highly sensitive power

Paulina Bustamante pursues her dream of acting with an all-encompassing joy that’s infectious. She’s honing her acting skills at Vancouver’s Lyric School of Acting, using her high sensitivity as an asset. In person, Paulina shines (even more so when she’s talking about acting). Her hands gesture. Her eyes sparkle and connect. She laughs often and gives her attention generously.

Tell me about the combination of acting and being highly sensitive.

An image that came to me about being an actor is that all of my nerve endings have to be right on my skin, opening up. I’m learning how to do that, how to open my nerves and bring them to the surface. This is important because nuances are important in acting – people often feel more than one emotion at a time. When I’m acting I need to have as much variety of emotion available to me as possible, and increased sensitivity helps me with that. Right now the process of acting in this way is new enough that there are only so many emotions I’m comfortable bringing up. The way I develop my skills in this area is by acting with my scene partner. I have to express myself and also be able to receive and respond – all with as much nuance and emotional variety as I can bring to the process. For instance, rather than acting just angry, I can slice up the anger into variations on anger, adding other emotions to the mix. I can split the emotions I’m expressing up into finer and finer layers. Hopefully, then, when someone sees my performance, they won’t see a whitewash of anger, but something much more nuanced than that.

Being in the classroom has shown me how I can apply my high sensitivity, how I can make it work for me. It’s given me more control and helped me to be out in the world – buffeted in a line-up at the store, for example – and not be as covered in raw nerves. Being an HSP [highly sensitive person] out in the world can still feel difficult, but in acting class (and on film sets, hopefully), all the depth and tone and sound that comes to me as part of having a sensitive body is in the perfect context. I’m able to turn up my high sensitivity during a performance. Let’s say my acting partner even just breathes on me. If I let myself be affected and vulnerable and sensitive, that informs and influences my performance, adding another layer of nuance to the moment.

Actors have different ways of accessing a scene, of getting into the place that will, for them, result in honest and true acting. You can see the difference. You can tell when an actor is grounded in truth or not. I’m still learning how to enter into a scene, and by constantly allowing my body to be sensitive, letting all of my senses be open, I get a lot more toeholds for getting into a scene with honesty. For me, the more I can sense, the more toeholds I have. I’m learning how to just be nudged into that space, how to be so receptive and responsive to my instrument – my body – that my entry into a scene is subtle, not using up too much of my energy. Then I have more energy for the scene itself.

Something I’m starting to tackle now is endurance – how to maintain and develop the ability to be consistent with my energy over time. It requires a lot of energy to be in a scene, to be in a play for two hours, and being an HSP means I need to be informed and ready to handle my sensitivities in a performance context. Since acting is my work, that’s really important. Being reminded that acting takes energy, even for non-HSPs, helps me accept the challenge of learning endurance.

Is there anything else you want to say about acting?

I love acting. It brings me joy. It’s how I really learn to be human, and it makes me appreciate humanity more. Acting works everything out. It’s physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental and it challenges me on all of those levels simultaneously. It’s extraordinary. I highly recommend it for everybody. I love it that for ten hours a week I’m in a room with people and all we’re doing is talking about emotions, reviewing circumstances in which we feel emotions, exploring historical contexts for characters, and learning how to express ourselves. All of that sharing about all of those things is the best jumping-off place for me for gaining a holistic education. When I need to know about a character I need to know so much about them that – through that learning process – I learn about myself. I’m constantly being made aware of what I know and what I don’t know, and going to the edge of what I know. In the classroom, I witness that happening for other people, too. I always leave class feeling in awe of what other people do there. And all it requires is a space, people who are willing and open, and, in my case, an unbelievably empathetic, encouraging, and brilliant teacher – Nancy Sivak, at the Lyric School of Acting here in Vancouver.

What message of encouragement would you like to give to other highly sensitive people?

If you do sign up for an acting class, it will be challenging, but my experience has been that the best instructors and the best actors are people who are supportive and encouraging. If you sign up for a class and the teacher is not supportive and encouraging, or is harsh, I would encourage you to sign up for another class instead. Also, taking an acting class doesn’t need to be about the final performance. For me, so far, even though I’m training to be a professional actor, what I learn by focusing on the process of acting is worth it all, is worth all I put into it and worth every penny of the cost of the classes. It would sadden me to know that someone decided not to pursue acting because they thought they weren’t good at it. If , for you, there’s something happening inside, then don’t let it go.

What are three of your most favourite books of any kind?

The Lord of the Rings series, by J.R.R. Tolkien – if you read it, I advise putting it down the second you get tired. Don’t even push on to the end of the paragraph – otherwise, it feels like a slog. The story is strong enough to wait for you.

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster – preferably read it in one sitting on a rainy day.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen – I opened up this book on a rainy day and read it in one sitting, even though I hadn’t expected to.

Photo by Goga.