Thoughts on Developing Artists and Misperception

First, an attempt to get some things clear:

I'm 20 years old, a junior in an arts college, and an admitted sentimentalist. I, for the most part, don't know what I'm doing, nor do I know how I'm perceived in the world or by my theatrical peers and mentors. But I love the work. I love the play. I love the theater and all that it is and I'm linking it to my spiritual journey that is my life. Most of the time I don't interact with the world in a way that would suggest my constant pursuit of and delving into spirituality, but it's always there, lurking like some subterranean, submerged creature, the very presence of which influencing my thoughts and actions. And most of the time I feel like a crazy person when I talk out loud about it. But again, I only claim an opinion, a feeling, and perhaps, another way of seeing.

I'm writing this as a developing artist myself--not from the vantage place of already have been and am now watching artists develop. No, sir. Instead I take this chance to peek my little head up out of the creative waters to spy on myself and all the other little tadpoles swimming toward some kind of life in the theater arts. Who knows where these waters will take us.

To begin: perception confuses me. How I perceive the world greatly influences my judgments and actions, but recently, I've begun to be more and more confused about how I perceive VS what is actually happening externally. For example:

In an exercise I did this summer, I had to get up and speak for a minute about why I thought these 27 plus people should vote to put me and not someone else in a life raft. They were all strangers, people I'd only just met the day before and yet there I was, crying and trying my best to explain in a minute who I was, what I was about, and why I wanted to live. And the end of this minute I felt like I'd failed. Like maybe some people would see what I meant, but feeling that several of them, at least, must have thought I was ridiculous. "Oh god, what a sap story, she's not getting on MY life boat!" And then--the moment of insight. The conclusion of this experiment, this exercise, was that anyone who wanted to could get up and receive feedback, see impact you could have on a handful of strangers with just your life, your body and your voice. You could see how many people voted for you and have some comments about why they voted for you.

Astoundingly, each and every person there voted me on the life boat. And I couldn't explain it away. They had nothing to gain by saying yes or no. They had no obligation to vote for me. They simply had to be moved by my statement and feel compelled to do so. The impact I'd had was more than I expected. I was "congruent" they said, with my words and my desire and my body.

The actor always comes down to a life, a body and a voice. Sure, sure, there's the play, the set, the costumes, the director--there are all of these things that come together to craft a piece of theater. But on a base level, what moves people in the audience when they come to see theater is an actor or actors who can be congruent with those tools, and compel us with their lives--fictional or real.

Then the next layer: how do I compel other artists I work with and inspire them to work with me?

As a theater artist, I must work with many people. And my desire is to work with many people! So why is it that my desire does not manifest in the world? Is it that I'm not being congruent in this situation? Must I reach out and risk being turned down, risk my actions being misinterpreted? I suppose I must. Someone said to me this summer:

"Why hide yourself? They can either see you or they can't. If they can see you, there's no way you CAN hide.  And if they don't then there's no use trying. They'll see you when They're ready."

As we begin to come into ourselves as theater artists, just beginning to get the idea that we might know something about something, we jostle around to see who's who and what's what. I keep looking around myself for people to work with and not knowing how to reach out. I guess.. just do it, ya?