a trip to Selma for a week of nonviolence training. She’s also doing a residency with 7 Stages’ series Home Brew at the end of which Ochs will do a reading of the work. That happens at 2 p.m. March 19 at 7 Stages.
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