My Assignment for Acting Class: “My Personal Manifesto”

I feel that God has called me to shine the light of Truth in the parochial arena. As a step in this process, He has me going to school, working toward my bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications. He hasn’t actually revealed all of what lies ahead for me in the future, but I know that He plans to use me to speak His truths to groups of people; sometimes small groups like church boards, and sometimes larger groups like those found at conferences and rallies. I (as “We”) felt like an acting class could help me to be more confident, and to appear more smoothly “together”, and, thusly, both respectfully professional and appropriately authoritative. I feel like I need a practiced stage persona that I can rely on to adequately deliver God’s Messages when I am too tired, frustrated, depressed, or in need of sugar. Moses had Aaron to speak for him; I will have another “me.” 

I’m sure I will learn the basic techniques that I will need to employ during these times when I’m likely to deliver an incoherent and weak message in the Acting 1 (Beginning Acting) class that I am currently taking, and, so far, the process that I am using to get to the place of knowing those consists very simply of listening closely and understanding my Acting instructor, participating in the class exercises, learning what I can about acting from the assigned text book, and practicing what I already know about stage presence while I interact with my friends and family in play.

I believe that one thing that I could be working on developing in myself is the capability to be 2 or 3 different “me”’s, while still being genuinely me; I need to see what I’m like when I’m hyper, when I’m playful, when I’m dead serious, when I’m driven, when I’m angry, when I’m clever, when I’m artfully whimsical, and so on. I need to figure out how to not only step outside of my body and look at myself, but how to do it from the perspective of a different set of eyes, so that I can “take notes” objectively, and be as thorough as possible in constructing the character of “me” to play when I’m “on stage” in front of a group of pastors and deacons, so that I don’t appear to forget what to do with my hands, my tongue, and/or my brain.