A scientist. A basketball coach. A priest.
In seventh grade, my mom founded the speech team at my middle school. That was when I seriously started acting.
A husband. A father. A son. A friend.
Since then, I have performed in multiple theater productions, competed at dozens of speech tournaments and delivered hundreds of performances.
A man trying to support his family. A man wanting nothing more than revenge. A man trying to make the most of his last day alive.
At one point or another, I played all of these characters and plenty more. When you perform as this many people, it’s impossible not to bring elements of yourself to each role.
You become the character, and the character becomes you.
The first time I realized I had adopted a mannerism from one of my characters was during my freshman year of high school. It was incredibly minute, a small twisting gesture with my left hand. Nobody noticed anything different when I started displaying it in everyday conversation.
Even today, almost every time I delve into a new character, I adopt some of their behaviors in my real life. When I was in high school, I used it as a tool to practice my performances during everyday interactions.
Eventually, though, it stops becoming practice and just becomes you. And when you’re an amalgamation of fictional characters, who really are you?
College is supposed to be the time you find out who you are. But with speech, in which I currently play the role of four characters, I constantly feel like I’m spending more time figuring out who other people are, all so I can more accurately pretend to be them.
This isn’t to say I wish I wasn’t competing. I love the activity more than almost anything, but it’s hard to reckon with the feeling that it’s interfering with my personal growth.
I don’t know what parts of me are me. I don’t know what parts of me are my characters. And I don’t know if I think that’s OK.
When I go to bed at the end of the day, it feels like I’m going home after a day of filming a movie. There’s a director in my head who tells me “congratulations, that’s a wrap!”
But every time I wake up, we’re back to take one.
