Aspergers and Acting/Theatre

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Is anyone here an actor, professional or ameteur? I took acting as one of my fine arts classes in high school for two years (freshman and junior). I've also been a techie for several plays, and while I haven't had many major roles, I have played roles such as Peter in Romeo and Juliet and am preparing for the role of Dr. Anagnos in The Miracle Worker. (All these are school-produced plays, BTW.) MY theatre program is particularly good, they emphazise professionalism and expect us to be as good as the adult actors in local theatres, but despite this, let us have our fun with the plays we do.


But my point is, maybe the process of acting, of discovering your character's innermost thoughts, goals and desires in order to become that character, helps teach the social interaction that we as Aspies don't know instinctively. By becoming other people, mimicking their behaviors and actions and living their stories, we learn in some weird way how to be ourselves, and we learn how to fake or "act" social interaction to make up for our lack of ability to do so for real. Well, that's my thought. What's yours?

I agree

I agree

exactly

i'm still on the Johnny Depp topic with this in mind, he does what I do, I do what he does. Getting inside characters - all the other deep information seems to just come naturally, a bit spooky. After watching zillions of Depp interviews I haven't found his real accent yet, sometimes it subtley changes in different answers - this is not normal actor acting! Just like Kaufman did sometimes.

Same thing as with David Lynch, he says - "the artist doesn't have to suffer, he just needs to understand it".

I'm an actor. I really enjoy it. I agree with what you were saying, and I'd like to add that one thing I love about acting is that the writer did all the hard work of thinking up what I should be saying and all I need to worry about is listening and reacting to what the other actors are doing (if that makes any sense).

I was in drama class in JR High and something called "forensics" which was about going to compititions and either reading/acting out different from of literature of debating,(I did inturpretive reading and won several compitions,even going onto state level)The people in my group were all "weird" and the only friends I had in Jr High. When I tried it in High School,I recall nothing about anyone else in the group..no one talked to me though I made one friend in the school play(I was the lead in "I Remember Mama")

Not bragging,honestly,lol....I just wanted to say that I thought that I couldn't possibly be an aspie because I did these things and they seemed to contridict the stereotypes of AS I had read some places....Then the theripist pointed out that most aspies are acting "NT" most of the time.Acting comes natural,and some do it better then others.

I think all the reading and TV watching I did as a kid helped me learn tone of voice and some basic NV communication and how it matched human emotion.I wouls recommend both to aspie kids...acting classes and lots of reading about people.

Acting classes have helped me a lot over the years. Especially now I work in the media.

I did a performing arts diploma at college, I found it helped me no end.

I am somewhat of an amateur actor. I find I excel most at Shakespeare (I've played Ophelia in Hamlet and Titania in A Midsummer's Night Dream). I wanted to be an actress for the longest time but then I realized how hard it is to break into, so now I've decided that I'll perform on the side. I love doing performance art, and I have an alter-ego (Fannie Dee). My inspiration for my alter-ego was a Bust article on drag queens who are biologically female (women who pretty much do the same stuff as drag queens, getting dressed up way over the top and performing).

I love acting and am apparently quite good at it. But I wouldn't do it professionally because I HATE WEARING MAKE UP.

I loved acting for quite a while. I did it for GCSEs (and AS, but I never completed it), as well as a youth theatre that I attended for five years. I enjoyed it, and the youth theatre especially taught me a /lot/ about people and social interactions.

I'm crap at it, though, I came to realise. And now that I've taken as much as I can out of it, I've had to drop it.

I didn't complete my Alevel because of the teacher though. The studio lights triggered my epilepsy, but the teacher wouldn't let me turn them off and use the performance lights in class, so I had to drop it. I probably wouldn't have passed anyway, but it did annoy me.