Are aspies good at acting?

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and what about yourself? Do you enjoy acting/roleplaying? Are you good at it?

hi greentea,

i love 'fancy dress' - i collect costumes and build themes/charecters that i can become for the night. however, i have never been very good at acting as such (though i have spoken to some aspies who have been well into it!).

i went on a short clowning and physical theatre course back in april as i thought that it would help with putting some 'colour' into my trapeze performance (my community aerial theatre co put on a piece in october and i was a main charecter). however, i didn't realise at the time that the course was run by 'steiner school' and was more aimed at self development than learning any traditional clowning techniques and unfortunately i didn't get as much out of it as i would have liked.

what are your experiences with theatre/acting?

have you any helpful advice?

I could probably emulate a robot that lacks eye contact, but I then wouldn't be acting.

Hi, I played the Earl of Westmoreland in HS, "My liege, this haste was hot in question, when all athwart there came a post from Wales, laden with heavy news, whose worst was that the noble Mortimer, and thousand of his men, were by the rude hand of that Welshman taken". == Henry the IV, Part 1.

Of course, I don't remember the lines correctly, but I'd like to think I did a fair job jof acting in the Senior Class Play, but don't think I could earn a Tony for it! That was in 1962, and I've still got a copy of the program!

I feel that we can act, if we are in the right mood, with a sense of humor bubbling up, but if we're serious, it could be difficult to act convincingly, unless we were just playing ourselves.

I used to do magic, and that's really just acting, with a few props thrown in. It's the acting that really creates the magic, not the props.

I performed a simple quick-change stage illusion, and had to fix up a costume, just an old man's jacket, an old wide-brim '40's style hat, and a fake beard, to take the part of an "old professor" who comes up on the stage to unwrap me from a bedspread, and when the bedspread gets unrolled, it's a beautiful girl, the old man took off his beard, hat and coat and he was me!

That was the most fun acting, and it was all my own production, no one else to tell me what to do, and my first big "acting gig".

I had joined an acting class at school and stayed with it many years - and I think I wasn't all too bad.

The good thing about it is that there's somebody, teacher/director, who explains and works out with you how to act in certain situations, how to express certain feelings, how to control yourself in expression and posture ... I think that helped me a lot !

I think that as a rule, some of us are very good actors. We spend way too much time pretending to be normal, and trying to fit in. It comes second nature to us in the role of seeking acceptance.

I acted some times, but it was not on a high level. Well, I had fun acting and people were happy with the results.

But most roles were close to myself, the clumsy types or the 'boring' types.

I love acting and plan to get more involved in acting for tv and movies.

Acting Up topic

This is interesting as when I was a kid I wanted to go live in a book and become one of the characters. This seems a bit unusual now that I am older, in that would I have a consciousness or would I just meld into the words and pages, only to come alive if someone read me? Did I always wish to find a good book to live in, as Melanie wrote in "Look what they've done to my song".

Actually, this sounds like the way I am now!
However, I don't see what character I would be in a philosphy or history text. Perhaps the author.

When I was a kid I had this secret desire to act in some of the TV shows I watched on a regular basis, which really was not much as the TV was often incapacitated. Reading and being the character or narrator (author) of a book seemed more interesting. But I am digressing.

Having said as much, the reality is that acting is strenuous and demanding. How Darryl Hannah, Dan Ackroyd and others unknown to me at this moment can manage the art and science of acting is beyond my comprehension.

My youngest son is in an acting program and totally enjoys this extra-curricular activity.

My older son was and still is fantastic at doing foreign accents. Our younger son hasn't shown that skill, but he is plenty skilled at acting and singing. Doing these things helps to give him self-confidence.

I really think that people on the spectrum would do well to get involved in acting classes, as it is a "natural" for teaching NT behavior in a very enjoyable way.

Kris

I was obsessed with acting as a kid.....would habitually go to auditions..practice monologues out these monologue books I collected....was in a few plays as a teenager...am not so ambitous as an adult

I am not very good at it, but I did participate in school plays.

Miler and physician Roger Bannister did some acting in his years at Oxford. He did it to overcome his painful shyness.

I have a different spin on this acting thread. One of my lifelong special interests is why people act the way that they do. I have obsessively watched human interaction and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships since I was a very small child. As a result, I can in some situations emulate NT behavior to a degree. This is hands down acting, and more difficult interactions (romantic) I cannot pull off, but it keeps me going in the workplace.

I can say the most ridiculous things but I can say them in a way that makes people believe that I'm serious.

As far as acting in some sort of production...I'd probably have a snowman's chance in hell at being a good actor.

Exactly Duncan, exactly. I think we're often way better at it then we know. There is acting off the stage and I think many of us, especially given time learn our roles, do it very well. Sometimes we have no recourse but to act to get by in the world and it, in itself, can be the cause of great stress. Like some comedians and actors that can't come off stage, many examples of them. I have always watched people, as far back as I can remember, studied them. Doesn't mean I have it all figured out, it still amazes me when my wife points things out with the opposite sex, just what it is I'm missing in the role they're playing. But yah, my Dad said to me one time when I was young, you should take up acting. Now he was aspie as well, I don't think he could have done it near as well as I, but then he did Math to the Nth degree and I don't do numbers, but I do math, it's just different then his. My math works very well with people as the symbols.

I suspect there are many on the spectrum that are famous, were famous, look for the recluses just for a start. Also look in the comedy groups, they cross over into acting as well and being aspie is a bit easier to pick out with them. I think because we so often have a different take on things, see things differently and very often in more then one way to the point of not knowing which is correct, gives some of us the ability to lend it to the craft. Now the stage, that is a horror to me, I can not think on stage, at all. I suspect it too is part of the craft and I've heard it said learning it is important and maybe with training such a thing could be gotten use to. What training is made up of, I can't say. There are more then one schools of acting and I fully expect there are more then one that might make it easier for an aspie to really soar in. I would offer nothing but encouragement to any aspie that might like to go down this path.