Acting practice to increase Social Skills

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What are you experiences with acting? There are even acting exercises that you can do alone. Did it help with social skills?

I took acting lessons after being involved in civic theatre. The way it helped me was that I learned to meet social challenges by taking on roles. Give a presentation on a new technology? Mr. Spock works just fine. A new hire is always late? A little Dirty Harry and he starts showing up on time. It's best to not overdo it, though ... I learned that the hard way while trying to romance my wife as Pepe LePew ...

Worked as professional actor

It did not "help"

Yes,it can and especially for things like learning about body language and facial expressions. Otherwise, I do a lot of reading about body language and facial expressions.

For example, I learned that having an open position and your head held high will give people the hint that you want to communicate. Another one, pointing your toes towards other people.

Following an empowerment training at my college, we sometimes act out situations with the group to make people feel comfortable about dealing with that situation.

Besides that I'm actually a performing arts student and my teachers consider my ASD something that makes it hard for me to play convincing scenes with others because I don't read the emotions of the other performers correctly. They have accepted this and try to convince me to improve my already great skills instead of helping me overcome this problem. They tried, but they feel like they're on a dead end with me.

I want to study psychology after this so I can still learn it hopefully, also because I want to help explaining autism to others.


Sorry for the rambling and rant, I really want to grow as an actor but it frustrates me that theatre school hasn't taught me much.

Caesar, awesome because I am studying psychology myself and I am almost done with my second degree. One of the great things about it is that you are able to pick up all kinds of great terms and models that you can plug your situations into. It really helps.

It's called "Role-Playing" (but you already know that), and it's not just for games!