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30 November 2023

Tara O’Hara (195? – 198?) performer.

Original June 2011, revised November 2023.

Tara's male persona was raised by a Jehovah's Witness family in New Orleans. In the early 80s, he was working in Berlin as an English teacher.

Tara and Jayne, from Jayne's book.
When he discovered Romy Haag's drag club he came back again and again, and started wearing drag to the club. This lead to a part in the show and Tara gave up both teaching and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

She was in Rosa von Praunheim's 1983 film, Stadt Der Verlorenen Seelen (City of Lost Souls) along with Jayne County and Angie Stardust where they all play versions of themselves.






Some sites including IMDB say that Tara was murdered in 1983, but some say that she was encountered later than that. 

Jayne County writing in 1995 said:
 "Ten years later [after 1983] I heard the tragic story of Tara's passing on. Tara was found in the ladies' room in the Berlin Tiergarten area with her head bashed in. They took her to the hospital and she lay there for weeks and weeks in a coma. Finally the doctors decided that enough was enough and pulled the plug on her. I guess they thought that Tara would never recover, but they should have consulted someone. It caused a stink in the Berlin press. She was dying slowly anyway, but leave it to Tara to go out with a bang!" (p155-6)

However there was in the 2010s another Tara O'Hara  resident in Berlin.  She lived with Edeltraut P., and they were gay and community activists.


IMDB  


1 comment:

  1. While I can't supply the real date, I know the 1983 date of death for Tara is definitely wrong because I didn’t even move here till 1986, and the Tara I knew (fleetingly) was also in the Praunheim film, so they must be the same person.

    I met her when she performed for me at an underground party in 1986 ("Bloody Night" at Frontkino) and I figure it was sometime in 1988 or 89 that she took refuge from a violent John at a dance party I was doing ("Shake n Bake") on Potsdamer Strasse.

    Greetings from Berlin,

    Bryin

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