Creativity and the Performing Artist - Behind the Mask

Creativity and the Performing Artist: Behind the Mask synthesizes and integrates research in the field of creativity and the performing arts. This is a field that has received limited research investigation, yet our culture is powerfully invested in, and influenced by, the performing arts.
The book will help explain the creative process, flow and flow enhancement, emotional regulation strategies, career demands, including injuries, burn out, and stress, as well as developmentally appropriate training recommendations to augment creativity and enhance performance.

• Discusses domain specificity within the performing arts
• Encompasses dance, theatre, music, and comedy performance art
• Reviews the biology behind performance, from thinking to movement
• Identifies how an artist develops over time, from childhood through adult training
• Summarizes the effect of personality, mood, and psychopathology on performance
• Explores career concerns of performing artists, from injury to burn out

Paula Thomson, PsyD, is a professor at California State University, Northridge, professor emeritus in the Department of Theatre at York University in Toronto, and adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. For over thirty years, she has worked professionally as a dancer, choreographer and artistic director in dance, theatre and opera. She has worked internationally as a guest artist in organizations such as Stratford Shakespearean Festival, Canadian Opera Company, OperaWorks, University of Cape Town, University of Limerick, Banff School of Fine Arts, Ithaca College, Canadian Stage Company, and Julliard School of Music. As an author she has contributed numerous chapters in edited books including the Encyclopedia of Creativity. Together with co-author, Victoria Jaque, they direct the psychophysiological laboratory and conduct research on the effects of stress on performing artists and athletes. Their research has appeared in major peer-reviewed journals including Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, Creativity Research Journal, Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Attachment and Human Development, Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, Death Studies, Journal of Dance Medicine and Science. She works as a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Los Angeles. Her clinical expertise includes working with complex trauma, disorganized attachment, dissociation, and performance anxiety. In 2013, she was named one of the top 20 female professors in California.