At fifteen, I pawned my mom’s fur coat, ran away from home on the Upper East Side to live with my best friend Joanie in Colorado, and somehow took up with a family of Pentecostal born-agains in Houston along the way.

With an opening like that, you’re hooked, right? The words belong to Melanie Greenberg, a writer/performer who is now telling her “somewhat harrowing and unconventional story” in the form of a cabaret show. She’s taken over the Friday night cabaret residency spot on through January 28 at the Apple Tree Inn in Lenox, a position held by The Freemonts in the fall.

Confessional cabaret seems to be the rage (at least in the Berkshires), and Greenberg's "The Elephant in the Room" is sung and narrated through the context of a psychedelic ayahuasca trip. Picture it: An Upper East Side Jewish girl who goes on an odyssey through psych wards to a cult-like “therapeutic” boarding school for troubled youth to the Ivy League (just a few of her experiences). She promises it’s funny, because funny is her thing.

“I’ve had a wild life that’s given me outrageous stories,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to do a cabaret act, and about two years ago, just decided to do it. It was an interesting process. I did a deep dive into some of the events in my life and the choices I made. I’d had a narrative about my life that wasn’t fully accurate. Writing allowed me to reclaim my story.”

In the beginning, Greenberg planned to put her words to existing Broadway tunes, but she ended up writing all original songs, offering a tip of the hat to the original song she might have used. Each one relates to the musical moment of that part of her life. To wit: in a psych ward at age 15, the doctor reminded her of Miss Hannigan from “Annie,” so for the cabaret she wrote her version of a tune from that show. A nod to “The Little Mermaid” figures in at some point, too. The show is directed by Joanie Schultz with Bill Zeffiro as musical director.

“The conceit is that I’m this kid who loved showtunes. They’re my escape valve for difficult times in my life and the lens through which I’ve seen my life,” Greenberg says.

While "The Elephant in the Room" is getting its Berkshires premiere now, it's already been out there in the world: Last month it won Best Comedy in the United Solo Festival, one of the world’s largest solo theater festivals. Greenberg has an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School, which may or may not have helped her to create “Kill Switch,” her YouTube channel “critically acclaimed by seven viewers.” She also wrote, produced, and starred in a comedy TV pilot called “Outnumbered,” about a middle-aged mom who attempts to become a You Tuber to gain the respect of her children.

True story? Could be. Greenberg moved to Great Barrington last summer in the wake of COVID, although she’d be coming up here for years. From Brooklyn, naturally, with two kids in tow.

Prior to writing her own story, Greenberg worked with Open Doors, a nonprofit that provides outlets for disabled Black and Brown people to share their stories. In fact, those storytelling activities are what propelled her to come up with her own autobiographical comedy and brought her back to her passion for performing. “Through sharing stories, we are given the opportunity to build empathy and heal our own trauma,” Greenberg says. “We wanted to make a space in the world for people to come together and share their stories as individuals and collectively.”

Her work in that arena continues with her new venture, The Story Sanctuary, a wilderness-based retreat and learning center. Its mission is to support personal growth, ecological awareness and empathy building through programs in storytelling, farming and nature connection. It will launch in 2022.

In the meantime, she's eager to tell her own tale. The writing was a healing process for her. And laughter is that for the rest of us.

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