Acting & Autism by Hannah Ottley

21 October 2017

Hi Courtyard! My name is Hannah, I’m an autistic teen who runs a blog that strives to educate about autism (www..ndddemonstration.wordpress.com). Today I have the honor of guest writing for Courtyard. I am super excited to talk to you all about my two favorite things, Autism and Acting. But before I can start rambling I need to define a few words I’ll be using.

• Autism: Autism/Aspergers is a neurotype, the brain of people with Autism (AS) is constructed and works differently from typical brains. That means that people with AS see and experience the world differently. I think that’s super cool! 1/68 people are diagnosed with a form of autism.
• Allistic: or neurotypical refers to people with typical neurology or people without autism. 67/68 of the population is Allistic/Neurotypical (NT).
• Scripting: A method of communicating common in autistic people. This refers to having pre-planned responses to common questions and situations as well as possible things they could be asked.
• Affect:   A term referring to people's facial expressions, in particular, how expressive somebody's face is. Someone may have a “Flat affect” meaning they do not show much emotion.
• Special Interests: is a term referring to the intensity and depth of AS people's interests. Special Interests (SI(‘s)) are very important for autistic people, and we enjoy talking about them immensely.
• Masking: means to conceal or hide in this case the identity of a person. In the context of autism, masking means to act as a neurotypical.

I love acting. (You may have guessed I am writing a blog about it.) Courtyard is the first and the only place I've acted. I adored my first season with them in Suessical JR. I hadn’t known I liked acting when I joined, then I realized… I was pretty good at it. It didn’t take me long to figure out why. Masking. 24/7 practice in my real life every day. Because of my autism, I have flat affect. I often struggle with the correct response. When I am my most true self-people are confused, we have a hard time communicating. So I learned how to pretend I was just like everyone else without thinking about it.

For me acting is a safe space. Bundled safe in scripts the whole cast knows. Knowing what to say is very difficult for me, one of the most stressful things in my day to day life. Theater takes that from me. No more wondering why what I said was wrong. I know why I flubbed a line. No more wondering what the other person will say, we’ve been rehearsing this conversation for months. I normally only practice real-life conversations for hours or days. When we have a script I can recover quickly. You meant to say this, let me prompt you, we got this.

Oh and Blocking is a Blessing. I often have trouble with using the correct body language, being aware of my space. In acting, I don’t have to worry  I’ve spent weeks practicing exactly how I enter this stage, how I move on it and around my castmates. Enter stage left, cross center, line line line, and leave. Hit your mark sing your song. Learning my expressions is simple enough as well, I spent 16 years cataloging what everyone else looks like and I am an excellent mimic. I can show you the difference between anger and fury. Happy and joy. Sad and despair. My voice bleeds emotion, years of practice paying off. Concerned one second and wistful the next. Anger and fury, and despair mixing together as I play the grieving giant for Into The Woods.

I love the freedom theater gives me, I’ve said I’m closest to my most true self in the theater. Part of that is shared SI’s. I know my peers have at least one thing in common, love of theater. My cast is happy to listen to me gush over soundtracks and songs. So and so’s performance. The choreography for that one show. Often my cast can get just as excited as I am! We bond over backstories and build each other up practicing scripts and songs in the break.

Overall, theater is an amazing experience for me. From cold read to show day and the rehearsals in between. I love seeing a show come together being a part of that process!