Metamorphosis: a Conversation with Myself

Having a conversation with myself on stage wasn't anywhere close to my first idea of what to do for this fireside, but self actualization, introspection, and honest soul searching are among some of my highest ideals. Coincidentally, the conversation that I performed with myself last Friday at the fireside was not only me expressing my beliefs through form and content, but it was a reflection of the process of deciding what to do.

I would have really loved talking about concepts such as listening, learning from mistakes, forgiveness, or the Atonement. However, I have a natural inclination to be a little heavy handed with things that I believe very strongly about. I felt as though my original thoughts of how to express these ideas artistically would have been a little too abstract, aggressively didactic, heavy, or plain old artsy-fartsy. I would start writing a draft and then I realized that it just didn't sound like me.

I critiqued my concepts again and again to the point where I was tired of myself shooting down ideas. I called a friend to ask what I believed in and during the conversation I had with him it became apparent that I could utilize my inclination to humor, belief in self actualization, and limited acting ability to make a point.

To make this point, I started by "trying to hard" to make points artistically. My limited skills in graphic design yielded mediocre images that co-insided with my verbose, sweeping statements about the human soul. The goal was to be so heavy-handed that audience members would feel like I was trying to cramp ideas down their throats. At the peek of this moment, they would see that my own soul was offended by such fake remarks. Planning the script was a trick, but filming my recorded responses was even more difficult. I ended up creating visual loops to try and give myself enough time to have a conversation, but if I had thought of the idea earlier I would have liked to make it a little more organic. Eventually, after discussing generalizations and elitist language, I explicitly reinforced the idea I was implying the whole time: self actualization, and an honest, healthy relationship with oneself.

I felt as though the performance went well. Anytime that I have worked on a stage in the past I was very accustomed to improvising new lines in the moment, but I couldn't afford to do that if I wanted to be in sync with my video. I got positive reactions from my fellow students and intern had some very good conversations with Hadley and Colton about their presentations. Having just finished a first draft for a short film about experiences in my family, I came was in a state of mind where I was especially inclined engage with them about some of the subtleties hidden in their performances. As it would turn out, Hadley's parents' divorced a few years ago. Although it made sense once she explained it, I initially thought she was merely portraying the difficulties that arise in marriage. We had an honest conversation about the blessings and drawbacks of our folks' divorces, in which we discovered that we had similar experiences and ideologies. We ended the conversation with a warm, heartfelt hug.

Thank you for initiating such an entertaining and lovely note to end the class on.