The effects of masking aka camouflaging.
This may be a repeated topic, but I think it's an important one to revisit. So often we hear about actors who have invested so much of themselves in their craft and they are celebrated for it. Most recently we've heard about Austin Butler and his performance of Elvis and how at the end of filming, his body simply collapsed. He could not carry on
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkR · 5:00
They're okay now, but they were really ill, but they just kept on working. And I wasn't focusing on that. I was focusing on how they're ill, what's wrong with them? But actually, when I thought about it, wow, they kept on working no matter what that means. Most people would have just stopped. And I thought, wow, that's real strength. It made me feel
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkR · 4:21
So is it really not somebody not saying, I'm not appreciating you as a powerful person, but really they are because that's still part of you. Isn't the mask, if you're calling it a mask, isn't the mask just a technique or somebody that you create a lot of boxes, like I'll talk about Tyson Fury, a lot of boxes like Sugar Ray Leonard
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:45
And although there can be some low, low, low, low functioning autistic individuals who need assistance to live, you know, well after the age of 18, that's just not the example for all. And I think that's what makes it so complicated, that it's such a diverse thing where from my son, for instance, he couldn't really appear neurotypical even if he wanted to. And that was a part of the reason why he got checked out, was tantrums
And I think that's not always seen with either people who have anxiety or autistic individuals who seem quote unquote normal. There's a lot going on internally in order to appear quote unquote normal. And so we haven't, as society embraced or normalized different behavior of what it looks like for someone to listen. Some people will doodle, but they're actually listening. But someone will perceive that as not paying attention
To some extent, things are excused and said, well, boys will be boys. And to another extent, then girls are socialized a bit more. So girls might stem by twirling hair or chewing gum or our tongue playing with a tooth in the mouth or doodling or something like that. Something that's socially acceptable, right?
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:32
Hey, interesting, I would say, as a person who's not really I don't know, I'm not a huge theater expert or anything of that nature. I just know I enjoy plays and movies and things like that, especially if it's a topic I have interest. Christina well, it kind of reminds me of this clip I had seen, I think it was last month when Will Smith did a red table talk with his kids about the movie
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkR · 5:00
We had this little conversation about Neuro Divergence and being neurodivergent, and I didn't realize that you meant that you actually had to. You've created a character being yourself. How do you do that? I guess it's very similar to the actor, but it's different because as an actor and so when you're acting, it's a completely different thing. Although I've got more to say about that as well. But why would you do that?
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkR · 4:57
So, for instance, after The Player, when I come out as myself, I'd find it really nerveracking, even though I'd just done the play, to take a bow because I'm me now. But yeah, it's really interesting
It's interesting to me that these roles where actors immerse themselves so deeply and so intensely, often are roles that require you to turn into delve, into the darkness, like the dark character. And I marvel at it. I can only imagine all that it takes to do that, because when was in the International Theatre Company, most of them were one off performances
And like for the longest time, those expectations are handed to you, right, of when you're growing up, what it looks like to be a good girl, for example, and then what it means to be a good Christian girl and and then what it looks like to be a good Christian wife and and Anne, right? And and you sort of I started to shape some of what that was. And if someone says, oh, what are you doing?
And so anything you say I don't know if the words are hollow or the words don't have meaning or the words can't be interpreted or understood, but if they don't have a place to begin a construct that they have begun creating, then they have nothing to work with in order to hear what you're saying. And so putting on that character, that role was similar in that sense. It helped facilitate it's
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkR · 4:52
And that's why sometimes when I see a kid who's fully expressive, you think, wow, it's really cool because they are maybe just being who they want to be in that moment and they're not. If they my nephew, he used to go crazy. He was like kind of hyperactive in public places and he could and I was just saying madame, but imagine if he acted like this as an adult. He'd get arrested, right, or thrown out of a restaurant or something
I don't remember the exact wording of it, but it's something along the lines of we learn more of what it requires to move through the world and to live when we're older, when we really need that information, when we're younger. And it's really funny, right?
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkR · 2:21
It's all buried under a lot of it could be a lot of things. You act in certain ways. Could be emotional things or triggers. Life experiences sort of changed you, and now you're no longer you. So I guess we're always trying to get back to ourselves somehow. If you want to be yourself, that is it's really interesting. It's a really, really interesting subject
It really is okay to throw a monkey wrench into this with respect to clothing and how much of that defines us, also how much of it we are defining. Like, for instance, a mutual friend of ours describes clothing as costumes. I'm I'm not saying name or gender, just in case. I don't think it'd be a problem, but just in case
And suffering is endemic to existence, right? So there's going to be some suffering no matter what choices we make. What defines us in terms of other people's ability to identify us right. Still has nothing to do with our internal landscape, is the thoughts, ideas, and actions that we choose to attach to
There's freedom to sort of redefine, recreate, reimagine who I want to be in each moment, in a sense, right, in each interaction and each day moving forward. And I really like the way that you put that there at the end, that we're sort of a presentation or aura. It's not the word you used
One of the really happy masks that I'll put on is to be an EXO bird and to sing and dance and show off and have fun with people when we go swimming. And I'll do a lot of, like lip syncing and all of that. And I absolutely hate swimming because the water drives me insane. And I hate loud noises and I hate people looking at me and all of those things. But I do that because it gets a reaction. And everyone has fun
Unfortunately, in today's society is not a show that should probably be done anymore, which is sad because it defeats the whole purpose of why the show needed to be done in the first place. Anyway, in case you don't know, it's about the main character, Josh, who I was fortunate, quote, enough to be cast as. And I ran home and I was like, Mom, I got the lead in the show. And she was like, oh, that's awesome
Wow, river, that was a really, really powerful share. Just wow. It just made me think of, like, all of the different ways that everyone masks to some degree, let alone if we're neurodivergent or we're part of the LGBTQIA plus community and, like, the impact that has
Ezra Lawhn
@AtlasEz · 2:05
So I completely agree, hardly with everything you said. Well, not everything, but, like, a lot of things that you said. Because when I was little, I was and someone might have already said this if so you can just ignore me. But yeah, I was always the kid who was picked on for domain class or being weird or acting a certain way
And so just reading through there and some of them are so much clearer to explain to somebody who is not autistic what it's like, because it seems I don't know, I feel like as much as I try to explain it, I can't quite get there. Because to some extent masking is something everybody does, but not to the intensity or amount that autistics do. Masking and somehow or another that's a difficult concept to either convey and or understand