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A capstone that can break your heart and build you back up? Your host, Kimberly Koljat, IMFT-S, LMFT sits down with Audrey Grimes, MA, APCC, Drama Therapist, writer, and dancer, to unpack the self-rev: a personal performance in drama therapy where you turn lived experience into staged truth. We talk about how it feels before you begin, from “no paper, please” excitement to the dread of being that vulnerable, and why the fear is often a sign that something real is ready to move.

This candid discussion between Self-Revelatory Performance director and actor explores the parallel processes within the creative process from each role perspective.  From the outside, the creative process of exploring material, creating a script, and finalizing a performance from scratch is often left as a mystical, unknown phenomenon that somehow ends up making powerful pieces of theatre.  In this discussion, Audrey and Kimberly talk through the different stages of the process, what their individual experiences were step by step, and share clips of the final performance as example.  Though centered on the creative process for self-revelatory performance, this discussion has parallels to collaborative creative processes across multiple mediums- from theatre, to dance, to music, to writing, to art, and more.

We map the stages of the self-rev process the way we actually lived them: exploration filled with “what if” play, clarifying themes and aesthetics, then the creation phase where the script refuses to cooperate and you start battling your own patterns in real time. We also share why having a director with both theater craft and clinical training matters, especially when the work feels like therapy in a pressure cooker. Along the way we touch Developmental Transformations, metaphor, identity, grief, and the ambivalence of wanting help while also needing to claim your own voice.

Then we get to the part no rehearsal can fully predict: performance. We dig into the energy exchange of a supportive audience, the phenomenon of peak performance and flow state, and what changes when you let yourself be witnessed. If you’re curious about drama therapy, therapeutic theater, creative process, or what it takes to make something honest onstage, this conversation is a real behind-the-scenes look. Subscribe, share this with a friend who makes art to survive, leave a review, and tell us: what would you put in your self-rev?