It's All About the Soul....

Tonight I was reading a post from the wonderful Los Angeles based writing and acting coach, Sea Glassman. Sea and I have a lot of crossovers in our work. We are both long time students of a Course in Miracles and we both approach our creative work as a devotion...as spiritual practice.

Here is what I want to ask of you, as you ponder creating your solo show: "What does your Soul want to say? What does it want to say to you? What does it want to say to Life? What does it want to say to this world, others, God? What story does your Soul need to tell for your awakening? Because following any other pass is a lesser path...Following your mind, ego, a clever concept without taking into account the Soul's longings is like fast food, temporarily satisfying but ultimately empty.

I have been pondering my own creative work lately. It has been several years since I have performed my own solo show. My time has been spent teaching others as well as directing and producing.

Last year, my mind started pressuring me and I almost put up a show that just wasn't quite right. I knew that it was a viable concept. I knew that the script I had written was strong. But, something inside of me just didn't want to do it. In retrospect, I see that it wasn't a creative avoidance. It just wasn't what my Soul wanted me to have an attachment to and an association with at this time in my life. (It was called Scorpio Rising: a monologue of sex and death)...Nothing at all wrong with that and those are not topics I shy away from. It just wasn't the right timing and the energy behind it was murky.

Now my Soul is rested and emerging with a new personal vision for me in my personal art. It is a 7 year project with one performance a year. The performances will be monologues that are much more improvisational in nature (terrifying to my ego) and freer than the tightly written scripts that were hallmarks of my style in my younger years.

I am 46 years old. My memory is not razor sharp as it was. I cannot live my life with as much "pushing" intensity and my performance...my Soul's performance would like me to reflect this...And so, I move into a new time in my work, letting go of lots of character driven pieces, sharp and sometimes biting humor, perfectionism around every scripted word... into a new realm. A softer story wants to be told that, yes, will include sex and death...but also the quieter realms that I used to have no patience to explore. And a new kindness that I never used to show myself will be embodied.

Also, I am looking to develop a new, inclusive relationship with my audience as we go on a journey together..one that will, if my vision unfolds, be different every night. As I open to trust my body, Soul, memory and the poetry that lives inside my every cell to show up new, fresh each night, a once only show has the opportunity to unfold....

What is your Soul calling you to share? Go deep....deeper still.....Find it in Silence....and bring it back to this world as a story....