Blog Post #2

I’ve been very invested in getting roles in shows in my time at Kenyon, and I realized during our discussion on cognitive dissonance in class today that I’ve been experiencing a significant amount of cognitive dissonance regarding the disappointing results I’ve received this semester regarding casting in shows. I didn’t get cast in a musical at the beginning of the semester for which I and many others thought I was a shoo-in for the lead, which threw off my confidence an enormous amount. And I didn’t even get a callback for The Glass Menagerie, the final mainstage play of my Kenyon career and one of my personal favorite plays, period. It’s been pretty tough for me to handle this much rejection at once in areas that I have a lot of investment in, and I think my myriad of mental responses to this situation has reflected the fact that the difficulty of the experience is likely framed by cognitive dissonance. The conflict in my mind is this: if I’m a good actor/performer, which I have little choice but to believe I am, why did I lose these roles as a senior? What’s making me uncomfortable and I am thus trying to justify (read: nullify) is the fear that I am not a good actor and that’s why I’ve performed badly in these auditions. If I’m correctly identifying the moments in the past that I’ve experienced as cognitive dissonance, I think my usual response to that feeling is to try and change the behavior, so I can attack the problem from its root. But in this situation, I don’t know how to change my behavior, because I don’t understand the root cause of the problem. I’ve tried to change my attitude insofar as I’ve tried to reframe the situation in my mind to be less about me and more about the vision the directors had for the characters, and that’s done a bit for me. I’ve tried to change my perception of the behavior in that I’ve tried to think about how my performance in those auditions may have been influenced by the generally weird emotional state I’m in as a second semester senior. I’ve added such consonant cognitions as, “Kenyon is weird and people’s standards are shaped by that,” “These roles just aren’t my type in these directors’ eyes” and “I’ve been cast in a show by the faculty director and shows in the student theater company in the past so maybe they want to mix things up.” I’ve minimized the importance of the belief by, frankly, wondering if I’m really cut out for acting and if I should just focus on my other career idea of teaching. I’ve reduced my perceived choice by partially deciding that it’s better that I didn’t get these roles because it gives me more time to hang out with friends in my last semester. It’s amazing how directly this concept translates to actual thought patterns. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it applied to this situation in class because these are the exact categories of thoughts I’ve had on this issue. Social psychology really is a remarkable thing–it applies itself to real life in clearer and more direct ways than anything I’ve ever studied before. I’m really enjoying seeing that phenomenon in a different light every time a new concept is introduced.