Looking Stupid

I had a drama teacher named Mrs. Carvalho in high school. She was crazy and fun, and pushed us self-conscious high schoolers to our limits.

We did several stage productions, but we also did street theater. Shakespearean improvisational street theater, no less.

If you want to force a highschooler out of their comfort zone, put them in a toga, drop them with a few friends in a public place, and tell them to interact with people for two hours in character.

. . .

I had a great session a few weeks ago with some A-list musicians. The night after the session, I got on each one of their instagram pages and messaged them.

I told them how much I enjoyed my time working with them, how much I looked up to them as musicians and how inspired I was by the way they did things.

As I started to press send on the first message, I almost deleted the message. It was too over-the-top, not the cool move, “too much”.

At least some of the guys were bound to roll their eyes when my message popped up in their DMs.

I pressed send anyway. Because I knew I was genuine, and I’m not responsible for what they read into it.

And once you’ve done crowd work in a toga with strangers, you just don’t care anymore about looking stupid.