Myself When I Am Real is an exploration of the self as a dynamic, multi-faceted being, inseparable from the world we are embedded in. Its beginnings grew from a period of mandated pandemic isolation that caused a significant disruption in the ways we could be (or not be) in relationship to our world and to others. Disconnected from our social field and grieving our past lives, for many of us, our existence became small, dark, and insular. 

Accompanied by Mingus’ hopeful, multilayered musical improvisations and Smith’s imagistic poetry, the work is an intimate reflection on what a disrupted world has brought to light within us. It asks how we might honour this gift by feeling our way into the possibility a recalibrated self-in-the-world relationship where we can live fully into our aliveness.