Masking is a common behaviour for autistic and/or ADHD people (or those of us who are both). It's sometimes referred to as camouflaging, mimicking, or being a social chameleon. You might mask subconsciously - you might not even realize you do it! But it's essentially suppressing your natural reactions, responses, physicality or expressions in order to hide some of your natural behaviours or instincts. Your first reaction.
Masking can help you fit in with the crowd, make social connections, or avoid punishment at work or school. It can also be exhausting, among other things.
Masking affects your improv in good ways, and also some challenging ways. It affects the way you approach grounded characters and scenes, the way you do voice of reason, host shows, and of course… helps quite a bit with peas in a pod or character matching scenes!
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.
Note
This podcast has been renamed a couple times to best fit what it needed to become, and better reflect what it eventually became! It's not gone, I am figuring out what is sustainable and most needed by myself and the community.
I mention surveys and written versions in earlier episodes. I am moving this content to ImprovUpdate.com on a new being-developed website. You can always send me any comments, thoughts, feedback, or contributions using the contact form on this page.
Where to find stuff
- Get articles about improv: Join the ImprovUpdate newsletter(s) for general improv articles, and articles about neuroinclusive improv and comedy. Join either or both! (merging of my websites coming soon!)
- Review the podcast: Rate and review this podcast on Podchaser.
- Appear on this podcast: If you'd like to chat about improv on this podcast, contact the podcast/Jen here.
- Improv with us: Do you want to improvise in fiction podcasts at StereoForest? Subscribe to the ImprovUpdate.com newsletter.
- Chat about improv and comedy: Join the Improv Update Discord here.
- More information coming soon about a major update to Jen's improv resources.
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About
This podcast was created, written, and is hosted by Jen deHaan. You can find her bio here.
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