Paula Josa-Jones in Russian Ghostdance

This week, I am thinking, feeling and writing a lot about performing. I write about it in this week’s Journal.

I have been working with two artists recently as coach, choreographer and director.  Both have one woman shows.  I love this part of my work – bringing my eye to their work and helping them to deepen and open.

That work has also awakened my desire to perform.  In the past, many of my performances involved deep disguise.  Ways of hiding in plain sight.  I wonder how this new creation will reveal, what/who is waiting to be seen.  Performing has always been about revealing a part of myself that I cannot show in the daylight world.  The dark side, the inside, the wild side; underlayers, like showing my psychic petticoats.

Writing the daily post is also a performance.  But unlike the theater, where I can hear you (the audience) rustle and breathe, where I can calibrate my performance by how I am sensing an audience on a given night, this performance is for a largely imaginary audience.

But here’s the thing:  before the relationship with the audience comes the relationship with myself; with the impulse to create, to shape something new and delicious, something that I can savor.

Flight attendants always tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.  Same thing here.