All the World’s a Stage

It was the day of the big performance. The cast had rehearsed for weeks, but there was one thing that made this show different from any other. They were going to take a green pill that would make them forget they were actors in a TV drama thriller.

Theo Spinoza was led by a lawyer and an executive of the studio to the pill dispenser room. He signed a bit of paper, took a pill, and waited for the effects to kick in. Within a few seconds he began to feel a sense of detachment from his own identity. Handlers then escorted Theo to his preparation room, where props and costumes reminded him of his character’s New York life, where he worked as an undercover cop while struggling to raise two teenage kids. By the time Theo emerged from the room, he had become his character.

The handlers escorted Theo to a large, marked area in the centre of an enormous warehouse-like studio. The lights and cameras came on, and the show began. Theo and the other actors really saw and felt everything that their characters were seeing and feeling. They experienced joy, pain, love, and sadness as their characters did. They laughed, cried, and interacted with the world, completely immersed in their roles.

The cast could not remember anything about their real lives or the fact that they were performing in a drama. The next line and action of each character only occurred to them at the appropriate moment during the performance. When a character was not in the scene, the actor would pause, as if they were sleeping. When it was their cue, the actor’s response arrived naturally, as if it were a new moment arising in their life.

For the viewers, it was a mesmerising production. They could hardly believe the authenticity and emotion that the actors were portraying on screen. The characters were so real, so human, that the audience could not help but become invested in the drama.

After the lights shut down, Theo was given a yellow pill in the dispenser room, and very quickly he fully remembered who he really was and what he had been doing. The intense emotional states that he had experienced during the performance turned into interesting distant memories—for he was no longer personally identified with his character’s unfolding story.

But even as he returned to normal life, Theo knew that he had been changed by the role. He had learnt what it truly meant to become someone else, to see the world through another’s eyes. And he knew that he would carry those lessons with him always, as he continued to bring characters to life on stage and screen.