Masking and Improv: Character Matching
This week you can read something and skip my voice. Or, happy holidays? Next week: egregious verbosity on something different.
Hi Improv Friends,
Holiday week, so a little bit different today. I’m sure many of you are busy with things that aren’t, I guess, listening to podcasts. Maybe you’re doing things in the general vicinity of other humans without your headphones in or something. So here’s a text-based newsletter from my lonely basement to your inbox you can read while pretending to pay attention to them.
This week I wrote out last week’s ep as an article, which I’ve heard (from a small sample size) is useful for them. Which is neat! But maybe some of you have had enough of this topic… I hear you too. I’ll be back with the next episode of the Neurodiversity & Improv podcast next Sunday.
I’ll be egregiously verbose in MP3 format about something different next week. Maybe I’ll make it extra different, even.
However, this article and the podcast episode are kinda different. I have clarified and added things in the text version. Removed some things I said in the podcast to clean this verbiage up. I improvise off some bullet points in the podcast. So they're mostly the same, but not entirely. I think this is a bit better? Technically has more thought put into it, I guess.
Way to sell it, huh?
An Article About Masking and Character Matching
This article derived from the notes made for episode six of my Neurodiversity and Improv podcast. You can listen to the original podcast using the player below. For more information on the podcast, see this page.
This episode covers the intersection of masking and peas in a pod scenes in improv, after a bit of an infodump about what masking is, and why we do it. I hope it makes sense. I don’t know if it will, this stuff is weird and imposter syndrome is real. A future episode will infodump 2.0 about how masking affects voice of reason and grounded scenes, and I think it’ll be more useful than this one maybe.
jendehaan.substack.com (post for Ep 6)
You can also access the podcast recording along with the transcript and more info here.
Don't use this podcast or article to diagnose anyone, please. Including yourself! If you find yourself identifying with a bunch of these episodes/articles, you might want to do some online tests and set up an appointment with some expert in this stuff.
Now lets get to the verbose and wholly self-indulgent article! We like to use a lot of words to not be misunderstood so here is ME doing THAT! Unmasked. Heh.
About Masking
Masking is a common behavior for people who are autistic and/or ADHD. Masking is sometimes called camouflaging, mimicking, or being a social chameleon. It can be conscious or (most commonly) unconscious, but it's essentially suppressing your natural reactions, responses, physicality or expressions with others to hide some of your natural behaviors.
For some things, to some extent, in some scenarios. It's complicated!
Masking can help you fit in, make connections, or avoid punishments like bullying or losing a job.
A person might copy behaviors of the people around them or rehearse interactions in advance. Essentially, we sometimes do what it takes to make us "socially acceptable." And a lot of us were raised, trained, or conditioned, to be this way by parents, teachers, and other important figures in our lives. How intensively this conditioning can depend on parents, region, or gender.
For example, if you were raised socially as a girl you may mask more heavily. Girls and women often have more social barriers at school, work, and other parts of society. Or someone might mask a lot because they have greater support needs.
So we change our behavior, and mimic other people to fit in. We match other people's characteristics and point of view to do this. This might be a solid clue about how masking can affect improv.
There are many ways masking affects an improv practice, but in this episode I'm going to focus on some of the matching elements of camouflaging that might help your improv a bit. In other podcast episodes (or articles, if I write them out!) I'll cover some topics around voice of reason and identifying the unusual, performance versions of yourself, and taking on a character's point of view.
FUN THINGS!
We're All Doing Improv Differently
I might have received some things for "free" in improv thanks to masking most of my life. I've had a long history of being in some kind of character, to a certain extent in certain scenarios.
I've been hyper aware of the expressions and point of view of people around me because I've typically been on the outside looking in, bullied, the outcast, "kinda weird", and so on. Pretty common story amongst the neurodivergent people out there. So to fit in as well as possible we match expressions or emotions, maybe voices and sounds of people around us.
We can do that effectively by being good listeners and observers.
I've always been pretty darn aware of other people's reactions - so these skills are built in: listening, observing, reacting. Because we needed to! For safety, to people please, and make our parents happy with their social conditioning. Make a hard life a bit easier.
And we might not notice how good we are at it, or understand how we tend to react as a result. It's all rather subconscious. Learning improv does help expose some of these skills, or the extent to which we have them.
This is weird to admit all this stuff, and I reckon it'll make others feel uncomfortable. Hey, join me in perpetual discomfort and worry! Hi! :)
But for me, masking still feels like ME or at least KINDA ME. I'm not really faking things. My masking is mostly to be understood accurately, correctly - the typical neurotypical reaction, sometimes. I'll act a certain way so I'm better understood. So my voice, body, expression doesn't send the wrong message. Because it can and does, often in certain environments, and it can end up hurting you or me. And that would be bad.
I might be masking, and sure it might be kinda like acting - but I'm just trying to help you understand me better. Or not piss everyone off. Or host a fitness class in a way that says THAT PERSON IS THE FITNESS INSTRUCTOR! Me on stage as the fitness instructor, weirdly, felt the most "me" of all... despite being the polar opposite of the me you said "hi" to at the door before class. It's also a mask, or at least I had it called my "character" many times. Although it took a ton of effort to be that way, it felt very natural all the same.
Honestly I think this is what a lot of us highly masked autistic adults struggle with - we don't know what version is really "us" - because performance, host, silly, possibly juvenile, fitness instructor Jen feels like I get to be tragically-unmasked without being considered... obnoxious? I'll save it for therapy.
Masking is work, it takes energy and a toll. It can also make you feel more comfortable, because you're kinda acting more comfortable. Or it's just that truly unguarded energetic weirdo you get to "do" with freedom on a stage. And I bet it is experienced very differently by other neurodivergents.
So. Improv. Do I know who I really am? What do I find... unusual? How do I answer honestly and truthfully? Good questions, you improviser you!
What's the context? Set my base reality please
I am a high masking, middle age woman raised in North America by parents who really cared I fit in. SO:
I have been doing it a long ass time because I'm older. I'm barreling towards 50. This could mean it's more wired in, and we also might have a slightly less accurate sense of self. Possibly.
I'm a woman, and was socialized as one from birth to act a certain acceptable way at school then work. I did many things as a girl and woman that wouldn't have been my "default." For example, I suppressed a lot of ripe comebacks the boys got away with in classrooms. I deeply hate getting in trouble, which I did the one time I tried. But I was pretty intensely bullied too, so I didn't mask perfectly. Plus, I loved being weird - I even told my mom I "never wanted to be one of the popular girls." So who knows. It's nebulous and weird.
I used to mask for work. I don't have much pressure to mask for the past 12 years. Or unmask. Haven't done the hard work in this space to know what's what, and don't plan to because *looks at life*. So - I guess that's your disclaimer about how much weight to put in this article!
ANYWAY. Since girls and women, among others, often have more barriers in these spaces. Especially if they are male dominated. We mask to get by in a variety of ways. And luckily I was able to do so to SOME extent, especially as an adult.
Our experiences will all be pretty different, so this article is primarily about some of the ways you can think about how neurodivergent masking affects your practice: learning, scenework, characters. You'll also learn how you can take notes you get from teachers and coaches and apply them to improve your own practice. Hopefully, anyway.
These improv friendly skills, as with most things, has cons as well as the pros. I'll cover some of those later too.
We mask, do you mask?
So I covered some of the reason why we mask in the first place. While people who are not neurodivergent might change a bit between locations, it's not as extensive. If you strongly associate with a bunch of these things, you might want to chat with someone smarter than I am.
I'm going to indulge in some details in this section because I think it will be helpful for you to either understand IF you mask, if you're newer to the idea of masking, or understand WHY other improvisers mask if you don't.
As described earlier, masking varies a lot. Despite not wanting to be a popular kid (or adult), and coming across as "kinda weird" by most (I think), I discovered I still masked quite a bit as an adult. Especially when I ended up in a corporate workplace in my mid 20s to reduce being interpreted inaccurately. When I'm thinking or problem solving I can certainly come across as upset or frustrated. I've learnt this the hard way, so I try to mask this stuff and fail sometimes. But a lot of the other "fitting in" stuff I've largely dropped. I got okay being weird and being asked "are you okay?" in group settings if I'm not in performance mode. Conversation starter?
Autistic people are also known to be blunt at times. We might choose to mask that (text too!). Have any of you found yourself smiling when you type to try and make your sentences... more normal or friendly or something? Anyway. *smile* :)
We love to problem solve, get in the details and fix, and people might not like that. They just want to be heard. Apparently fixing problems in general isn't the natural inclination for many people. I'm not many people. Want a perfect job for us? Software QA. I was the top QA bug filer back in the day with a team of truly weird chaotic humans. And it IS a competition if your brain makes it one. At least I made my devs look TOIT while winning that bugbase. End tangent. What am I even talking about now.
"Don't fix problems" - repeat improv note. First time I heard this note I remember the double-take... WHAT? Improv is... breaking things? .... wut. (I had a weird improv trajectory - hadn't come across that curriculum/concept yet).
Neurodivergent humans sometimes default to connecting socially by sharing a similar experience, and this is widely considered rude. Didn't know that until pretty recently (thanks, Internet). Not doing this is a new mask, because it doesn't come naturally and sometimes feels like nails on a chalkboard or just.. rude, or wrong.
We info dump - monologue on subjects we know a lot about (yeah, I hear it yall). We enjoy to do this, it fills us with joy. Pure. Fucking. Joy. Ask me to explain something I've just hyperfocused on for two weeks? Like legit query of legit interest? And you let me JUST GO? And ask follow-ups? OH MY GOD. (Narrator: No one did.)
But I did know pretty early on this wasn't socially acceptable to most people. My dad was the best infodumper of all time, and I saw how people looked at him when he did this. I knew that I was just like him in this way, and I knew I wanted to avoid that eye glaze/side eye from the general populous.
So we learn when things are okay and we can unmask and infodump. When to avoid the infodump, and mask. It's surveillance and curbing ourselves... and failing sometimes like when you accidentally infodump on niche tech shit and clear a zoom room of improvisers a few months ago.
Improv: Can you accidentally infodump in a scene? YUP! Oops. "That was a long walk..."
But hey, it's just who we are. Masks fail! Scenes fail! We might be masking our "honest and truthful" in improv sometimes. Or a lot. To be a good/better scene partner!
Mask or no mask
So, we learn to mask to keep jobs, to keep friends, to NOT be socially annoying, to NOT be harassed, to be a good scene partner. To be safer (in real life). There are lots of great, valid, important reasons TO mask when we need to and unmask only when it's pretty safe.
But also, there are cons. Masking can SUCK, a lot. It takes effort, it's tiring, and we can ultimately wonder who we really are, especially in social contexts. So people choose to unmask in ALL occasions, even social ones. And that's cool too.
I've been doing this too thoroughly for too long it's just a big bucket of stew or something and I still don't know some of the extent to which I mask a lot of the time. But I know I want people to understand me accurately, which is the mask sometimes. We might only unmask around people who really understand us.
And exposing some of that kind of vulnerability, which comes up in improv, especially when it comes to voice of reason, or certain tasks like identifying unusual - when we gotta be our truthful selves. This is what makes the intersection of masking and improv hard until we piece together what we're doing. We can do this by way of notes and a lot of processing, and then formulate an improv plan.
Oh that sounds so official, like it's a thing.
Neurodivergent Masking and Improv
Understanding who you really are, without the mask, impacts improv. Character point of view. Voice of reason. Honest and truthful unmasked point of view vs the masked point of view.
Oh, the characters. Not being myself is such a joy. Being me is exhausting. I'm just IN that character, and I don't need to worry for once. For a few minutes in a row. That is the best part. I just feel like I'm them for awhile, and that is so nice.
Masking and unmasking involve understanding your own identity, or how you hide it, and self esteem… is the unmasked me not good enough? A recent WGIS class by Shannon O'Neill was called Who the Fuck Are You? You and your essence was used to drive scenes (apparently. this class was in NYC).
Of course we know our good selves are in improv. Using yourself is IN improv as part of the learning-improv process of course, since it's all these things I'm talking about.
"Character from the inside out" Billy Merritt has said.
Respond as you really would.
It makes us better improvisers to know and use our own selves in the scenes. Our first reactions. Which makes neurodivergence kinda important as we learn how to do that, or teach it, or process a note.
So framing or understanding what's unusual is involved - neurodivergent by definition is unusual. Reason. Grounding. Truth.
But I want to touch on these particular things in a separate episode because this one is already getting REALLY FUCKING LONG. So let's return to the concept of mimicking, camouflaging, and character matching and I'll get into that other stuff in another episode/article.
Peas in a Pod / Character Masking Scenes
When we mask, we sometimes subconsciously (or consciously) mimic the person or people we are with to fit in. This can include body movements and expressions, turns of phrase and other ways of speaking, tone of voice, accents, and even point of view. SO, this skill is obviously helpful in improv for Peas in a Pod or character matching scenes.
So I know this next part might seem boasty so I want to emphasize - I've done masking in some capacity since I was a very young kid, with early memories of it from kindergarten. Basically I've done peas in a pod like stuff for over 40 years.
And in other episodes/articles I'll be talking about how masking makes improv HARDER and more of a struggle. This part is mostly good stuff you get a bit of for free. Or well - 40 years of investment of hiding some weird. Which honestly doesn't feel all that free, I suppose.
I'm apparently used to matching people I'm with. I had no idea I did this to the extent I do until I did improv exercises. My very first peas in a pod experience was in the short form game Hitchhiker at Second City, maybe level 2 or 3. We all had a chance at being the "driver" and had to take on the physical characteristics and POV of our passengers picked up succession.
I was really surprised being able to just kinda "do this" without much effort. I had never tried this before, I was nervous. I'd never done most of the characters thrown at me by the others, because until then I had always made my own in my own (internal, visual) way. Few endowments, if I even knew what that meant yet. This matching concept was new. But the strong memory from this exercise was mimicking my valley girl scene partner, which is one I'd never attempted. I was surprised when I just copied it in an automated-feeling way being so different from me or any character I'd tried.
Maybe it's normal, or maybe it's masking. It felt cool and was a real surprise.
Over 40 years of subconscious reps. So it can give you a head start in all of this part of improv - not everything!
Newer to this improv thing? Try things... just try it and see if you can be valley girl or whatever. Get those reps and try things you don't think you could do! Everyone, no matter what, need reps to go the rest of the way. Especially, for me, with things like POV matching (not automatic).
But the subconscious part when it came to physicality and voice is kinda cool because you don't need to think about some of the matching if you want to do those things. You can just let that automatic stuff run, and focus on learning the rest... because the rest is a lot!
What's Harder in Improv
When you're a high masking neurodivergent human the hard part is when the assignment is that you can't do matching scenes, and it's something your body might subconsciously want to do. In these cases, matching is not right for the scene (because you need to do the right positioning), or it's the assignment from the teacher or coach.
What happens? Sometimes, occasionally, this scenario can put you firmly and squarely IN YOUR HEAD. You're monitoring to make sure you don't until, say, you are firmly in the scene or whatever.
You might, especially earlier on in learning improv, feel this subconscious drive to match a scene partner physically or vocally. Perhaps also point of view. And if you're not supposed to match view, you want to make sure you don't subconsciously end up matching later in the scene.
So carefully check in from time to time, especially if you notice this kind of matching is something you tend to do. Point of view is the most important part of matching scenes and what you really don't want if you're not supposed to be peas!
It's very easy to gravitate towards these matching scenes in general, probably everyone no matter what neurotype you are. It's fun and has a very natural feel (especially if you're a masker!). But we also don't want to do anything so much in improv that it becomes a habit, crutch, overused in sets, or otherwise boring. This can sometimes feel hard when your reaction is quite automatic.
Remember you can match physicality and voice, but not point of view, and have a non-peas scene. So maskers, you can still use those skills or that subconscious response safely as long as you focus on an appropriate point of view or positioning for the scene.
Basically, do reps.
That's It For Masking and Matching Scenes
So that's what I have for masking and peas in a pod or character matching. What an infodump, eh? I’m sure there are a lot of mistakes.
Transparency: I am not used to being this transparent. But whatever. I think I said try things you’re uncomfortable with, right? This is definitely that for me.
We'll get into voice of reason, identifying the unusual, and masking - as it applies to improv - in future podcast episodes. And maybe here as an article if writing these out proves to be useful. Is it?
And side note for the content nerds. So… Substack makes you put the canonical on your original content if it’s on an external website. (not very cool, substack!) But just in case those words make sense and that matters to any of ya — there you go, now you know. Shrug, here ya go Substack - take it. And off I head to add a canonical on the original :)
Other Improv Stuff
World’s Nerdiest Improv Show (WNIS) (weenis): Episode 1 just launched. You can watch the first WNIS first show here. We’re seeing if all that production value even works, and talk a bit about improv too. It didn’t totally break on the first show, so I’m actually sharing links to it. IT MOSTLY DIDN’T BREAK! YAY!
Characters Only - Point of View Drills: My next WGIS class is February 11 - you’ll be getting character reps in POV. Practice getting that philosophy out quickly and efficiently. Check out the workshop at http://weeg.is/903.
Anyway! I guess this is a newsletter now! Until next time, bye!
Featured image: Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash