This dance work explores the effort of performance and questions the way an audience invests in a body that exists solely for their entertainment. The audience is confronted with watching a show within a show-there are seemingly surface level mini-investigations of rehearsal consciousness and performance consciousness, as well as performing witnessing. I am interested in what happens when a performer decides to no longer exist for the pleasure of others and instead becomes attuned to their own desires on stage. The movement is centered around high theatricality with quirky irreverence. Inspiration is drawn from comedy shows, bodybuilding, and pushing the limits of physicality. The project seeks to contrast what it means to perform for an audience versus for yourself. I am questioning and attempting to convey the insecurity and struggle of knowing oneself in the eyes of another. The work searches for a way that the states of performing to achieve internal versus external validation can coexist in space on stage. I question if an audience is able to engage with multiple forms of a performers being simultaneously. Dance is so malleable as a form and allows for the performer to make both nuanced and dramatic shifts between these states throughout the work. I seek to find out how multiple states of being and identities can live within one body simultaneously and how exhausted I become in an evening length solo exploring the effort of performance.