Tajna TanoviĆ
is a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter, actress, producer and photographer.
She was born in Sarajevo, raised in Germany and New York City.
Tanović was the leading actress of Theater TAS in Germany and is the co-founder & producer of TAS in the US. The production “Project 3” toured Germany in 1993/1994 and was featured in over ten major theaters (Munich’s Kammerspiele, Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, etc.) with reviews published in papers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. New York projects have included performances in the TAS productions “The Last Story” (HERE Arts Center, 2011) and “Yard Sale: New Footfalls...” (DUMBO Arts Festival 2010), “Canal Street Station”, a radio theater installation by 31Down and several projects with Dalzell Productions. She has curated the “Postdramatic Theater Workshop” in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut New York.
Her short film “Dolly Belle” (story, co-direction, score and lead) appeared in the Official Selection at the Big Apple Film Festival & the international chashama Film Festival, 2009.
Her photographs have been published in myp Magazine and on several music blogs. She has created photo collages for the TAS multimedia performance “Blood on the Cat’s Neck” (written by Rainer Werner Fassbinder) in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and the multimedia performance “Woyzeck von Sarajevo” presented at the USC-Max Kade Institute.
Tanović has self-released her debut EP “I Think of You” in 2011 and continues to compose theater & film scores and perform original works. Most recently her music was featured in the multimedia performance “Blood on the Cat’s Neck”, in which she played the lead character Phoebe Zeitgeist. International music shows have included two concerts at Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll’s summer festival in Germany (2001 and 2003). She was a member of the band “Love in Shakespeare” performing Shakespeare’s sonnets. She was the German voice of PUMA’s “Soundtrip for FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany”. Her songs “I Think of You” and “Hey! Hey!” were featured in the theater performance “Mirjana and those around her” by MGL Theater Ljubljana (Slovenia). She wrote music for the performance “Yard Sale: New Footfalls...” by Theater TAS.
In 1994 she was nominated for the Best Young Artist Award by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) for her role of the Girl in the TAS production “Project 3”. In 2003 she was given the “Apollinaire Award”, for outstanding achievements in French for her work on playwright Yasmina Reza’s play “Life x 3”. She has received the ASCAPlus Award 2011 & 2012 for her contributions to American music.
She is fluent in English, German, French and Bosnian. English translations include plays by Kaća Čelan - “New Footfalls” (Bosnian), “The Last Story” (Bosnian), “Woyzeck von Sarajevo” (German) - as well as “The Blonde Jewish Girl” (Bosnian).
Tanović is a member of SAG-AFTRA & ASCAP.