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POSTCARDS: From Rehearsal to Ringside: Tara Rynders Presents "A Nurse is Calling"

Happening June 19 - 21, 2025 at Newman Center for the Performing Arts, Denver, CO

Something happened today in rehearsal that I wasn’t expecting. I thought I knew what this scene was about when I wrote it. Turns out, my body had other plans.

Today I laced up boxing gloves and went to war.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Threw punch after punch at this invisible opponent that’s been systematically destroying everyone I’ve ever tried to save, including myself. My fists connected with air, but I felt every impact in my bones. This thing — this broken system — it’s been my enemy my entire career.

Then suddenly… it started dying.

Photo courtesy of the artist

“Is there a nurse in the house?” “We need a nurse!”

Of course. Of course they called for me. Of course I ripped off the gloves and dropped to my knees, pressing my hands to the chest of the very thing that’s been killing us all. Pumped and breathed life into my opponent.

It died anyway.

That’s when the hands grabbed me — lifted my arm high above my head. “THE WINNER! THE CHAMPION!”

But I wasn’t looking at the cheering crowd. I was staring down at the body, my whole being screaming to go back, to try again, to keep fighting for something that was already gone.

And in that moment, with my arm raised in fake victory, it hit me like a freight train:

Photo courtesy of the artist

This IS my entire career. Fighting a system designed to break us, then being ordered to save it. Being called a hero while watching everything we love die. Being paraded around as winners while we’re drowning in the wreckage.

That’s when the music shifted and my body showed me what I was really grieving. For two minutes, my body took over and danced my grief. The grief I felt when my brother died at the hands of the system. The grief of the realization that even I — a nurse who knows this system intimately — had been tricked by it, complicit in it.

Today I was reminded that sometimes it’s the movement that teaches us what the real story is. My movement revealed I wasn’t just fighting the system - I was grieving something I once believed could save us. Mourning not only a dying system, but all the deaths it took with it. My mom. My brother. All the people I thought this system could save.

My body swirled through disbelief, sadness, anger — at the system’s failure, at my own lost faith in it, at how we’ve all become part of the very thing destroying us. Let it move to every part of me, then released it out to make room for the next trauma coming.

Because THIS is what healthcare workers never get. The dance that processes what we carry. We go from patient to patient, crisis to crisis, with no space to let our bodies release what gets trapped inside.

None of us won. We never had a chance to win.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Tomorrow I’ll step back into that ring. Because putting these stories on stage — the raw, bleeding truth we’re taught to keep quiet, and giving ourselves the processing dance we’re never allowed to have — turns out that’s the most revolutionary thing a nurse can do.

See you ringside,
Tara

A Nurse is Calling opens June 19 - 21, 2025 at Denver’s Newman Center. As I prepare for opening night, every rehearsal is teaching me something new about my own story.  I hope you can join us ringside for this one-woman show combining personal narrative, dance, and live music — stories from the ER, nearly dying from an ectopic pregnancy, losing my brother, and helping my sister emerge from a coma. Even though I’m trembling about sharing these stories on stage, it’s my love letter to nurses and caregivers who give everything and deserve everything in return. Deep gratitude to Director Dr. Clare Hammoor, the magical musician Ryan Marvel, my partner Tim Rynders and our children Soren and Femka, who'll join me on stage.