Humans of Rockaway Shane Kulman: Enchantress Shane

“I’d come out here for the beach. We’d take the Green Line bus from high school to come to Rockaway.” Shane grew up in Canarsie. She moved to Rockaway about ten years ago. “I wanted to live by the ocean. I wanted sunlight. I was looking on Craigslist, and I saw a bungalow for rent—I grew up going to a bungalow in upstate New York in the Catskills—so I was like, ‘Bungalow? That’s my language!’ and I found this block.

“This block has real friends—real family; we really show up for each other,” Shane Kulman said. “The Rockaways itself is like Sesame Street! You see the same people over and over again, and if you’re a good person, living a good life, it’s fun to see these people over and over again!”

I sat down with Shane at her Far Rockaway bungalow. I’m partial to the bungalows, but hers was especially charming. A disco ball sat half buried in the small bed of plant life, a stone statue of a woman stood next to it, and brightly trimmed windows sat above. She greeted me at the door, holding fresh lit incense. Inside, the walls were lined with art, much of which was her own. The back deck had a small seating area and a couch draped in blankets for lounging in the sun. The kitchen table was covered in art supplies—wooden rings, crystals, wire tools. “I’m so grateful every day,” she said of her home. Her creative nature, welcoming spirit, and multifacetedness were obvious from the start.

“I’m a creative,” Kulman said. “I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a therapist. I write an advice column for The Rockaway Times. I’m a performer. I paint. And my recent endeavor, along with YANA (You Are Never Alone) House, we’re opening up a black box theater on Beach 117th… I wear so many hats. I love doing different things. I love self-expression. I’m not just a writer or just anything. I really try and do what’s most fun in the moment.” Additionally, Kulman studied education in college, has a master’s degree in special education, and is finishing a second master’s degree in family and marriage therapy. Many hats indeed. How does she manage all this? “I don’t know. It just happens. The most important thing just steps forward, then everything else sort of gets in line.

“I have been a coach and a therapist. It is most fun for me to try to do everything in one arena. So the Enchantress is me, but it’s also someone who helps people, and so I can coach from that place,” she said. Kulman is working on a comic book centered around the Enchantress. “She helps people slay fears.

“The comic book feels really fun right now. It feels like she is a hero; she does help people slay their fears. I have a coloring book called ‘**** Your Fears,’ and I love it, but you know, it can’t be for kids, so I’ve updated it,” she explained. I told Shane I wrote down some questions, but as our conversation flowed effortlessly between her many passionate endeavors, they were not necessary.

“I teach improv acting,” Kulman continued. “I started improv probably 15 or 16 years ago, and it changed my life. And then I taught it to kids in prison for a while, and it changed their lives. I’m really passionate about it. Improv acting is based on saying ‘no,’ so it just really is a way to self-develop and self-actualize…and it’s fun. That’s the common denominator. If it’s not fun, I’m not doing it.”

Kulman was a student of Manhattan’s Open Door Acting Company. Their motto was: “Doors open when you do.” “I loved the work so much, so now I teach it once a month at YANA House, which is a home but also serves as a community space,” Kulman said. YANA House is located at 116-16 Rockaway Beach Boulevard. You can connect with them on Instagram at @yana_house_rbny. “YANA stands for you are never alone, and I align with that. I resonate with that,” she said. “The owner, Sal Lapizzo, is really generous in sharing his space, his ideas, and his building abilities.”

About how her life has changed since moving to Rockaway, she told me, “I feel like I show up. I can be a really smart and sassy isolator. I’ll look like things are great and feel beautiful, and I’ll look beautiful, but actually, I’ll be struggling inside. And here, in Rockaway, it’s such a safe container and people really care,” Kulman said.

Kulman recently lost her father and had to move her mother into a care facility, two major events she said reminded her of the goodness she is surrounded by. “It just feels like people are helping me. So, I’ve learned to show up in grief, I’ve learned to really self-express amongst friends. I did a one-woman show in Manhattan. I invited people, but it was a struggle to invite people,” she said. “But here I’ve done burlesque, I’ve done music videos, I wrote for the paper, I’m really showing my inner thoughts and inner life. And then even if I don’t feel so cool, I’ll go out, and someone is like, ‘Oh hi, Enchantress,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, right, people know me!’ So, I’ve learned to show up with all my inner feelings and not isolate.

“Self-expression can come in so many forms: getting dressed, writing a play, speaking even. I feel like my life’s work is about self-expression and helping others to also self-express so that there’s less stress in the world,” Kulman said. I remarked on the importance and impact of the kind of work she is doing, “I feel it!” she said, and went on, “I love teenagers because I see and still have their struggles. If you’re in a small world or are raised in a small world, it’s so hard to be the different one. But at some point, it becomes so hard to be the same.” A lesson in individuality that endures with age.

(By the way, in the one-woman show, about her “personal imprisonment,” Kulman played five characters. She described the experience as “painful growth.” It sounded very cool.)

Kulman is currently in the final stages of writing a play with the Rockaway Theatre Company. “Everybody writing this play is writing about their own stories,” she said. “For me, it’s therapeutic, but it’s not therapy. It’s not like you have to just dump all your stuff, you put it in characters, and you let them have a life, and you don’t hold it anymore.”

The Enchantress features in this play as well. “It’s about Enchantress Shane and teenagers in a psych ward and how they handle their fears that are emerging. Then this heroine comes in to help them… It’s kind of like the comic book come to life.,” she explained. In this context, she describes the Enchantress as an apparition of a teenager’s imagination who exists in opposition to “the Approval Goblin,” which sows self-doubt in the mind of the teen, while the Enchantress seeks to dispel it.

“What challenges me? To go beyond what I know. People are excited by my like 80%, but I’m like, ‘wait, there’s more.’ … Going out of my comfort zone and bringing things out of Rockaway or bringing more people to Rockaway,” she said. “It’s like, I don’t know what I don’t know, so what am I missing? And having that feeling that someone could see me and push me more, inspire me so I’m like, ‘oh I could fly, I didn’t realize I could do that!’”

We shared plenty of laughs. I was endlessly impressed by the brightness of her personality and openness, as well as her bungalow, which perfectly complemented these traits. I asked what Kulman is looking forward to. She said, “I’m looking forward to using the black box theater, to really push myself, and to get artists to come together so we can inspire each other and do things we didn’t even realize were possible.”