The Vulnerability Theatre
A couple of years ago, I developed an analogy to explain to my two theatre-obsessed teenagers why they shouldn’t stress so much about randos on social media. My nineteen-year-old is better at extending metaphors than I am so we extended it all the way to the street. It struck me as such a good revelation that I had to sit down and do an inventory myself.
Imagine your life takes place in one theatre. Let’s call it, “The Vulnerability Theatre”.
“Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”
Imagine the people in your life are playing a role in your production. Think about how much access those people should have to your most vulnerable, tender heart. Here are some questions to ask to take an inventory of your relationships.
Who is in your Dressing Room?
I like to start in the place that requires the most vulnerability and work my way out.
My criteria for the dressing room is basically, I can trust these people to be in my dressing room 5 minutes before I am about to go on stage and not fuck me up.
These are the people who you love with your whole damn being. They can call you at 3 AM with an emergency and you could call them with one too. Not everyone can handle being in the dressing room and they don’t deserve to be there.
These folks are who deserve your most care and attention. If you have more than 1 person that fits this role, you’ve hit the jackpot. If you have 3-5, you are an emotional billionaire. If you don’t have any, that’s okay, you may have never felt dressing room safe with anyone so that’s where the work begins.
Who is Backstage?
There are people you can trust with your heart and then there are people who you can trust with your life.
Collaborators and kindred spirits. You CAN trust these people with personal or emotional information but you might not call them to bail you out of jail. You’d be more likely to call them when you need a quick change or a prop.
For me, this includes my hairstylist and my therapist. It includes some of the ride-or-die homies that I might not see often but if I need to put on a metaphorical or literal show, they are the first people I’d call.
Who is Center Stage?
We all have a role to play and for most of our life, we got very little say in the casting decisions. Your parents, family, co-workers — may not be your favorite people to share a scene with but somehow that’s who you ended up with.
Ideally, some of your Dressing Room and Backstage folks are going to be major players Center Stage but the focus, for now, is the people who you might not be that vulnerable with but you still trust that if you forget your lines, they’ve got your back. As we age, we learn who and what we are looking for in these Center Stage relationships and we get more say in the matter.
For me, these people tend to be friends, family, coworkers and other people that I interact with regularly.
Who are your Front Row People?
Not everyone in your life is part of the show. Some people are just cheering from the audience.
These people are in close proximity to you/your social circles and have actively supported you or shown up for you in your work/life and what’s going on with them matters to you. It might include teachers or mentors that have believed in you or a person you have mutual admiration with on social media.
Who are your Season Ticket Holders?
We could even call them “seasonal ticket-holders.” These folks have actively supported you or shown up for you in your work or life. What’s going on with them matters to you but these people are not in close proximity to you and are not in your immediate social circles.
For me, these are “fans” of my work that I have met in person and have been following them since they were high school or college so I feel somehow invested in their lives. I feel like if we spent more time or lived closer to each other, they would be center stage or closer.
Who is General Admission?
These people follow you on social media or are generally aware of your work/life because you have common interests and community but you haven’t spent much time together so judging each other is pretty pointless.
And that’s really what it all comes down to. When we get clear on the roles that people play in our lives, we spend less time judging others or worrying they are judging us.
Still, there are people who see and hear what you do and it makes a difference to them, even if they never say so.
Everyone Else is a Non-ticket Holder.
If they aren’t even in the building, why are you still giving them energy? These people don’t care about you or even know much about you. They don’t have tickets to your life so they get absolutely no opinion on you or what you are doing.
When I first did this inventory, I realized that I had been spending quite a bit of time worrying about what these people thought instead of nurturing the relationships that mattered most.
There Might be a Protester or Two.
After the first draft of this analogy, I realized I had a couple of people in my life that were worse than Non-ticket Holders. They were protestors. Adversaries. They actively fight against me and whatever my “show” is about. They aren’t worth worrying about but they are worth acknowledging because the ones who get the biggest rise out of us, are often who we can learn the most from. I mean, we can learn the most from our reactions to them. Some are just haters. In which case, fuck ‘em.
“Don’t try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer.”
What I’ve Learned
In 2021, I made an effort to focus more on the Dressing Room and Backstage folks than I did on the General Admission and Non-ticket Holders. I paid more attention to what vulnerability felt like — both when I am sharing and when I am holding it for someone else.
As a result, my closest relationships got closer and my fragile, peripheral relationships dissipated and didn’t cause as much stress. It was also nice to have shared language when talking about boundaries and relationships with those I am closest to. Overall, it’s been a worthy experiment.