Why would anyone want to become an actor? Most actors wonder: why did they start wanting to be an actor? I don't mean "the event" that started it all, e.g, a high school play, seeing one's first Broadway show, but why did the event have that specific effect? Many actors, especially during tough times, have probably looked to the stars and asked: Why me?!
God only knows.
For most of us, I think wanting to be an actor, the desire to act, finds us rather than vice versa. Sometimes I go to sleep at night hoping I'll wake up not wanting to be an actor - my life would be a lot easier. But nope - I wake up full of hope, optimism, determination, and dreams, and then once again get up and tackle the practical matter of making it all work out, making it all come true. Also as I get older, the more risk I'm willing to take with my life. I figure I'm running out of time so - why not? This drive for risk and creativity too must be genetic: genes verses rationality and common sense.
But where was I? Oh yes:
Behavorial genetics use something called "twin studies" to try and disentangle the effects of genes and environments on our personalities. Using twin studies, researchers compare the personalities and lives of identical twins to fraternal twins in order to estimate the relative contributions of genes and environment. Identical twins have exactly the same set of genes. Fraternal twins, while genetically very similar to each other, are not genetically identical. Not surprisingly, researchers find that identical twins have more shared personality traits, tastes and preferences than fraternal twins.
For example, Rice University professor of political science John Alford has found that identical twins are more likely to agree on political issues than were fraternal twins. Since both identical and fraternal twins share the same respective social and parental environments, the greater agreement between identical twins may come from the extra genes they share.
The most powerful type of twin study is finding twins who were raised apart, most commonly through adoption. Researchers have found that despite being separated shortly after birth and raised in completely different environments, identical twins are surprisingly, sometimes unbelievably, similar in their personalities, tastes, and preferences.
For example, James Arthur Springer and James Edward Lewis had been given up by their mother and separately adopted as 1-month-olds. They reunited at age 39. They found they had each married and divorced a woman named Linda and remarried a Betty. They had the same interest in mechanical drawing and carpentry; their favorite school subject was math, their least favorite, spelling. They smoked and drank the same amount and got headaches at the same time of day.
While there's been no twin studies involving actors, this story comes pretty close: Plot Twist in his Life Leads Actor to Reunion on Stage with Mom
Ryan Kathman has been thinking a lot lately about nature versus nurture. Last week, the young actor found not only his birth mother, but in her, he found an acting partner as well.
Next month they'll share a stage in Lincoln - playing mother and son.
Kathman, a student one year shy of his master of fine arts degree in acting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was adopted as an infant in 1980.
Tracking down his birth mother using his birth certificate, he was flabbergasted to learn on Google that she had earned the very degree he's working on nine years ago at UNL.
Advertising.His birth mother, Moira Mangiameli, 50, has earned acting accolades at the Omaha Community Playhouse and other area theaters since before Ryan was born.
Mangiameli married her husband, Mark, in 1985. Their two sons, Matthew, 23, and Nicholas, 20, didn't share mom's interest in theater. Mangiameli and her family spoke of the boy she gave up often through the years, referring to him by the name she gave him at birth, Brendan.
"After I gave Ryan up, I grieved a long time," Mangiameli said. "I never thought I did a wrong thing giving him up. I knew I didn't have the capability to take care of him then."
She was 21 and a student.
"But when you have a child, you fall in love. There's always been that hole there, even with my marriage and my boys."
Now, she said tearfully as she sat next to Kathman at a Lincoln restaurant Tuesday afternoon, that hole is filled.
"It's the kind of thing you can never repay, what (Mangiameli) did for me," Kathman responded. "But I'm just so thankful for the opportunity to try."
Kathman and Mangiameli have since learned that their paths crossed a number of times.
They competed for the same acting scholarship at the regional Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in 2000.
"She was better than me," he said, as Mangiameli laughed. "She got into the finals. But I was just a sophomore in college then."
The two were cast together in a play at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in May, unaware of their connection as they sat next to each other for the performance.
The day they met, Mangiameli walked into a room at Catholic Charities to find Kathman and his wife, Jenny, seated on a sofa. He stood and opened his arms for a hug.
"He was a little misty, and I was crying, and I said, "You were considerably smaller the last time I did this," she laughed.
"I only regret I didn't do this sooner," he said. "I love investigating things as a reporter. But for a long time it felt taboo."
Mangiameli said she, too, had been afraid. "But I never lost faith. My whole life I knew I'd meet him again”
Written by Christopher Calliope
The Secret Of Theatrical Space
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