“Are you telling me you already perfected yourself and in the last 3 weeks you’ve perfected your character who’s twice as old as you?” My theatre professor stopped rehearsal and fired that question at me. I stood in the middle of the stage shaking. I was an arrogant college freshman in my first play giving my scene partner notes on their blocking. I felt naked. Emotionally I was. My professor had exposed the awful truth. I had never taken the time to tell my own story, how to embrace it, use it, own it, and not be owned by it. To be truthful in my own skin. If we avoid our own story, hide from it, disown it, or let it define us, we are unable to live whole. We remain a shell of person waiting for the richness of life to fill it. And by rich I don’t mean easy; I mean rich as in full of all the aspects of life. The pain, the joy, the failure, the success. Sanford Meisner once said “Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances”. Truthfully. When we are able to be truthful with our own story, to learn to tell it, then we grow in empathy toward others. We participate in a beautiful play of redemption. Seen&Heard invites you to step onto the stage with us to empower transitional age youth in foster care as they enter adulthood.
