Blowing your lines

Mario Tosto

One reason every actor dreads the prospect of blowing his lines (forgetting or misspeaking them) during a performance, is the knowledge that at that instant the illusion of the play is destroyed. A play works because the audience allows the actors to play parts in a drama. In the theater this is called a "willing suspension of disbelief." It is up to the skill of the acting company to maintain that fragile illusion.

Of course, an actor who blows his lines often won't be working long. Obviously, mistakes in the theater are neither desirable nor justifiable. But it may be helpful to use some of the terms and dynamics of the theater to examine the whole human drama, in which we seem to have complied, as audience or actor, with the roles of mortality.

Christian Science shows that on the human scene, evil is also an illusion, a product of our willing or unconscious acceptance of suggestion. The entire repertoire of human woes is rehearsed under our agreement with the supposition that God and man are separated, and that evil is a real force.

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