Performative Ations — ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE...

William Shakespeare said that through the voice of Jaques, the lucid, existential character in As You Like It, a comedy which, by the way, I did several years ago with The Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Co. We were an all-female identified cast playing all the roles written by The Bard. Aside from having to tape my breasts down as flat as I could every night, the experience was awesome.

To stand in the world as another being is perhaps one of the most illuminating experiences one can have.

Luckily, as a professional actor, this is what I get to do. In my career so far I’ve played many different roles including a teacher, an art gallery owner, an assassin, an immigrant mother, a cowboy (yes, a male), a ceramist, a doctor, a poet, a crack-addicted sister, a newscaster, a hotel maid, an astronaut, to name a few. And in every single one of these characters I have been completely and wholly myself. There is no other way.

I have learned that the whole world lives in me, and I live in the whole world. This may sound too abstract and philosophical, perhaps, but when one has the chance to embody this notion, it is actually something that can be felt for real.

I wonder if we could all act more. And I don’t mean in the performative way that is in vogue now but, actually, wholeheartedly ACT—step into somebody’s shoes and live life from their point of view and within their circumstances. Wouldn’t that force us to become more empathetic? Every good actor in the world knows that in order to play even the most macabre, cruel, horrifying character, one must access those aspects of the self, that darkness inside. Humans are very complex and inherently flawed, and the array of personalities and living circumstances is vast. In order to truthfully embody that other being, one cannot judge the character, or else only a feigned performance can be achieved. Every single aspect of life must be considered from that particular character’s point of view, and it works the same way whether you are playing Heidi, the little girl from the Swiss Alps or Ramsay Bolton from Westeros. Wouldn’t the world benefit a little (or maybe, a whole lot) from having more people live life as ‘the other,’ that character that is perceived with such fear and suspicion, even if it was just for a little while?

This morning I saw the news of a white couple in Missouri pointing a rifle and a pistol to peaceful protesters who were passing in front of their house. I wondered if anyone had ever pointed a gun at them. I wondered if, even just for one day they had been automatically assumed criminal, just for looking the way they did. From the way they were holding their firearms and pointing them at people, one could assume they had very little concern for the implications of their actions; It was as if they were innately exonerated from any culpability because in all their whiteness-greatness, they were defending their eye-sore of a dwelling with all their mighty right. Now, I have no way of knowing what they were feeling in their hearts, and in actuality, they were probably very scared and felt they needed to threaten others with their weapons. But, why were they so scared? How could it be that some people will go so far as to threaten to kill and— in way too many cases, actually kill another person out of unfounded suspicion? How have we let this get so far?

I continue to grapple with so many questions every day, and scour the reality of the society we have co-created, in search of beauty and all expressions of hope that allow me to go on. It is only the faith in that “as is above, is below,” the trust in the universe’s great balancing power that I find the courage to keep going.

We all have a voice; some have the chance to be heard much more easily than others and so we speak up. We can, we must find a better way to coexist. #BlackLivesMatter