Stereotypes vs. Archetypes
[Music]
[Applause]
human
connection we
crave it many of us are starved for it
and yet we do the oddest things to block
it
to push it aside to turn it away to
shut it out
i have this memory i am
giving my voice students their midterm
i’m looking out across the rehearsal
hall and i am seeing all these drama
students all
draped all over each other leaning on
each other and filling in their midterms
and my
eye lands on the jock
i don’t know why he’s taking this class
he wants an easy a he wants to see
theater students in their natural
habitat
time passes people are getting up
they’re walking over
to me they’re dropping down the midterm
and they’re like hey
see you later hillary and time is
ticking and we have one person
left the jock
he finally rises puts on his baseball
cap and his letter jacket and he comes
on over
in his sauntering style lays down his
midterm out of the corner of my eye i
see
all of this tiny writing tons of
handwriting filling in the answers
and he says uh miss i’ve been
using the voice exercises with the coach
because i think that he would be a
better leader and the team would listen
to him better
if he were using his voice differently
mind blown little tiny box that i had
put that guy in
blown apart i had completely
flattened him and squished him and
stereotyped him
and put him as an other
why do we do that why do i do that why
did i do that to my own student
am i moving so quickly am i tired what’s
going on that
it’s like pulling in for fast food i’m
in a hurry i know it’s not great for me
when i want to pull in french fries
sound great
and i get my fast food our stereotypes
the fast food
of connection
they label and labels limit
and when we limit
what are we doing to people isn’t it
diminishing them isn’t it
disregarding them isn’t it devaluing
them and if we keep going on that
d trajectory may be damaging and then
honestly dangerous
and i’m a drama teacher
i’m a drama teacher i’m an actor i have
been directing
and we never allow anyone in the acting
profession to diminish their character
by playing a stereotype
we admonish it we say honor your
characters
find out about them be curious see them
i didn’t see
that student ask questions and explore
who they could be
create a roundness
i gave more honor to all the characters
that i’ve created and others have
created
than a human being in the theater we
have a really great tool
called an archetype and we all know
archetypes from the performance world
it’s
what creates the characters in our
stories
they are tools to figure out what role
we have
in the shared story of humanity
i’m going to share 12 archetypes
this is culture talks idea taken from
carl jung’s work he’s a swiss
psychiatrist
and looking at the behaviors and the
thought patterns and
all of the elements that go into human
beings these 12
make up us as humanity
you recognize some of the names on their
hero and lover
revolutionary every person
and thinking about these 12 archetypes
and people around the world these are
not the only ones let’s be aware that
there also
there’s a really fun article that has 99
archetypes
that we find in the movies that we’re
watching
and there’s another article with 253
from around the world
globally we connect we may change the
names
we connect and if everyone has let’s
take these 12
inside of us some of them are dominant
some of them are latent
they’re all there and
then we become as humanity an infinite
combination
of these different roles and different
parts of them and percentages of them
how exciting to blow apart the idea of
that flat stereotype
and go with the multifacetedness of who
we are as human beings
on this journey that we’re sharing
together
if we think about archetypes and
i invite us to contemplate them and come
into the
artist world and see what that might be
we can bring up i took
an assessment and the culture talk
assessment and i am
you can see a magician a lover and a
ruler are my
top and underneath we have some of the
traits
there are more traits than that
otherwise we’re back to the stereotype
so there are
more traits than that and we’re
multifaceted and this is me
let’s do what i’m inviting you to do
with the jock
i did this you may choose differently i
see him as a hero
and as a sage seeking the wisdom and
definitely as a revolutionary he’s
coming into that drama class
what happens then that
draws us to those stereotypes aren’t
they as a performer aren’t they funny
we use them for humor for sure
i had this amazing improv troupe of
teenagers
they challenged me and they performed
really like no other group
that i’ve been with and because
we are performers we discuss the
difference between
archetypes and stereotypes and it’s easy
to fall into a stereotype when you’re in
the middle of a scene and something’s
funny i can call even my teenagers my
sullen smelly teenagers
it doesn’t really go anywhere we
challenged ourselves
to see if we could bring the humor and
improv is not all about humor
if we could bring the humor and the
story in the humanity through
archetypes versus stereotypes and we
came up with this
list of differences
and we played and we explored
and i would add to this in the spirit of
improv
that the stereotype is the no but and
the archetype is the yes and
and i ask them i say what do you think
we lose
and as i looked at them and moved away
from thinking
of them as the smelly selling teenagers
and thought of them as that is such a
lover
with a revolutionary and that is
definitely a ruler with hero energy and
looking at them and
knowing who they are one of them piped
up and said
the only thing we lose
is the sharp edge that cuts
the sharp edge that cuts when we
stereotype
and push people away
so how do i keep going to stereotypes
what is that habit
that i have what draws me into that
i’m going to suggest two specific things
that happen the first one
is a sameness if you go back to the
story i started with
i stereotyped those drama students
i had them be really one facet
drama students draped on each other but
because i’m one of them
because i am the same i felt a safeness
in saying that
it doesn’t lessen the fact that there is
diminishing of who they were and perhaps
damaging of who they were
sameness not safe and something i think
i’m calling myself to be aware of as i
journey through life it’s a habit
and the second one i am
driving down the road and i’m having a
good time and then that person does
that thing that that person does
and immediately i’ve decided everything
about them right there
based on their behavior which was
ridiculous right what they just did the
dangerous maybe even
and maybe their car maybe the truck
they’re in whatever it is i just
stereotype them i am in the safety
of my little glass and metal and
fiberglass and plastic box
they can’t hear me i mean maybe they can
i don’t think they can hear me but you
know something’s going on
and unless i go to road rage what’s the
what’s the danger what’s the problem
the problem for me is that i just
increased the depth of my habit groove
in the safety of my own car
it gets easier when i’m walking down the
street to stereotype someone
it gets easier when i’m scrolling
through social media to stereotype
someone
it gets easier when i walk into a place
of employment stereotype
it matters if we see people
for all of their fullness and i know
we’re tired
and i know there are so many things
going on in our brains and the
stereotype is going to happen we’re
going to be pulling in for that fast
food at times
and yet how do we make sure that we
see people for what the possibilities
could be if we’re on a story together
in this this in this story together and
on this journey
how do we invite that diversity
i have a triple a action plan for myself
and i invite you to join me
first a to be alert and self-aware
noticing when i’m doing it the second
one
to be an accomplice and an advocate and
maybe someday an
ally really being fearless and calling
out when you notice it happening
using our voices to make sure other
voices
are heard and third
the archetype activate the archetype
have fun with it we see it in movies and
novels everywhere
have fun with it ask questions be
curious see that person and know they
can be
more
and challenge ourselves to
step into the complex
messiness of this interwoven story
that we’re in together and believe in
human
connection slow down
breathe maybe even stop
get nourished
and ultimately thrive
i see you and i want to know
[Applause]
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