From her apartment in Greenwich Village, Regina Ress has a photographer's view of Lower Manhattan. Unfortunately on September 11th, 2001, the view was one of sheer horror as she watched the first plane crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and the subsequent burning and collapse of the towers. 

After, Lower Manhattan was in lockdown. “I was in what I call the edge of the center of the disaster,” said Ress, an award winning storyteller, actor, writer and educator. She witnessed “guerilla volunteerism,”  a tremendous outpouring of civilian volunteers. “I witnessed this outpouring of loving kindness which is, I think,  a fundamental instinct of most people,” said Ress. 

She shares stories of the best human impulses in response to the attack on September 11, 2001 at the upcoming event, Compassion, Generosity and Grace: Stories from 9/11, on Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 6:30 PM at the Mid Manhattan Library.

She tells of volunteers making sandwiches for relief workers alongside the Sisters of Charity, who worked with the recently canonized Mother Teresa of Calcutta,  disaster personnel from Tennessee cooking meals for relief workers in a mobile kitchen and individuals offering homemade cookies. “I have to come down on the side of Anne Frank who said I believe in my heart most people are good," she said. “That’s what the stories are about.”

Ress won a 2015 Oracle Award from the National Storytelling Network and has performed  stories around the country, including  the White House lawn, where she enacted the story of Peter Rabbit at the White House Easter Egg Roll in 2000. She has also performed at festivals in Europe, Rio de Janeiro and Latin America. This coming February, she will be co-hosting the storytelling festival in Chennai, India. In addition, she teaches applied storytelling at NYU.

Ress was an actor and had worked in theater, including Broadway, in an all star production  of the classic American play called The Women , which was adapted into a feature film in 1938 and 2008 and also toured with the legendary Mickey Rooney. After having her son, she was trying to figure out how to reshape her life.  “I knew how much violent imagery is placed in front of children even back then and I wanted to find a way to get other imagery in front of them,” she said.  “At the same time I was working with women around the concept of goddess mythology and teaching at the New York Open Center. I met a very famous story teller named Diane Wolkstein.  I didn’t really know anything about storytelling and she pulled me into it.  It was a natural fit for me since I had a theater and teaching background.”

She also co-produces short films on domestic violence with Healing Voices-Personal Stories, which aims to raise public awareness of women survivors of domestic abuse. She and co-producer, JoAnne Tucker, along with award winning musician and theatre artist Jeannine Otis, herself a domestic violence survivor, will present two of their films. The films demonstrate how domestic violence occurs across all economic levels, ages, cultural/ethnic backgrounds, and across the gender spectrum, and discuss the impact of the arts in the healing process. The event will take place October 5th at the Mid Manhattan Library. The program will conclude with a Q and A session.