Character Building

Lessons from Acting and Insecurities

There’s a beautiful Japanese idea called kintsugi, an extension of wabi-sabi principles, that has found its way to me through various books and articles in the past year. I recently came across it again in Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. When pottery breaks, rather than restoring it to its original state, the Japanese highlight that it broke and fill in the portion between the cracked pieces with gold, emphasizing the imperfection. The impermanence of all things.

Crafting interesting characters is not so different from this, because the beauty is in the richness of imperfection. The mess. 

I’m currently involved in a handful of projects where I’m trying to embrace just that. I’m developing characters ranging from a wealthy lawyer and mother of two in an abusive marriage to a quirky 30-something desperately looking for love. A young girl in her early 20s whose alcoholic, comatose mother is on the brink of death to a Californian waitress being courted by a boy who’s ten years younger than her. 

The polarity is shocking and intoxicating to me. 

In my acting program, we learn how to build characters and dive to the depths of their universes. Our training starts with the slogan "the actor's job is to tell the truth between action and cut." It then progresses to "the actor's job is character." And in the final leg of the program, which I'm currently in, we learn that "the actor's job is to live as the character." 

Method actors, am I right? 

It's a process of understanding both the objective and subjective sides of a character. Her world, but also her worldviews. Her beliefs and narratives, but also how those came to be. We must know a character's morals and values as deeply as we know our own. 

Easy enough, I thought. 

But where it gets challenging for me is the insecurities of the character. It’s one of the key concepts we learn at our acting studio. Much like we do in our actual lives, our characters also operate from a place of insecurity and will do anything to hide it. 

This always stumped me. How could I both show and hide something as personal as an insecurity? 

Hot Seat 

It wasn't until a recent exercise where this idea clicked for me. As a part of the program, we do something called Hot Seat. 

Each of us picks a character we want to build over the span of several weeks, and then we are interviewed as if we are that person. We did this exercise two weeks ago, and I picked a fallen pageant queen — I called her Summer Kay. Someone who had been in the pageant circuit for her entire life, sights set on winning Miss Universe once she was eligible. 

I started researching the path to become Miss Universe.

The history of pageantry. How they've evolved. Scandals. I studied films about aspiring stars, women who prioritized beauty, read EmRata's book My Body. I watched YouTube videos of various pageants and tried to perfect the walk, the smile, the poise. I called a friend who had once been in the pageant circuit herself to understand the lived experience, the nuance. I started listening to podcasts hosted by pageant trainers and former queens, advising me in contradictions: be efficient with my words, but also don’t rush my responses to the judges’ questions; make friends with the other women, but keep my eyes on the prize. 

Clear as mud.

Once I felt I could confidently talk about the world of pageantry, I started building out a life for my character: a backstory, major life events, where she went to school, what her relationships were like, etc. I was making great progress, but hit a bit of a wall when I tried to understand her insecurity (or what I thought it was). 

Originally for this character, I was thinking that her insecurity would be: am I pretty enough? 

A girl who was told she was pretty from a young age, who won competitions for her beauty, all of a sudden is forced to doubt that core piece of herself when she loses at an important pageant. I pulled on this thread of insecurity during my preparation in the days leading up to the Hot Seat, unsatisfied with how real I was able to make this feel for myself. 

As someone who did not grow up thinking I was pretty at all — or really even thinking it was a thing to focus on — I was having a hard time relating to my character’s plight. But then I had an epiphany.

I realized Summer’s insecurity around if she’s pretty enough is definitely a layer of her insecurity, but that’s not the full picture. There are other, more complex layers that I was failing to consider. And they’re not so different from my own. 

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall

I thought back to something called the Mirror Exercise we’d done in class a few weeks prior. 

In this exercise, we stood in front of the mirrors lining the studio walls. At first, we started out in a wide shot, standing 20 feet away from our reflections. The light in the room was dimmed to limit distractions, and we were told to lock eyes with ourselves in the mirror, something we call “anchoring”.

As our teacher played moving instrumental music over the loud speaker system, he told us to move closer and closer over the span of 15 minutes. We went from observing ourselves in the wide shot, to the medium shot, to the close-up, and finally, the extreme close-up.

And then gradually, we progressed back again in the reverse order: extreme close-up, close-up, medium shot, wide shot. The final step of this was to move to whichever position we felt most strongly about. 

Everyone in the class immediately moved to the extreme close-up, practically pressing their noses against the glass on the wall. I stayed in the wide shot. In this view of myself, which we so rarely take, I was reminded of something.

I saw how small I was in the space of the open studio. I saw a younger me, Little Shivani, staring back at a reflection of who I’ve become. And it was in this moment that I was reminded how soft I am.

I remember nearly scoffing at myself, thinking that most people need to be reminded with the common adage that they’re “stronger than they think.” For me, I need to be reminded that I’m softer than I think. 

I often forget that the strong-willed, white-knuckling version of myself that I show to the world on most days is partly real and partly fake. Like a mask or putting on make-up. At a high level I’ve always been a performer, having a strong desire to keep those around me laughing and entertained. 

Growing up, that looked like putting on random dances for my family or being a “goofy baby” as my mom calls me to this day. As an adult, it often looks like putting a smile on my face when that’s the furthest thing from how I’m actually feeling. 

Behaving this way for so long and largely being surrounded by the same friends and family for most of my life, it often unnerves people if my energy level isn’t shooting through the roof towards the moon 100% of the time. My parents still get uncomfortable when I spend the whole day quietly reading or diligently writing instead of spontaneously bursting out into song and dance. 

I’ve created an expectation, for others and myself, that my norm is high energy, high output. I’m not just “fine” when people ask, I’m great! Wonderful, even!! FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!!! I think most people in my life believe it’s safe to assume that I must be happy. It’s a mess of my own making, really. I don’t share what’s wrong if I think it’ll make the person opposite me feel sad too. I have to protect them. Where does this come from, Shivani? 

It’s a semi-conscious agreement I make with myself, but one that I’ve bought into so profoundly and for so long that I lose sight of the fact that sometimes it’s just a mirage.

I often forget it’s not always real.

I forget there’s a part of me — maybe most of me — that’s actually the opposite to what I often let people see. The “me” that’s quiet, introverted, academic. I disguise this part of myself often and even from the people closest to me. Especially from the people closest to me. This means sometimes I forget that this part of me exists at all. 

In the mirror exercise, I remembered.

As our reflections stared back at us, we were not playing any character. We were simply asked to observe ourselves. To not think, and just feel. What I felt was a disappointment in myself for neglecting the very human, real parts of me. For neglecting the little girl in me.

And it was with this realization that I found grounds for commonality between myself and my character Summer. The real insecurity for both of us is not, “am I pretty enough?” or “am I smart, bubbly, entertaining enough?” 

It is, “who am I once I set aside who I’m supposed to be?”

Insecurities are felt most acutely with the realization that we’ve spent so much time pretending they weren’t insecurities at all, that we forgot how scared that little version of us has always been. Scared, but also pure and uncalloused.

We got so caught up in putting all these layers over our tenderness — hiding it — that we lost sight of it altogether. We lost sight of the fact that we are tender and started to believe we were the external-most version of ourselves; our facades. That we were who we showed to the world, forgetting the core under all the papier-mâché we’ve done over our souls. The little girls or boys inside of us.

It broke my heart as I grasped the concept of insecurity in characters more instinctually than I could have ever intellectualized.

Shivani: The Character

Every character I play, regardless of how different she is from me, should have an airtight worldview. It's my job to build that. To cultivate it in a way that is truthful to the text and believable to the audience. 

When you recognize you can be a convincing actor in this way, you recognize you can be anybody. And it makes you think: have I just been acting this whole time? If no, thank god. But if yes, who am I actually? 

Was I just “Girl Who Was President of That Org” in college or was I actually a good leader?  Was I just “Girl Who Loves Building Positive Workplace Culture” at these companies or was I actually keen to make people feel included? 

Is there even a difference?

Having spent a year living abroad where I’m surrounded by completely new people and experiences, this sense of duality is only amplified. It has felt like leaning toward the wind’s push at the very top of a hike, trying to emulate the strength of the mountain itself as you stand at the edge of the cliff.

It’s beautiful, yes. But can also cause you to break.

And I think I’ve been afraid of breaking if I were to show, or even tap into, my insecurities. But maybe breaking can be a good thing, especially if we’re breaking through all the layers we thought we needed to build to protect ourselves and those around us.

That’s what I did with Summer Kay. I chose a character to work through my own insecurity — a crack in the pottery of life — and played with its imperfection until it felt as warm as gold. I faced it, rather than suppressing it. I placed the translucent pages of my life over the translucent pages of hers, rearranging them again and again, until they read as one. 

Shiv

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