If you were wowed by the otherworldly vocal power of Lady Zen in Marin Shakespeare Company’s“Hamlet”— or you only heard about it and rued missing out — now the performer with a one-of-a-kind life story takes center stage at Marin Shakes’ new indoor venue in “Mothers of My Voice,” a solo cabaret with music and stories.
Lady Zen, who uses both gender-neutral and feminine pronouns, spent the first part of their childhood in an orphanage in Brazil and then got adopted by a missionary couple in Arkansas.
“Having a family was not my birthright,” they recount in“What’s in a Name,”a short film about their life. “The names I was given were changed. The gender I was assigned was challenged.”
Now Lady Zen is a mountain climber of a singer, scaling summits and valleys, a brassy contralto and an ethereal soprano all in one, with the warmth of a blazing hearth.