About
In my travels, workshops, concerts and book readings, I delight in meeting all kinds of people from around the world. I stay curious and hungry to learn, and try to inspire others towards greater awareness, sensitivity and the courage to show up in our authentic selves, despite our fears.
My Story
I’ve devoted my life to growing and developing, including times when I need to leave the world, to be close to nature, escaping all forms of competition and judgment. Walking for miles and miles, away from the world, singing full and vibrant and free. Perhaps that is where I am happiest, where my voice and imagination can soar.
Born in New York City in the 50’s, I grew up in a ‘melting pot’ of cultures, in a family of immigrants. Always curious of where I’m really from or belong, I’ve lived a rather eccentric and yet simple life living here, there and everywhere. Grateful that my work supports travel and in connecting deeply with people of varying cultures, even if I still haven’t found my home, I’ve certainly had an interesting time in the search.
I often tease, having left the US in the 90’s, that I’m a Reagan refugee. Based in Oslo, Norway, I prefer to be in small countries like Portugal or Greece, or islands in a warm sea. I still engage in political and climate change activism, and my writing, teaching, performances, humor and social interactions reflect these deep concerns.
Media Bio
I started writing songs and keeping diaries as a teenager, and continue to find comfort in these activities trying to make sense of this chaotic world inside me and out. Writing a good song, a good essay, memoir, novel or play is different than diary-keeping and in classes taken at NYU, Bennington and Stanford, at Theater Makers and in private coaching, the learning goes on.
My first musical Island in the Storm, is moving forward in the world. My new novel: The Sinking of the Leonardo da Vinci will soon be published. And currently I’m at work at two new memoirs. One featuring Leonard Cohen and song writing called Dance Me to the end of Love and the other, Quiet Remembering a travel memoir of living in Italy with no one during Covid.
In this ever-growing technical age, it is my hope to rekindle and awaken the unusual yet universal specialness of what it means to be alive.
Deborah Jeanne Weitzman
I teach both live and online. Contact me for a free introductory session for Voice, Breath, Alexander Technique or coaching in healthy creative living.