Who Are You?

Since public performance scares the stuffing out of normal folk, people often think that actors have rock-solid confidence and an insanely secure sense of self. As an always-on-the-border-of-basket-case neurotic and a lifelong theater person, I can assure you that is a largely mistaken impression. One of the reasons we do what we do is because, from a very young age for most of us, we have yearned to be someone else. Or many someone elses. Many actors are acutely awkward offstage and have a hard time navigating the real world without scripts, costumes, and rehearsal. Others stay onstage at all times to avoid having to navigate the real world. A pretty complicated bunch. Either way, losing yourself in a character and walking around in someone else’s skin for awhile is pretty seductive. “They” can do all sorts of stuff you would never do and provide a chance to fit in with groups you might never be able to infiltrate as the real you, but it’s important to remember that they aren’t the real you. In Mick Manning’s cock-a-doodle hooooooo!, a sad, lost little owl wanders into a chicken coop and finds a home. He admires and likes his fowl friends so much that he embarks on a very frustrating quest to be one of them and begins to act chicken-y. The problem is he stinks at it, as he would being an owl. One day, though, his owl instincts kick in and save the henhouse--little owl is a nocturnal-friendly hero.


http://www.amazon.com/Cock-doodle-hooooooo-Mick-Manning/dp/1561485683

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Manning