Sometimes I like to just go places and pretend to be someone else. Like a medical professional!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going into a hospital and telling them that I’m prepped for surgery. I mean when I’m at a party, or our in an unfamiliar place. You take on a different persona, and thus your acting prowess is sharpened since you’re forced to maintain said persona in an act of extended improvisation. My acting mentor taught me this, and I’ve used it a lot, hence why my acting is at the level that it is. Yesterday I went to a convention for stage lighting, something I usually find quite dull, and so I decided to slip into a new persona for the duration of my time there doing research. People might have thought that it was odd that a hyperbaric oxygen therapy specialist.
from Melbourne was at a lighting convention, but I had a compelling backstory. I was Doctor Muller, a renowned oxygen therapy doctor visiting from Munich. However, in my spare time I had a passion for the intricacies of theatre, mainly the things that happen backstage. They appeal to my sensibilities, given that I’m an oxygen therapy specialist and I have a keen analytical mind and all that. Also kinda felt like a lot of people there were bored, so they actually wanted to talk about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. THAT was a lot of improvisation on my part; I think I gave a different explanation to every person, because I’ve never experienced it myself. I know providers of hyperbaric medicine in Melbourne offer portable chambers, and that’s the extent of my knowledge.
However, as I stood there chatting to a man selling another variety of stage lighting, telling him that oxygen tanks were 90% filled with positive ions, I realised that I’d sunk into my role. I was method. I WAS the oxygen therapy specialist, from Munich, with a degree in hyperbaric sciences and an eye patch.
-Aubrey