A Reflection Point facilitator and team member, Maria Bitarello is a writer, translator, editor and journalist living in São Paulo, Brazil.  She is also a member of the longest running theater company in Brazil. In this essay, she connects the dots between her experience of expressive theater and the space created in a Reflection Point conversation.

I’ve often thought that Reflection Point is like theater. And theater, I speak from experience, is the art of being present.

Sure, there are lines and cues, but performing onstage – or backstage, like myself – requires unequivocal concentration and unwavering presence. If you are not fully here and now, you compromise everyone else, the whole show. From the actors’ safety to the audience’s experience. We must be wholeheartedly present for the magic to occur. It is generosity at its peak, giving yourself entirely to the collective, as well as being fueled by the energy that emanates from the Company and the audience, as one.

At Reflection Point, the sessions we facilitate around a story offer a similar ride.

Read the entire piece at reflectionpoint.org.