“Tell, me about your upcoming show, what are you excited about?” Asked Beccy, my new administrator / co-ordinator.

Excited? How can I be excited when I’m this terrified?!?

What am I afraid of?

Failing.

What might that look like?

I get onto stage and all I can see is a sea of expectant faces looking back at me. You want me to show you something extraordinary, astonishing, life-changing. You want pure poetic wonder that touches your hearts and makes you glad to be alive. You want me to make you laugh until you’re sick and then you want me to keep you laughing until everything makes sense.

The projected expectation coils hard around my ribs, squeezing and squeezing until my mouth shapes words, but no sounds come out. 

I am a human goldfish, alone on a stage. 

And you are disappointed.

No pressure then!

I am joyfully committed to exploring all of this and more with you, my curious audience. I have a lot of structure in place to support me (a facilitator, an impro / movement coach, a therapist, a supervisor, a boyfriend, grounding friends, a meditation practice, a friendly space and your curiosity) and I’ve got 5 more days dedicated R&D time between now and February 5th (2 days with facilitator, Amy Rose, 2 half days with impro / movement coach, Brenda Waite and two day’s writing). 

I’m not sure, but here are some things that I think might happen in the show (this might change!):

• I might share some of my experiences of stage fright
• I might show you what’s happening, whenever the stage fright arrives
• I might talk about some of the theory I’ve been exploring around stage fright
• I might dance 
• characters might appear
• there might be live music
• there might be optional live audience experiments for us to understand more about stage fright.
• some of it might be funny
• some of it might be touching
• some of it might be a bit rubbish
• All of it will be for you

It will be a total one-off and there will be opportunities for you to feed back to me at the end. This feedback will form the basis of my second work in progress show on March 5th. 

Come and see the show on 5th February at 7.30 at The Wardrobe Theatre. Pay what you decide at the end. Venue info here.

Facebook event here.

All the blogs from This Work In Progress Project are conveniently listed at the bottom of the first blog, which you'll find here.