Student Blog: Your Acting is So Beautiful, YOU Are So Beautiful

“Nothing of me is original, I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved” - Hannah Hassler

I have always loved this quote. It never fails to make me feel so beautiful. 

I was told once in elementary school that I should have gone as a witch for halloween because my nose is so “pointy”. I felt really self conscious about it after that, which sounds silly now, but words can and do hurt. It really bothered me until I realized, my nose is one passed down to me through years of love and connection.

My whole face is a mosaic of love - my whole existence is. 

I have found this to be a comforting quote for my looks, mannerisms, and personality, but I recently realized it works for acting, too. 

I have wonderful news for you! There is absolutely no one exactly like you on this earth. Not a single person talks exactly like you, looks exactly like you, acts exactly like you, or has had the exact same experiences you’ve had, so that leaves me to believe, no one can be an actor like you. 

My acting has pieces of my family, my friends, my local community theatre where I began acting for the very first time, my performing arts high school where I studied with some of the best people I’ve ever met, my directors who showed me what my acting can be, being on my own for the first time in college and creating a life in a place where no one knew me, the array of sports/activities I tried before I found theatre, my lovingness towards people, and my complicated feelings towards others, etc. 

I, myself, am a mosaic of everything and everyone I’ve ever loved and my acting is too. 

My acting is a result of all of the training I’ve gone through, but more specifically how they mix together. It is also made up of how I feel about and react to different situations. Each character I play teaches me something for the next character as well, sometimes even altering how I view the world as myself. I have picked different characteristics for my characters through lived experiences and people watching. They are sometimes depictions of traits I wish I had. My characters are as original as a finger print and each rehearsal and performance they are different. Even my own acting each day is not the same as my acting the next. That goes to show just how unparalleled our acting truly is. 

So, act like your acting is completely unique, original, and something no one has seen or done before - because it is. Your performance each day is uniquely shaped from every experience you’ve ever had. Comparison should not live in theatrical places, because if all of our performances were the exact same, characters would be unrealistic, and oh, so very boring. Celebrate your creative differences. You deserve to believe there is a place for you and your acting, because there is. You are as unique and unparalleled as the universe itself, bask in that and believe it.  
 

Work Cited

Hassler, Hannah. “Living Mosaics.” Medium, https://hannahhassler.medium.com/.