Stage Play

Oct 31, 2023 | Autism, Thoughts

My life feels like a whirlwind on many days, which I have to fight to prevail.

Many people with autism use their masks, scripting and ways to design their encounters and daily businesses to reduce the whirl and in the best of cases even make the wind work for them.

Some of us, like me, have always felt a certain yearning. When watching shows or movies, when listening to music or looking at a theatre performance.
I then feel longing to feel those feelings too, to be able to be all overcome by one state of emotion and cry out, rejoice, sob or laugh with a clear intent that the scene provides.

Only daily life rarely, if never, gives such distinct opportunities. We are never facing a green lit box to feel to our heart’s content.
There is many objectives, rules, conventions inside the given space, other interfering feelings, connections to the people around us and if we can’t even make out those elements: A whirlwind of confusion.

One thing that I think is gotten wrong by many who look at an autistic person: We do feel so so so much. We feel so strongly, so all-embracing, so bare and hard, that our life’s purpose seems to be to contain this ever-lasting Tsunami of stimuli.
We take on our armour of many layers from an early age, to be able to fit in or at least to protect ourselves and others from the consequences of those crazy intense feels inside.

In the time when I wore all of my well-forged armour, I got into amateur stage play.
I was part of a number of small-scale productions, with a wonderful director, a loving ensemble and a constantly amazed audience.

It is fun and a nice hobby to follow, a challenge and an outlet for the own gifts to explore.

But little did I realize, that a stage play is not without reason a place of comfort for my inner workings:

  • There is a script

  • Someone tells you exatly how to behave

  • There are no random surprises to be expected

  • Each scene is rehearsed many times

  • You slip out of your armour and take on another person’s mask

  • There is a safe space to feel any given thing inside a closed environment

  • Every aspect of your surrounding is then fixed and has a purpose

  • For a short time it can be just like you would like your own story to progress every day