On The Rehearsal, Roleplay, & the Question of Authenticity
Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal opens with a seemingly simple premise: what if you could practice real-life moments before they happened? The HBO show is both a parody of and a tribute to the therapeutic value of preparation. Fielder plays with the authentic and the artificial so thoroughly that the viewer is never quite sure where one ends and the other begins. The premise is to take real-life scenarios with uncertain outcomes and rehearse them repeatedly until the desired result is achieved.
The Rehearsal melds Authenticity & Performance
Fielder obsessively prepares, meticulously recreating environments down to the smallest detail. In one episode, he constructs a full-scale replica of a Brooklyn bar to help a man rehearse confessing a lie to a friend. In another, a woman embarks on a six-week experiment raising a rotating cast of child actors to simulate eighteen years of parenting and test her desire for motherhood. These intricate and recursive layers of roleplay blur the line between rehearsal and reality, inviting us to question whether authenticity is something we are or something we perform.
How Therapy Uses Rehearsal to Support Growth
In therapy, we often ask people to do what feels most unnatural: to stay with the very thing they most want to avoid. Across modalities, clinicians guide clients toward painful emotions, difficult conversations, and feared outcomes not to cause distress, but because avoidance often blocks the very growth we seek.
In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), for example, therapists use a skill called Cope Ahead to help clients prepare for emotionally intense situations. Clients are asked to vividly imagine a specific scenario, not as an outside observer, but in real time, picturing where they are, who they’re with, and how things might unfold. This kind of mental rehearsal doesn’t just prepare them logistically; it changes how the brain responds. Research from the University of Pennsylvania shows that imagining the future activates both the part of the brain that envisions events and the part that evaluates emotions. By practicing how they’ll cope, clients train their brains and bodies to stay more regulated when the moment actually arrives.
The Controversy Around Roleplay in Therapy
Despite its utility, roleplay remains contested in therapy. Critics argue that it can feel artificial or disconnected from deeper emotional work, or that it risks perpetuating stereotypes when people act out roles that are not their own. But when done thoughtfully and consensually, roleplay can be powerful, especially for people who experience emotional flooding during conflict. Rehearsing a situation in advance can reduce the intensity of the real thing. It can give clients a chance to see a difficult moment through and discover that they can survive it, even if things don’t go as hoped. In that way, roleplay can support, not undermine, authenticity.
Relational therapy often asks: what does it really mean to be authentic? The Rehearsal made me reflect on the conditions that allow someone to show up as their true self, and the ways in which planning or scripting can either support or distort that effort. Neurodivergent viewers have written movingly about seeing themselves in the show’s depiction of masking, being the exhausting effort of managing internal emotions and social expectations through advanced planning. For some, this kind of rehearsal isn’t just helpful; it’s a form of survival.
The Emotional Cost of Masking for Acceptance
This is where a one-size-fits-all approach to mental health falls short. People shouldn’t be forced into ABA-style training to meet others’ expectations of normalcy. In one episode, Fielder discusses an article by a man who spent years learning to mask his neurodivergent traits. While it helped him gain access to jobs and relationships, it came at a profound cost to his sense of self. He described feeling like he had to be "trained and tamed" in order to be lovable.
Practicing Authenticity in Real Life
True authenticity isn’t about perfection or polished outcomes. It’s about the willingness to risk being fully seen. Practicing a conversation doesn’t have to be a form of manipulation or performance. It can be a way to stay more grounded and present, to get clearer about what we need to say and why. When the goal of rehearsal is control, it can undermine connection. But when it’s used to reduce fear and allow for greater openness, it can bring us closer to our truest selves.
In truth, we’re all rehearsing, all the time, preparing for future conversations, situations, and relationships. No two interactions will ever be the same, but we can learn to pay attention to how we feel in moments of uncertainty and stay curious about the narratives and patterns that emerge.
The Rehearsal reminds us that even the most detailed preparation can’t guarantee a particular outcome. But perhaps the point isn’t to control what happens, it’s to notice how we respond. Our first reaction to stress or conflict isn’t always our most authentic one; it may be the voice of an old wound or a protective part that no longer serves us.
Authenticity as a Process, Not a Destination
Finding a "true" self isn’t a fixed destination. It’s a lifelong process of becoming, of adapting, of choosing honesty over performance when we can. That process will look different for each of us. What matters most is using the tools that help us show up with presence, integrity, and connection.
Authenticity, in the end, is not always a passive state. It is something we practice.
Featured therapist author:
Sarah Barukh, ACSW, the eldest of four, was shaped by her responsibility and deep familial bonds. She is a sister to a brother with high needs autism, which has given her insight into caregiving, advocacy, and the complexities of family dynamics. Sarah is exploring her Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jewish identity through Reform Judaism, finding meaning in tradition, culture, and community. She is also personally familiar with the emotional and practical challenges of supporting a loved one through serious illness, and has struggled with anxiety since childhood, which gives her a personal understanding of what it means to live with and work through it. She is engaged in social justice and organizing, with experience in political campaigns, labor organizing, and collective action.
In her spare time, you can find her checking out way too many books from the library, sweating it out at Dance Church, getting lost on a new hike, singing at the top of my lungs in the car, and FaceTiming with the people she loves who live too far away.
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