Acting is my core, my center. Performance, for me, has always been a form of spiritual expression. Sharing the experience is a kind of ministry.

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At ten years old, I announced to my parents that I wanted to be an actress. As I remember it, I said something like, “I want to be an actress of purpose.”

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I was the fourth of five daughters—the quiet, somewhat reserved child—so I imagine this declaration may have surprised them. They probably nodded and smiled. But that was enough to fuel an inward determination that had already begun to take hold.

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Perhaps because my mother understood something about what the theatre meant to me, every now and then we would sneak away, just the two of us, take the “L” into downtown Chicago, and see a production at one of the big theatres. I still remember leaving the Blackstone Theatre stunned into silence after seeing *Your Arms Too Short to Box with God*. Something happened to me in that theatre. I understood, even then, that what happened on a stage could reach somewhere beyond entertainment.

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I wanted to do that.

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Much of my youth and young adulthood was spent reading plays, anthologies, and books on acting technique; studying the craft; developing my voice; and performing anywhere that would have me. My family endured endless chants, vocal exercises, singing, strange sounds, and assorted voices coming from my room as I worked to develop my instrument and emotional range.

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There were speech contests and high school drama guild, college theatre and summer stock, community theatre and play readings, a touring troupe, commercials, small film roles, and even a little modeling when it offered another doorway into the creative world—or perhaps a free headshot.

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I earned my undergraduate degree in Theatre Arts because theatre was not simply something I enjoyed doing. It was how I understood the world.

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There is still something difficult to describe about being onstage—fully immersed in a character, understanding the subtext, present in the moment, and connected with an audience. Acting was never an escape for me. It was creative, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual expression. Onstage, I felt at home with myself.

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And it was always less about "performing" than about "sharing".

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Theatre taught me to observe. To listen. To question motivation. To understand that what people say and what they mean are not always the same thing. It required me to think deeply about people, relationships, conflict, identity, and the forces that shape our choices.

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Perhaps it is no accident that theatre eventually led me to sociology—a deeper examination of people, institutions, interactions, and relationships. Sociology led to law. Law opened doors to governance, international work, higher education, teaching, leadership, mediation, and opportunities to work across countries and cultures.

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My professional life took me far beyond the footlights—from corporate environments and universities to international organizations, classrooms, boardrooms, and institutions in the United States and Europe. I became a sociologist, law school graduate, executive, mediator, educator, advisor, and Fulbright Scholar.

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But I never stopped being an artist.

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Theatre remained underneath it all.

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It was there when I taught. It was there when I stood before an audience to speak. It was there when I negotiated, mediated, advised, listened, observed, or tried to understand the human dynamics beneath an institutional problem. It was there when I began writing more seriously and discovered that the page could provide another kind of stage.

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Over time, the words began asking to be spoken.

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Poetry became another way of saying aloud what I had carried quietly. My collection, Things I Say Out Loud To Myself, grew from that practice—part poetry, part reflection, and part conversation with myself and, I hope, with others willing to listen to their own voices.

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And theatre called me back.

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My play Still, I Shift (2027) brings together pieces of a life that for many years may have appeared separate: the actress, the writer, the professional woman, the daughter, the Black woman moving through institutions, the observer, the person who has left and returned, succeeded and questioned, grieved and rebuilt, spoken and remained silent.

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Perhaps they were never separate at all.

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My life has taken many turns. At different points, I exchanged the uncertainty of a full-time acting career for security, opportunity, education, responsibility, and different kinds of challenge. I traveled. I studied. I built a career. I led. I taught. I wrote. I advised. I began again—more than once.

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And through all of it, the ten-year-old girl who wanted to be an “actress of purpose” remained.

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I understand her better now.

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Purpose was never going to require me to choose between being an artist and everything else I would become. The life itself would become material. Every discipline, every place, every transition, every loss, every accomplishment, every unanswered question would deepen the voice.

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So this is not quite a return to where I started.

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It is an arrival—with more life to bring with me.

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Poetry. Plays. Essays. Reflections. Performance. Words spoken and unspoken. Stories still finding their form.

After a long and winding journey, I find myself once again near the footlights.

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The thirst remains.

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And I think I will stay awhile.

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Karen Lynn Jones
Creative