All the world’s a stage, thus wrote Shakespeare in his romantic comedy play “As you like it”. It is one of the most used Shakespearian quote after; “To Be or Not be “  and “Et tu Brutus” .  

From the moment we arrive in this world stage, as tiny actors, we are  made to memorize   dialogues from scripts ((often written by playwrights far less renowned than Shakespeare) we never chose and made to enact in our respective lives.  We begin crafting masks to our faces—one for home, one for school, one for the workplace, another for the market—each mask a story we tell so well that soon it ossifies around our facial bones, and we forget the face that wore it. In that crowded wardrobe of souls, our true self is often left behind, waiting like a silent guest in the corner until some social slip reveals we wore the wrong role in the wrong scene and life exacts its toll.

Erving Goffman (1922–1982), whose seminal work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) pioneered dramaturgical analysis, taught us that every interaction is a front-stage performance of polished gestures for an audience, with a backstage realm where we sigh, fumble, and slip the mask. It remains, for me, one of the most powerful sociology texts encountered at Azim Premji University, alongside Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and R.D. Laing’s The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Goffman’s explorations of stigma peeled back layers of our everyday theatre, revealing the frames that shape our roles.

Many may remember  Second Life which was the most popular metaverse / digital other life world in early 2000s. By the  time (  2013 ) I had created an avatar among over a million others, all seeking a moment’s authenticity beyond daily facades—beckoning us to explore the face we buried beneath our masks. This digital alias echoed a naming that began much earlier. No one called me “Vishy” before I joined Wipro Systems in 1995–96. My friends in GE’s Central Pension Accounting System began calling me that, and when email addresses arrived—short names being essential in an era of pricey storage—I chose vishy@wiprosystems. That name stuck. In Second Life, I christened my avatar Vishy Sankara. Today, more or less, I am that name; the original one from my parents seems to have vanished into that “crowded ward robe of souls”.

Now a days,  scroll through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or your WhatsApp groups and you’ll sense a second act of that second life unfurling: curated personas chasing applause, a polished script of likes and shares. Emojis become our tribal currency or social tax—tiny tokens of belonging we exchange to grease social gears, to murmur agreement without risking real words—yet Truth remains as elusive as Emptiness, unbought by any cascade of reactions.

As a bystander—an “adventurer” in Peter Drucker’s phrase—I drift through these currents, watching debates swirl, hidden anxieties surface, and group norms crystallize, noticing how charisma often drowns out content. Maslow’s hunger for esteem and belonging weaves an unspoken contract that steers our attention to familiar names instead of fresh ideas. The same impulse that flusters us into rushing past that janitor and  ikebana artist who creates those wonderful floral arrangements at the reception  to greet the chairman, as if status alone renders one worthy of our bowed head.

A long time back, during Six Sigma’s hey days, when GE was the “neighbour’s envy” in other corporate board rooms,  I too was one. A Six Sigma Black Belt.  During those days, we used to have a quarterly brain storming session often conducted in one of those resorts outside Bangalore.  I remember our Chairman came to address us in one of those sessions, during his speech he had asked a question to a front bencher and that unexpected question got him quite tongue tied. After our Chairman left, our Head of Mission Quality gave a rather long , boring lecture on being prepared with an elevator pitch.  That is when I first heard the word elevator pitch.  The idea that you happen to meet your CEO  in the elevator on your / his way to office and he asks you “What do you do in his company “ you may have  a few seconds to answer and make an impact. In other words, be prepared with your 30 sec mass dialogue for an act in play who never know when it may happen and on what stage you may be pushed into.  

On last  May 15, on my last working day at Wipro , I looked for Lakshmi and Sachin the  unsung artists of Wipro’s daily grace. Laksmi is janitor and ikebana artist who takes care of that wonderful floral arrangement at the reception. And Sachin who makes those tastiest ginger teas in that Corner café. It was another routine for me to have a tea with my Wipro travel team friends,  Zia, Prabhu, Hema , Bala , Denesh etc on Thursdays.  Zia and Prabhu  always paid for all of us.  Usually by the time,  we arrived at office,  the floor were clean and flower arrangement was done.  Once I asked the receptionist and she shared her name.  Lakshmi.  She was also a janitor who took care of that portion of the office. I left a thank you note for her with the receptionist.   Laksmi  told me I was one of the few  who walked into our office and who had the time to look at that flower arrangement. Everyone else either seems to be too busy or was on their cell phone.   And I was the only one who left a thank you note for her for the flower arrangements.  Probably that is the best compliment I ever got in my career. That moment taught me a quiet truth: when you really let go of yourself — your goals, your fears, your insecurities and complexes, your egoistic ways — you find yourself again. It could be in those flower arrangements, or a quiet joy kindled in the heart of someone you see truly. In that release, the mask falls away, and your very being becomes elevated beyond any rehearsed performance.

Even as children, we rehearsed these impulses. In our neighbourhood Monopoly games, choices revealed hidden scripts—those afraid of losing or being paupers often rushed to become the banker, clutching that role like a lifebuoy against imagined scarcity. We learned the dance of status through plastic houses and paper currency, mimicking adult hierarchies with startling precision. Facilitators of experiential learning in corporate training halls, know that very well.  Beneath our tailored adult masks, that inner child still peers out. So they recreate those games of fish bowl circles, mirror exercise,  blindfolded labyrinth etc , trusting that behind the professional polish, someone still fears loss, still longs to belong, still performs an old script from childhood.

They think this will shine light on blind spots we cannot see ourselves—each exercise a moving koan, an invitation to unmask in action, letting awareness dawn like first light across our faces.

Yet beyond these structured plays lies Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, born in Brazil’s political crucible, where actor and audience dissolve into “spect‐actors” who freeze scenes of injustice and step in to rewrite power

While I was a student at  APU, Prof Benson Issac conducted a program of  Theatre of the Oppressed for members of   APU Counselling team.  Sooner, I almost gate crashed into a  TO facilitator program conducted by  Radha of CCDC.  In TO, facilitators are called Joker as it mirrors the Joker card in a deck of cards. it’s a neutral, impartial position that can move freely between different situations and perspectives. Like a playing card Joker, the facilitator isn’t bound to any particular suit or role. They act as an impartial guide, helping participants explore different perspectives without imposing their own views.  I found TO to be the most powerful way of unmasking ourselves.  Image Theatre sculpts our bodies into living portraits of joy, fear, dominance, and despair; Invisible Theatre stages public interventions that provoke genuine reaction; Newspaper Theatre, Legislative Theatre, and the Rainbow of Desire weave analysis, action, heart, and mind into one seamless practice. Unlike corporate role‐plays that replay the same protocols, Boal’s methods pry open power’s machinery, surface systemic constraints, and invite us to co‐author new scripts of agency—cracking open walls so ripples of insight carry into everyday life, long after the final curtain. In that praxis I became aware of my own oppressive ways, even when I believed I was fighting others’ oppression and playing the victim.

Yet beneath these performances lives Maslow’s pyramid. Clinging to its base tiers – scrambling for security and approval – anchors us in scarcity loops. Paradoxically, some vault to self-actualization through creativity springing from unmet need. Late in life, Maslow pointed toward a realm beyond his famous schema: self-transcendence. Yet that truth had struck him decades earlier in 1938, among the Blackfoot Nation — where he witnessed communities thriving not on scarcity, but sacred reciprocity. Fulfilment flowed from collective harmony, not individual ascent. His hierarchical model, built years later, could never contain that revelation. Today, corporate workshops still peddle the pyramid — blind to the fact that Maslow himself transcended it. We remain trapped on its lower rungs, mistaking survival for meaning.

After leaving his Zen master, Tozan saw his reflection in a pond and whispered: “Even now he is not what I am, and I am what he is.” In that moment, roles fell away. The mirror returned the original face – not given, but uncovered.

From Goffman’s stages to Shakespeare’s eternal echo, we return breathless to the truth: all the world’s a stage, and we are only ever rehearsing our way back to presence.

And how in their removal, we sometimes glimpse the sliver of sacred angel flickering in between. in Us. That is when we all become truly human. Humane ones.

We are never just one thing—and perhaps that awareness is the most honest mask of all. When I stopped climbing Maslow’s pyramid, I became the ground it stood on at Kanzeon Zendo.