Totally LOVE this story. It reminds me years ago in drama class we each acted out a fellow classmate on stage, mannerisms and all. Everyone instantly knew who was being acted out--except the person it was! We didn't see ourselves as others did.
Totally LOVE this story. It reminds me years ago in drama class we each acted out a fellow classmate on stage, mannerisms and all. Everyone instantly knew who was being acted out--except the person it was! We didn't see ourselves as others did.
I've run acting classes where we've done something similar, though the subject knows it's them, as we start with observing the subject walking from one end of the room to the other and back, before imitating their gait as accurately as possible. Such a simple exercise, though it requires real trust and support - it could easily slip into pastiche, or even outright mockery otherwise.
Another useful part of the same exercise was for people to suggest where the walker was going, what their job might be, etc.
A further development was to get each walker to try and remove all such clues from their gait. I only ever saw two people achieve this neutrality entirely, with remarkably different result. With one, it was like they'd turned into an automaton without a soul, and one that could do literally anything and it not bother them one jot to do it; it was genuinely unnerving. The other somehow appeared saintlike, seeming unencumbered by the usual human frailties we carry round with us.
Totally LOVE this story. It reminds me years ago in drama class we each acted out a fellow classmate on stage, mannerisms and all. Everyone instantly knew who was being acted out--except the person it was! We didn't see ourselves as others did.
I've run acting classes where we've done something similar, though the subject knows it's them, as we start with observing the subject walking from one end of the room to the other and back, before imitating their gait as accurately as possible. Such a simple exercise, though it requires real trust and support - it could easily slip into pastiche, or even outright mockery otherwise.
Another useful part of the same exercise was for people to suggest where the walker was going, what their job might be, etc.
A further development was to get each walker to try and remove all such clues from their gait. I only ever saw two people achieve this neutrality entirely, with remarkably different result. With one, it was like they'd turned into an automaton without a soul, and one that could do literally anything and it not bother them one jot to do it; it was genuinely unnerving. The other somehow appeared saintlike, seeming unencumbered by the usual human frailties we carry round with us.
We were young. It was Berkeley in the sixties. We didnтАЩt know we had human frailties! Thanks for your comment.