I am indebted to
Sanford "Sandy"
Robbins
who inspired this conversation, and to
Werner Erhard
and
Sanford "Sandy"
Robbins
who
created
and lead The World Is Your Stage workshop in which they first
originated, distinguished, and articulated the ideas drawn on by
An Actor Playing The Lead Role In A Play Called "My Life".
At the start of Scene I of Act I in the play called "My Life", I'm
born.
I don't simply mean I'm born into the world's physicality
as a body. Although my body is a big aspect of being human, it's really
my most fixed aspect of being human, even though from time
to time throughout Act I, I consider it to be my least fixed aspect of
being human - in the sense that it's easily transportable
and relocatable. Rather, I mean I'm born into the world's
culture as a conversation - that is to say
I'm born into a climate, into a way of thinking, into a way of
expressing, into a way of being I inherit both from my family, as well
as from the societies, local and global, I grow up in, ...
and ... from Life itself.
This aspect of being human, this conversation I'm born as
(if I may say it this way), is my least fixed aspect of being human,
even though throughout Act I, I consider it to be my most fixed aspect
of being human.
Thereafter, all the remaining scenes of Act I in the play called "My
Life" are acted out while the body I'm born as, changes over the next
nearly three decades, growing, and
traveling all over our
planet.
They are changes I expect, allow for, and look forward to. But the
conversation I'm born as, the culture, the climate, the way of
thinking, the way of being I'm born into, hardly changes at all. It's
more than that really. It's not only does it hardly change at all: it's
I prevent it from changing. In a kind of naïve
loyalty, I suppose, to the particular broader conversation I'm
born into, I protect it, I nurture it, I hold on to it because if I'm
honest, I 'fess up that I identify with it. As a
sub-plot of the script of Act I in the play called "My
Life", that's how my role is scripted: as an
identity.
... at least, that's how I say it in Act I. But the truth is really
closer to "that's how I scripted my role" rather than
"that's how my role is scripted". I don't get this subtle yet profound
distinction until much later, long after the curtain falls on Act I.
In Act I of the play called "My Life", the whole idea, the entire
perspective of living my life as being in a play in which I'm the actor
playing the lead role, hasn't yet occurred to me - and no one has
suggested it to me yet. But that's grand theatre for you, and such is
the nature, the dramatic irony of this particular play.
Act II
Following Act I in the play called "My Life", Act II ends at exactly
the same time Act II starts.
Say whut? Did you get that?
That is to say
transformation
(which is Act II in the play called "My Life") takes no time at all ie
it happens out of time - which further implies Act II in
the play called "My Life" lasts for all eternity.
Act II in the play called "My Life" is really
the heart
of this play. It's its pièce de résistance. Act I,
in which I'm born as a body and as a conversation, lays the groundwork
for Act II to follow. As an actor in Act I playing the lead role in a
play called "My Life", I diligently follow the script. But there's a
wonderful "aside" which is revealed in Act II of this
play, one of those moments of pure drama when the audience is let in on
a secret even the cast doesn't know. It's this: I diligently follow the
script in Act I but I don't know I'm in a
play
so I don't know it's a script I'm following - I think I'm just living
my life.
It's even more than that actually. It's in Act I, I'm not only unaware
I'm in a play and unaware it's a script I'm following: in Act I, I'm
also unaware I wrote the script.
In Act II, I begin to see the possibility of living my life as the
playwright, which is to say I begin to see the possibility of living my
life as an act of creation. In Act II, I begin to see that since
I wrote the script anyway, I can follow the old script or I
can
write
a new one - and if I do follow the old script, I begin to see
I can do so as its author not as its reader / victim. In other
words
in Act II, I begin to see the conversation I'm born as, isn't
fixed.
As an actor playing the lead role in Act II in a play called "My Life",
I begin to see I'm responsible for creating it all, and I begin to see
the possibility of being the victim of none of it.
After the curtain falls on Act II in the play called "My Life", Act III
comes out of what Act II makes possible.
Act III
(The pages of my script for being an actor playing the lead role in
Act III of a play called "My Life" ... are all blank -
I've yet to
write
them.)
