Stage Skills Are Life Skills

Let's face it, junior high is an awkward time. During my own junior high years, the best I could hope to do was minimize experiences that accentuated my insecurities. As such, you can only imagine my dismay when I was selected for my last choice elective—drama.

It was a tall enough task to make myself scarce, or even invisible, among my judgmental peers. Yet to proactively make myself vulnerable, with a spotlight to boot, was a new form of teenage torture. When I started drama class in seventh grade, I reasoned that it would only be for one semester, and I'd manage to get the smallest part possible in the play. I would request a nondescript role, like an innocent bystander watching the action from far, far back on the stage.

But this was not to be my fate. And to my surprise, I would find a home in the theatrical arts. Not just for the semester, but for the duration of my six years of junior high and high school.

Although on the surface, acting may seem like escaping yourself and becoming someone else, in actuality you’re embracing something deep within you. You’re still you. You’re expanding the scope of what you thought you could represent, of what you’re able to evoke. You’re given the license to experiment in style and communication, dress and flare, and assume a new persona. You can experiment in ways that paradoxically expose you to an audience of your peers yet protect you from the scrutiny of taking such risks in street clothes.

By assuming the appearances of other people, I found myself.

I found my voice, my humor, my poise. I found a new level of confidence. I began to realize that I could place myself in different environments and improvise. I could relate to people, emotions, and experiences. I could be effective in scenarios that I had never entertained before. It gave me the confidence to know that I could be thrown into any situation, assume any identity, interact with people I hardly knew, and I could find a way to make it work. After years of training and practice, it eventually became something more than mere play—it became essential to my identity.

After many hours of afterschool practice and hanging out with my friends who were also a part of the drama crew, the entire identity of being an actor started to take hold. Going to school in North Hollywood, California, acting was not perceived as an unusual or undesirable pursuit: it was all around us.

Even though I moved on from the formal pursuit of acting when I went to college, it always remained a part of me. I never really thought of myself as an actor, yet it certainly changed how I comported myself, and my ability to interrelate with others.

Shakespeare was right: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely Players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts.” I’ve found life to be very much like this. Every environment that I was in, whether it was the social milieu or school or my work ecosystem, felt like a stage. In these circumstances, we all conform to the norms of the group, as well as play parts that enable us to achieve our aims. There are varying degrees of authenticity in the business environment, yet to some degree we all wear masks and metaphorical costumes. Some people play the villain, others play the hero. Some play the thief, and yet others play the victim. Then we all go home, take off our makeup, remove our costumes, and hopefully find our truer selves again.

Because of this, I should probably offer a simple piece of advice more often: take an acting class.

It can be an acting class, an improv class, a stand-up class—anything that teaches performance skills. Life and theater have much in common. We all have to perform in meetings, during interviews, during sales calls, and at business get-togethers. We all have to persuade others, create a vision, and face rejection. Social encounters are a stage, too, full of players, assuming their favorite roles and practicing their signature moves. Deep down we all want love and acceptance, have a need for compassion and a fear of vulnerability. Yet, depending on the situation, we play the comedian or the dramatist, bringing levity and humor to peers or perpetuating disbelief and fear. This is true whether you’re in a book club, on a bowling team, or attending a cocktail party.

Being an actor not only taught me how to assume different roles, it taught me how to detect when others were in character. And just to remove any suspense on the matter, let me just say, we’re always in character. Yes, we flash our authentic selves from time to time. But we then reclaim our body armor and shields to fend against the ravages and savages of the wild.

Great acting can appear indistinguishable from the various personas we detect in the normal process of life. This is in part because we all adopt affectations, however deeply held and seeded they feel. Some of these affectations run contrary to who we really are and want to be, and others conform more closely to our authentic selves.

Actors and other performers are trained to shift between different roles and to respond to people as they appear. This can be a powerful and instructive skill. Yet in life, as in acting, we can’t forget the person underneath the costume. People conceal themselves. And although we may be tempted to respond to the superficial masks we all put on at times, I entreat you to see the person underneath. Understanding the role that acting plays in each of our lives helps breed compassion. Fear of exposure and vulnerability and loss of love and acceptance will lead all of us to behave in counterproductive ways sometimes. See the person, not the pretense. Understand that they’re guarding themselves and respond not to the posturing, but to the underlying humanity.

I miss acting, being on stage, and embodying different characters. Yet, we are always in character. We are an amalgamation of all the personas we exhibit to ourselves, our family, our peers, and our colleagues. We undoubtedly behave differently at work. I certainly comport myself differently with my daughter than I do with a contentious negotiator (at least I hope I do!). As Walt Whitman said, we contain multitudes. One version of us may not be more authentic than the other.

The best we can do is play each part as well as we can.