It's 10:30 a.m. as I read a text from my best friend that says: boy do I have a story to tell you. This isn't so unusual for most of us. Typically, we associate with our friends during the day and become excited to tell one another stories from the weekend. We go to class and the professor lectures on a subject that essentially is story. We read newspapers, magazines, books, watch movies and flip through the television. If you think about it, storytelling is our lives.
I thrive off telling stories in every shape and form. But my favorite form of storytelling would be through acting. For a year and a half I was a theatre major. Many people might think studying theatre is a waste. The reality of life is you cannot receive a successful job and have a source of income if you go to school to become an actor. And while I have switched majors to something more practical, the real question for me wasn't, what is going to make me money, it was, what is going to make me happy?
I think society always preaches this idea of "going on a quest for happiness" but many people have yet to follow through. The number of people I see who are stuck at jobs they don't enjoy going too or don't find excitement in is astronomical. What if we all actually did something that truly brought us joy? What if we studied something that made us energized to go to class?
Studying theatre was something that forced me to analyze who I was, what I was capable of achieving and who I wanted to become. It was a lot of introspection of myself. The reality is, an actor can't impersonate someone else unless they know themselves first.
One obstacle that we learned in our acting class was we had to know how to be ourselves on stage, which is a lot harder than it sounds. How many of us have gone in front of crowds of people, become nervous, and acted unnaturally or changed in some way to get a better reaction? Performing in front of people is always nerve racking because you can't control how people are going to react to you.
Being a real actor can be terrifying. People really rip you apart. A good actor will throw themselves into a role and do an enormous amount of research to learn how to impersonate and understand a character. It may look like fun and games to tell stories, but really there is this huge individual process to develop a character that is believable. And the fact that you can put in all that work and personal and emotional attachment into a character, then willing have people critique and comment on what you do, well, it can either destroy you or build you up.
But the idea of acting is beautiful. Putting yourself in someone else's moccasins is something that society should do more often. It is easy to become self-absorbed or ungrateful when we only focus on ourselves.
That old quote, "to act is to live" is the reality of life. We all have our own stage, one way or another. We act out different people when we tell stories to one another. Or we put on a show to get what we want. Acting really isn't so far away from what we know.
Acting is an art that makes us feel connected. Because it does feel good to watch a movie and feel relived that you aren't the only person who acts or feels a certain way. The idea that even if we do feel isolated with no real friends, there is someone out there, who is like us, is a rich fulfilling idea. And the fact that there are storytellers out there who feel it is their purpose to connect people; that is a magnificent inspiration.
Storytelling is part of our culture and all the way back to the most ancient cultures. Because after a long hard day of work, it is enjoyable to listen to a well told story. It can take you out of this reality and to a different planet.
"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being," Oscar Wilde said.
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