śailūṣa nyāyaḥ (actress)
An actress during her various on-stage plays changes her dress, speech, and moves beyond recognition. Still she remains the same person.
This much-favored material world is comparable to a theater stage on which many actors perform their roles. As in actual theater, in our life theater, we are so much absorbed in our roles that we are carried away from our real identity as spirit soul subservient to God, into the illusion of being God. But a good actor, plays his roles very dutifully, at the same time never forgets his true identity. With this attitude, the illusory conceptions of I and mine can be, after sufficient rehearsal practice, easily overcome. Then resultant effects of dualities of happiness and distress have no distorting effect on that perfect soul-actor.
Why this world is alike theater? It was mentioned previously that Śrī-Kṛṣṇa is raso vai saḥ, which means that He is the unlimited reservoir of unlimited mellows and that His only occupation is to eternally relish unlimited moods. That is His only business, and we are part of that, whether we recognize that or not. The material world is one of His theaters. So to make this world pleasurable and happy performance we better go with the mood of our Lord, which in this case is to use our free will to depend on Śrī Hari by surrendering to His guru representative, perform a sacrifice for Him, cultivate transcendental knowledge of Him, remember Him by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, and perform our theatrical worldly duties diligently connected to Him.