Sharing Dreams

          Sharing our dreams and ideas can be awkward and can raise a variety of reactions, not only in those who hear us, but also, deep inside of us, there is a mixture feelings, especially if you say that you want to be an actor, a writer, a director, something that just a few have the luck to make a living of it.
            In the beginning I used to be frustrated and I used to have an adolescent reaction, thinking that “everybody is against me” or “nobody understands me” and “one day, they will see!” like a revenge or as if I had to prove something to the world! It took me a while to have emotional control over these expectations and opinions on my professional decisions, but I think the general European crises put everyone in the same boat. Suddenly, any job is a dream, a dream of having stepping stones and progress in order to build a career and have a comfortable life. Well, I am not satisfied with that and that affects my best friends, but now I feel that in a way, everyone does understand each other better, artists and non artists.
            Everyday I am so thankful for having found what I love to do and I don’t have to wait for my holidays or weekends to enjoy that. For a year and an half I made a living of my profession, doing a supporting role in a soap novel in my own country, Portugal. It was a very good year financially, saving almost everything to be able to come to London and to study here. I still have to manage to do other jobs in other areas in a part time basis but most of my time I dedicate to my profession. It’s difficult to have self discipline, to get focused and keep improving your craft when you don’t seem to have any project in a near future, so I try to create my projects and stick to my life plan.

         I am busy now preparing our play at Mountview. The course finishes in July and the balance of it is extremely positive. I made lots friends with whom I share this passion; I improved my English a lot and my knowledge of English literature. We had very helpful teachers and very interesting classes: improvisation, audition technique, classical and modern text, movement, voice, devised performance, character study. After the play I will focus on building my show reel in English. For that I will need to: study and shoot some scenes in English with my friends from the course; I have some monologues as well that I would love to explore and put them on tape. One in particular is very interesting... It's about the expectations that we all have before we come to London with what actually happens. I’ll go two weeks to Portugal as well to see my family. So until September, I hope I can build a good show reel and a have some headshots as well to start approaching the market here. 
          The process is very hard and slow at the same time and sometimes it seems that you are not going anywhere but I believe that sharing makes everything more clear to me.  I will keep updating all my plans. 

            Lots of love, Lilly