When stage actor Mamie Parris developed Bell's Palsy (a form of spontaneous facial paralysis) late last year, her first instinct was to disappear from public life. Instead, she's pulled out a magnifying glass to document her journey on social media, all the while continuing to perform onstage in concerts and the recent Goodspeed production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

"At first, it felt like I had burned my tongue on hot coffee," Parris shares, referring to her innocuous early symptoms. "The next day, I couldn't move." 

Bell's Palsy is an unexplained form of facial muscle weakness or paralysis. Often triggered without warning, the condition is typified by partial paralysis, with one side of the face going slack while the other side's muscles remain fully operable. While science has identified a small handful of risk increasing factors, such as a widespread viral infection and pregnancy, such knowledge is far from preventative. "There's no real treatment. They give you a course of steroids to boost your immune system to fight whatever may be causing it, but it's mostly a matter of time," notes Parris. For the majority of people who are diagnosed with Bell's Palsy, the condition fades away over time. 

But for some, the paralysis can continue on, seemingly indefinitely. Playwright and Pulitzer finalist Sarah Ruhl, who developed the disorder in February 2010, has publicly grappled with Bell's Palsy for well over a decade. Those who regain motor function after a few months aren't out of the woods either; for a seemingly spontaneous condition, reoccurrences are becoming more and more common amongst the afflicted. This is Parris' second bout with the disorder; she developed her first spontaneous case at 22, which she recovered from after a few months of reclusively.

This time around, Parris isn't letting it shame her into secrecy.

When Parris was diagnosed this second time, "I had to cancel a lot of concert," she shares. "Everything hurt, my face was not my face, and I just stayed inside with my dog for a month. And then Jennifer Johns called."

Johns, the artistic director of Broadway Artist's Alliance, needed Parris to teach a class. While Parris initially resisted the idea, Johns' convinced her to re-enter public life, asymmetrical face and all.

"I thought, 'There are a lot of people who know you, who wonder where you went. You need to let people know what's going on.'" After a few private classes, where the various groups of young students cared far more about her knowledge than her disability, Parris was inspired to share her healing journey with the wider public. "It's been a really cathartic experience. People are coming out of the woodwork, letting me know that they have had the experience, or someone in their family, or their friends...It's everywhere"

While Parris had initially felt alone and isolated, it soon became clear to her that Bell's Palsy was a far more common experience than she had been led to believe. "I've spoken with so many actors and singers who have had this, and who have had this more than once. It's supposed to be random, but there's a pattern here. I would love to see a study done, because there's so many theories as to what can cause it, but I really think there's something with singers and the way we use our body that can trigger it somehow."

As the year has continued on, Parris not only kept teaching, but started performing in concerts again. And she led the cast of The Mystery of Edwin Drood at Goodspeed. The role was Parris' test of the industry as much as it was a test of her own abilities.

"I knew, physically, I was going to be OK. My vocal cords weren't affected, thankfully, and I had learned how to enunciate with one side of my mouth by then. The bigger part was, 'Can I get out of my head and allow the audience and my peers to determine if the visual is an issue?'" Parris shrugs, tucking her hair behind her ear so as to show off the slack portion of her face. "And you know what? They were so gung ho about it, so long as I wasn't in pain. And everything I had been told, that people wouldn't see me, and only see the facial difference, was wrong. Not once did anyone say it was a distraction."

As Parris became more comfortable, the paralysis became a fascinating new tool with which she carved her characters backstory. "I'm playing a woman impersonating a man, right? So I crafted this fun story about my character, when she was young, being proposed to by a wealthy German baron who grew jealous of all her admirers, and who tried to poison her in her sleep, and she survived. But the part of her face that was on the pillow, where the poison pooled, was paralyzed. I wouldn't have had that without this."

Offstage, Parris' relationship to social displays of femininity has also changed—having had facial control taken away from her, she's become less self-conscious about her appearance. 

"It has allowed me freedom in an interesting way. When I go out to run errands, I'm prepared to run into people I know, and I'd always have a little bit of makeup on, and that soft smile. Now, I have to wear glasses, and there was no way I was going to put makeup on my face unless I had to. It allowed me this interesting, foreign freedom from feeling like I needed to look good for other people. And coupling that with Drood, it has really helped me tap into that masculine perspective, because all of the facial nicety that we concern ourselves with 95 percent of the time is for men. It has given me permission to just exist."

While Parris has regained a significant amount of muscular function in the seven months since her initial paralysis, she is holding on to the lessons gleaned from her experience as tightly as she can. While Parris' Bell's Palsy may subside, she is deeply aware of the wide of range of artists for whom muscle paralysis, or other visible disabilities, are an unchangeable fact of daily life.

"When we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion in our business, we have to include people with facial and body differences," she explains. "We're not really seeing people who look different than us, and that has to change. It's why I like difference more than disability. Not fitting into your idea of normal doesn't mean we aren't able to do it, we just have to do it our way. And that's OK."