In my experience with acting, putting on a character markedly different than myself has unlocked potential of how I can behave in my own life. When I took on the personality of someone clinically psychopathological, for example, I tasted the utter absence of fear that someone may disapprove of my behavior. Taking off that role, I appreciated how my care for other people connects me to them, while at the same time, I vowed to myself that my care would come less from fear of disapproval. Similar to learning from adopting the personality of another person, one can learn from adopting another person's physical presence. The way that another person holds themself, the way that another person walks, the gestures another person uses - trying on these qualities can change one's experience of one's body and alter how one relates to other people, including shifting how others perceive and relate to them.

Femininity was Luisa Betancur-Ossa's and my attempt to portray the manifestations of and reactions to femininity in our communities and highlight several ways femininity is understood as a concept. We asked our interviewees, who had different genders, sexualities, races, and cultures, all of the same questions about how femininity plays into their lives. I took our interview footage and first trained myself, then later hired actors, to exactly imitate the interviewees' posturing, gestures, and facial expressions. Clips of the interviews sequenced together a physical script that four actors would perform on four separate screens, arranged so that the actors seemed to be having a "conversation" with each other, and the audience would witness from the center.

Co-Creators: Luisa Betancur-Ossa and Lara Marcin
Project: Femininity abstract documental installation, proof of concept
Cinematographer: Luisa Betancur-Ossa
Choreographer: Lara Marcin