What's Under The Doormat?

At the An Actor Works workshop last weekend, I had the opportunity to ask Bob about the exercise from the Action! workbook that I wrote about. I said, "The roles that I picked for myself seem to be completely different from the types of roles that I realistically could be cast in. Where's the line between dreaming and creating your own reality, and the 'reality is not optional' fact of life?"

He replied, "We're going to do an exercise today that will help you with that."

(Before I continue, I must apologize to Bob if he's reading this, I was born with far more imagination than common sense.) 

So the exercise we did was the brief on-camera interview that I mentioned in my previous post. While we were in front of the camera, five other people wrote their first impressions of us, and the types of roles they would cast me in. Here are the responses I got:

First impressions:

1. Soft personality, caring, cautious, fun.
2. Talkative, outgoing, friendly, at ease w/camera
3. Light-hearted, bright, joyful, fun, spirited, funny - Fast talking - Fast moving - can't catch her sometimes. [because I was nervous]
4. Friendly, open, nervous.
5. Kind, energetic, honest, down to earth, determined.

Types of Roles:

1. Caring friend, everyday person.
2. A best friend, teacher, one of the girls in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
3. Fun loving teacher, young mom who makes kids laugh, maybe spirited best friend who always cracks you up, wacky bank teller, upbeat doctor.
4. Girl next door, secretary
5. Friend, teacher.

So, this did not clear anything up for me. These are pretty much the same impressions I got from my classmates at The Acting Corps a few years ago. Bob did not link this on-camera exercise to the exercise in the workbook. And according to the common sense of 'reality is not optional' fact of life, those are the types of characters that I must sell myself as, because that is the impression I naturally give people.

So I've been rolling this around in my head for a while, wondering what is the point of the exercise in the workbook if we are bound by the impressions we give, and the common sense of "It's better to sell the impression you give naturally and honestly than to try and sell yourself as something else." Did I mis-interpret the purpose of the exercise in the workbook?

And then I begin to realize, perhaps the impression I give isn't really who I am. And I know that's the truth. The impression I give -- earnest, friendly, agreeable, nice, (doormat) -- is the persona I created to protect myself a looong time ago. Because no one liked the real me. Because I'm a people-pleaser by nature. Because I'm an HSP and need extra protection from the world and getting hurt. And that impression is very shallow, I think. Not that I give the impression that I am a shallow person, just that it's not very real, there's no strength or depth to it. It's all charm and smoke and mirrors.

And perhaps if I let the real me show, people would see me in the types of roles that I would cast myself in. If I let the real me show, who would I be? A question for you my readers: Does the impression I give here in my blog, the impression I give when I write, match the impressions given above?

Something else that keeps rolling around in my head, an interview with Jason Alexander that I read. He said that he has a much more "Hamlet" introspective-type personality, but that totally does not match his looks, the types he can play.