Wednesday 10 June 2015

Game Changer


Hey all. It’s been awhile.

Lots has been happening in my world over the past couple of months and I feel like sharing some of it with you.

In my continuous effort to manage my anxiety etc. I was able to cross something else off my bucket list.

Solo theatre. Now, cross off might seem final, but instead, I found it to be an experience that I need to continue to work on forever.

It’s been hinted at growing up that I may have a tad of a desire to take to the stage. The timing is perfect for me now since I am at an age and stage in my life where I am willing to do battle with my self-doubt.

It’s still there, but I’m doing it anyway. For all of my life I have been looking for artificial ways to deal with my emotional ups and downs. Though they haven’t worked, they have certainly given me a shitload of material to work with as far as storytelling goes!

It’s only now that I am able to look back through the humiliation and despair and see the bit of (ok, a lot of) humour in my past behaviour. If I wasn’t able to do that, I would have been sucked down the drain of life for good.

At T minus 3 years to 50, I’m ready. I’ve wanted to perform and make people laugh since I could walk, but I didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. I would perform in my head and in some really dark times, perform while intoxicated and called it acting.

Soulo Theatre Founder and Artistic Director Tracey Erin Smith, has shown me a better way to clear the gunk out of my system and turn it into theatre. I found I enjoyed it so much more than flushing it out with alcohol. The euphoria I feel on the stage for 10 minutes is 1000x more than the 30 minutes of euphoria I feel getting drunk. The rest of the time is blank. And I don’t want any more blank spaces.

It’s ok what others think. It’s totally ok for people to roll their eyes. It’s more than ok for others to not “get” what I mean when I say that storytelling is not only fulfilling to me in so many ways and I will continue, it is also the best therapy I could have hoped for in my life.

So keep those challenges coming. It’s all excellent material.

And thanks to Soulo Theatre for showing me the way. And big thanks to Tracey, Brian, Kat, Chris, Domini and Eleni for the support.

Find your “thing” and make it work for you.

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