Layers of Identity

By Jamie Erin Murphy 

In this process I have begun thinking a lot about the layers of our identity that make us who we are. There are the typical ideas we think about like gender, sexuality and race for example. However, it feels much more complex than that. We are so much more than the boxes we check on a form.

In our rehearsal last week we played with the idea of putting on and taking off layers. I used a pile of clothing that belonged to everyone in the cast and gave different directives on how we put on and took off layers. This stemmed a lot of questions and ideas became a part of our improv exercise...

We searched out items that seemed to "fit"us

We never fully put on items that weren't ours because we new they weren't right. 

We weren't ever sure how to put something on to make it fit right.

Sometimes we struggled to keep the items that made us comfortable. 

We had to make a mental choice to let "a part of us" go.

Sometimes we saw discomfort in changing layers but we still allowed it to happen for our own comfort.

We allowed ourselves discomfort to keep what was important to us.

Is it ok to give up a layer to see if something else fits?

These ideas and so much more are inspiring a new section of Me Vs ... that I'm so excited to explore. Much more to come....