A Troupe of Performers PDF

13 A Troupe of performers On the stage he was natural, simple, afecting; 'Twas only that when he was offhe was acting....

13 A Troupe of performers On the stage he was natural, simple, afecting; 'Twas only that when he was offhe was acting. -Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (I Z74) Pick a job and then become the person thot does it. Barrett, Mad Men -Bobbie I'llnever forget my first day of college teaching. To a normal person in a normal profession this should have been a moment for celebration. Getting to this point, after all, had been a considerable achievement. I'd sweated my way through four years of a competitive undergrad- uate school, two more years at a second university to get a master,s degree, and another four plus at yet another university to fina'y earn my doctorate' I'd struggled through countless tests, qualifying exams, comprehensive exams, a thesis, a dissertation, the inãigniii.r-oru"ing a teaching assistant, the demands of often quirky prof"rro., and su_ pervisors. I'd landed an academic job during a viciously competitive market. I was a survivor, a finisher, a success story. It was all high_ fives when I left my graduate student hovel of a rife in New york city for my new one as a supposed big shot professor in california. ,.Make us proud, young man,,'one of my advisers told me. ,.oll the doors are open to you.,, what I mostly felt sitting in my new office, waiting to begin ^ Put first lecture, was terror. Whatever my in the world, I was asking myself, had possessed me to select a profession whose defining u"ti.ity,".p""lrng  Stranger in the Mirror 13 A Troupe of Pedormers before groups, had been my lifelong phobia? Sure, I wanted to be a For some reason, however-your basic deer in headlights comes professor. It had been my dream for as long as I could remember. Right to mind-I walked to that first class and gave my lecture. The ex- now, however, I was feeling like the proverbial man who had always perience was mostly a blur, as was the rest of that initial week. But wanted to be a concert violinist until he found out it would entail having after the first frantic performances something remarkable occurred: to learn how to play the violin. How could I be such a moron? a whole new me, a college professor, showed up at the lectern. The So there I was, pacing back and forth across my little office, man- new self-I'll call him Dr. L.-was rather poised and confident and ifesting all the traditional symptoms of coronary artery disease-rapid verbally at ease. one of the first things I noticed was how intellectual heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating like a hydrant-as my first Dr. L. sounded. He spoke differently from what I was used to. Even lecture drew closer. It's odd what your mind reverts to when you feel the Brooklyn accent lost its edges. The students certainly seemed im- cornered. Think positive thoughts, I kept telling myself. But when pressed. What was really odd, though, was how pleased I was by this I-a man who had just received his PhD in psychology, mind you- new persona as well. There were times when I would hear words come tried this, the only words that came to mind were old Nike slogans: out of my mouth and think, "How clever!" One time I heard myself "Be all you can be," "Just do it," "There is no finish line." I'm not just suggest a clever experiment to test a concept I had been lecturing a moron. I'm a cliché of a moron, a moron's moron. about. I found myself, like a good student, frantically scribbling down Before long, the only image I could conjure was the frightened a sketch of the experiment as soon as my lecture was over. stutterer I'd been when I had to give oral presentations in high school I'd never been much of a storyteller. In fact,I have hardly any back in Brooklyn. My mind kept replaying a particularly traumatic childhood memories of stringing together more than a few sentences episode when a tenth-grade English teacher assigned each of us to when speaking. One early lecture, however, I began with what was prepare speeches critiquing classic books. I drew Robinson Cntsoe. planned as a brief anecdote. When I was done, students peppered me This created a special problem for my stuttering because I had a nasty with questions, seemingly interested to know more. I started the story problem with words that began with the letter R. Furthermore, I was again and, this time, one image led to another, and to another and, told to deliver my talk with a British accent. This was a ridiculous when I looked up at the clock, I realized I had been telling my story challenge given that I recently had been diagnosed as having a bad for half the class. From then on, Dr. L. developed into a reliable sto- case of "Brooklynese" (in a high school in Brooklyn!) by our school rytelle¡ certainly a much better one than I'd ever known myself to be. speech therapist. My talk was an absolute disaster. Now, a decade late¡ Then there was this sense of humor. I've always tried to be funny, the nightmare was looping through my mind. There was that fifteen- but my usual style had been concise comebacks (attempts, at least). I year-old me stumbling to the front of the class, trembling, where I now found myself performing extended riffs. One student complained spoke with a British accent that made me sound like a left hemisphere he hadn't paid tuition to hear a stand-up routine-which I took as a stroke victim delivering an analysis of Robinson Crusoe while trying compliment. Sometimes I would get into give-and-take with my audi- to avoid saying the word "Robinson." ence. It felt as if I was doing improvisation. Where did that come from? And this first lecture would be just the beginning of a career de- There were elements of my new persona I could trace to people I fined by public speaking. Was I going to be torturing myself like this knew. Curiously, however, I didn't realize I was mimicking them until for the next thirty-five years? What could I have been thinking about after the fact. Once, early on, an old friend had volunteered to critique all that time I was studying to be a professor? I decided to quit my new my lecture style. Afterward, I asked him about my physical movements job right then and there. And I mean rÌght then, because if I was going and gestures. "I love that John Lennon thing you do when you want to put an end to this teaching delusion, I certainly wasn't going to put to make a point," he told me. "You really nailed his moves." The fact myself through that first lecture. is, I had no idea I was doing any such thing. When I lectured the next  Stranger in the Mirror 13 A Troupe of Pedormers day, however, I saw that my colleague was absolutely right. I even said, perience in his book The Trouble with kstosterone. After his father "Thanks, mate," to someone who picked up my dropped pen. died, Sapolsky found himself unexplainably adopting elements of From then on it was hard to get John Lennon out of my head. this man he had loved. He began displaying his father's mannerisms, A few weeks later, my impersonation leapt to the ridiculous. I was wearing his clothing, and even carrying around the bottle of nitroglyc- lecturing about the effects of culture on childhood development. I de- erin he'd kept at his side for his bad heart. The peak of Sapolsky's cided to personalize my lecture by describing a memory from the fifth confusion came when he delivered the final lecture of the class he was grade when my best friendAlan had shocked me by making fun of my teaching. He had intended to give a eulogy to his father. Instead, while Old World grandparents. My students seemed to be listening intently. dressed in his father's old flannel shirt, he found himself lecfuring in This inspired the performer in me, and I felt myself raising the passion the first person as if he were his father. Sapolsky recalls how he began level as I proceeded. I finished by saying that this was what it was like "offering the frail advice ofan octogenalian": "to be raised in a broken home in a tough section of Liverpool." It was an effective ending. But it was ridiculous. I was raised in a loving I warned them, amid their plans to tackle difñcult prob- lems in life and to be useful and productive, that they should home by eastern European Jews in Brooklyn. Uh-oh. John Lennon prepare for setbacks, for the rcalizalion that each commit- had crept in again. ment entailed tuming their backs on so many other things- There were other cameos. One time I was delivering a lecture like knowing their children, for example. And this was not about Erik Erikson's eight stages of man.3rs When I got to the stage of me speaking, still with a sheltered optimism about balancing middle adulthood, what Erikson calls the period of "generativity ver- parenting with the demands of science, but he with his weath- sus stagnation," I talked about how important it is to pursue long-term ered disappointments and the guilt and regret he expressed life goals that have an impact on people other than oneself. I described in his later years that he was always working when I was a middle-aged friends of mine who had made a lot of money but now boy. I told them that I knew they wanted to change the world complained that they had done nothing worthwhile with their lives. I but that they should prepare for the inconceivable-someday, felt very wise at that moment and said something like: "When I was they would become tired.3r7 young like you, it seemed as if money and success were all that mat- tered. But when you get to be my age, you understand how important it is to feel that you've made a contribution beyond yourself. You need I know just what Sapolsþ was talking about. it is like some- to take time for your family and friends and causes you care about. thing actors describe when they become so enmeshed in a role that Experience is a great teacher, and, if there's anything I've learned. it's the boundary between the part they're playing and their actual selves that your time can never be replaced." It sounded good. But what in seems to dissolve. The actress Annan Paterson told me, "There are the world was I talking about? "When yolt get to be my age"? I was times when I am so in the moment that I feel overcome by emotion twenty-seven years old-nothingbut a pisher'("a little squirt"), as my during a scene that it feels like I'm there." She might get so lost in grandmother used to say in Yiddish.3t6 And, "Experience"? I had been the script that she feels real hate or love for her onstage co-performer. out of school for a full two weeks, oh great sage I was. But, even as I Paterson recalls one strange occasion when, during a performance of was giving my advice, I knew it sounded awfully familiar. It should a play set on a farm in Ireland, "a real-life huge fly landed on my knee have, because it was almost verbatim what my father had said to me and I killed the fly as my character but in real life, too. For a moment I just before I'd left for California. Another invisible scriptwriter had really was on a farm in Ireland surrounded by pigs. It felt like 'pg'- joined my ranks. not like acting."318 The noted biologist Robert Sapolsþ describes a very similar ex- But actors have a script in front of them. In my case, it was unclear 7ñ Stranger in the Mirror 13 A Troupe of Performers where the words were coming from. If it was my father talking, was psychological tests taken before the experiment began. "It is import- I just a dummy in a ventriloquist act? If I was speaking from a script, ant to remember that at the beginning of our experiment there were no where was it stored and how was it activated? \\I'ho was the writer? diflerences between boys assigned to be a prisoner and boys assigned Who was the director? to be a guard," Zimbardo emphasized.3re I never doubted that Dr. L. was me. But his style was so unchar- The prison was hastily constructed. Three laboratory rooms were acteristic. He was so animated and such a performer. And he talk- converted into "cells." Adjacent offices were converted into housing ed constantly, sometimes an hour and a half (that is, a ninety-minute for the guards and bedrooms for the warden (a Stanford graduate stu- class) from start to finish, which I never, ever had done in my life. dent) and the superintendent (Zimbardo himself). A small, dark stor- There were times when I wondered what he was going to say next. age closet was made into an area for solitary confinement known as Nor did my new peßona totally replace the old one. He just showed "The Hole." A long corridor was converted into a prison "yard." This up at lecture time. I soon learned, in fact, that Dr. L.'s domain was was the only outside place other than a toilet down the hallway that rather limited. Once during those first weeks, I attended a colleague's prisoners were allowed to go (blindfolded, "so as not to know the way presentation. I was sitting in the audience at a student desk. During out of the prison"). The experiment was planned to last two weeks. the discussion period, I swaggered to my feet all-big-shot-like to ask On the morning ofAugust 14,197I, squad cars-real squad cars, a question. To my embarrassment, the doofus from my high school and real police, by arrangement with the Palo Alto Police Depart- English class showed up instead of Dr. L. But when I lectured to my ment-swept through the city, sirens blaring, picking up the prison- class in the very same room the next day, Dr. L. was back. ers in a surprise mass arrest. The prisoners were charged, warned of It was a confusing time for me. I liked this new self. Truth be told, their rights, spread-eagled against the car, frisked, handcuffed, and I had a bit of a crush on him. But he also felt like a stranger. And I felt tossed in the back ofthe squad car to be booked at the police station so fickle. Give me a new title and I send my old identity packing. Just and then transported to the "Stanford County Prison" in the basement like that. What kind of person was I? of the psychology building. Upon arrival, they were stripped naked, searched, and deloused. They were issued uniforms consisting of a {