The stage makes pretending publicly acceptable and occasionally makes honesty possible.

A stage makes pretending permitted, and that permission can produce more honesty than sincerity does. Under the cover of a role, people say things they could not say as themselves, and an audience receives things they could not accept if addressed directly. The frame of fiction is what makes the truth bearable.

You can use the same mechanism in smaller ways. Some things get said more easily in a letter than a conversation, in a hypothetical than a confession, in a story about someone else. That is not evasion if it delivers what was true. Find the frame that lets the honest thing be said, rather than waiting to become the kind of person who can say it plainly.