Acting Your Way Into Self-Awareness

I learned something important about myself and the self in an acting class today that was a bit unexpected. The teacher, Shanga Parker was explaining something that, on its face, is self-explanatory. You can tell when someone is a bad actor: it shows on their face, in their movements. They communicate as false. A good actor, on the other hand, seems true. We don't know why they are good. We simply feel the truth that their words and bodies speak. We forget that we are seeing a play.

Now, Shanga said none of those words, really. But he meant them. He talked instead about the difference between acting and feeling states. For example, if you are given a role where you are to be at a party and someone is to blow you off, the worst thing to do is to say in your head, "I just got blown off." No one would do that in real life and that is what would read as false to an audience. What happens is that you walk into a party, see the person who makes your heart beat fast and something bad happens that slows your heart down, or makes your stomach fall, or drop your beer, or toss your cookies. Your face changes, your body responds. People may or may not notice. But the audience is going to infer something - you got blown off, your heart was broken, you shouldn't drink. Definitely should leave cookies alone.

But more than this helpful lesson about acting, I was reminded of the wisdom that often comes with growing older. The common chestnut has it that we relax into who we are, learn from our mistakes, don't give a rat's heinie about what others think about us and on and on (and on). These things may all be true. But if practice makes at all perfect and we are blessed to learn the lessons of our errant ways, we may simply become better actors as we age. We may learn how to wear who we are and want to be as we walk into life's rooms so that we read to others as true.

By the time the curtain drops, if we are lucky, if we do the required work, the script will have sorted itself out.