Paula Luiz is more than an actress is a vehicle of creation, that through her experience of life , the people she meet on her journey and the travel's, she turns everything into learning experience that she seeks to relay to her students and society in her current writing .
What led you to pursue a career as an actress, in a hard country for artists of all genres?
Paula Luiz: It's hard to explain, because I say it was not me who chose it, was the profession that chose me. When I was younger I did not know very well what they wanted to be at age 15 so went to high school and ended up choosing sciences, because I wanted to follow medicine, psychiatry, but coincided with the fact that I started my theater course and then I realized that there was a whole world to discover from the creative point of view. It was funny to realize that had immense energy that was retained, it had to be crafted differently and be expanded. I fell in love just by the representation and began to pursue theater studies in conjunction with school. At 17 I had already done a few plays of the end of the course, I continued to do my training in workshops in New York, I always enjoyed the kind of American exercise, their language and always reacted very intuitively their school, really like this type of education, the Stella Adler style and was already working professionally when I did a casting for television. Was 20 years old, was precocious, but they called me and I did my first soap opera and was very strong, it was the first and the character was very rich. I showed my work in a more versatile manner, Eduarda was a girl who had mental retardation and I had to make a deeper and more courageous work. Loved it, people were fantastic , then progressed, did the " Wild Angel " , "your look" , did another television shows in a different TV station that was " revenge " which also enjoyed participating and " chiquititas " and a bunch of series and advertising. After the theater was still standing there forever , because the reality is that when we make television is hard to balance everything, because we worked 12 hours a day and to do nights stills, get to do a show at the theater is almost impossible when we you have to learn a text for next day. Now more recently I have been doing theater, written and staged by me, teaching, because I love it is a passion that I discovered in 2009, i.e. helping people to discover their best potential, such creativity, and such energy that is there and explore it.
Let's go back in time, because at some point in your career you decided to go back to the theater and left the other means?
PL: It came naturally, i.e. when you are in television sometimes you worked two or three projects and then suddenly there's a break, because there is a change in life, in my case what happened was this stop from TVI to SIC and are natural steps in our journey of life, which at the time have not questioned much, but they do happen. Then I return to the theater , was a return to the origins , because when we have many works in a row suddenly we no longer have the ability to self-analysis to stop and think , calm down, are you going as far as you expected in your artwork as you wanted? And I think when you work in theater it returns this healthy side of I will forget what I have done and go back to the empty space , Peter Brook spoke this very question: how is working in an empty space without props ? To create everything with you own body. And that return is almost going back to my 15 years of age when I discovered the theater.
One such project that speak is of was the monologue "Water women"? What attracted you in this project? It is very intimidating to be alone on stage and face the audience.
PL: This proposal was very interesting, because it came in contact with one director and another writer friend, suddenly we talk about it, we create something, we'll do a monologue, Paula do you want it? And I think in that aspect is better not to ponder too much, thinking is good, but there are occasions when we need to react immediately and go for adventure. Was a slight unconsciousness, that monologues have to have a certain thoughtlessness, because if not a person just paralyzes. It was also a project that applied for several grants and won everything so we could do it here in the commune theater and take it to the international festival "today is today " in Mozambique and the festival of Venezuela , in the city of Barcelona. All entities that might have supported made it possible. I've been with the Portuguese ambassador in Venezuela who liked the play and it is great to know that our work deserves to be shown and well represented and that people adhere. We are a nation without borders, we have the sea.
But beyond the fact that you're alone on stage, what brought you this character to you as an actress?
PL : The character was very different from me , energetically , of course , she had a more sensitive and fragile force that I also have and these nuances generated proximity , but she had stages of anger , resentment, indignation , and was a little more scathing than I, Paula , I do not have that facet . I live more in peace than the character; she had a tragic life story and could not overcome it. That show was her attempt to try to sublimate, sublimate. It was a beautiful text of Luis Carlos Patraquim, which is a Luso- Mozambican writer. It was very poetic, which brought some difficulty, because it is easier to express ourselves in more common parlance, than with such a beautiful poetryzation. The challenge was greater in terms of work, of perceiving and thinking: This is beautiful! What images this carries! There is all this work. On the other hand , had a very positive thing I was trying to have the domain of everything that is on stage , and when we are alone that we realize how much we dominated something , until then, I think I 'd never had that feeling at 100% everything I was doing . I even have a blank and go around and no one notice anything, I continued, gave a laugh and played with it. It is a domain that is added because it is ours, only we're there alone, the only chance is to master what we are doing, otherwise is not worth the penalty.
Another theater registration was "crime in the museum house "why wished to make this work, what attracted you to this project?
PL: This play is earlier "Water women". But, soon attracted me the proposal of Michel Simeon, who was the director, I sympathize with him a lot. He told me it was like "cluedo" and always enjoyed the game, where you have to figure out who the killer is and the character was very funny, because after had a poetic moment. It was a very sensible woman, had the entire historical component, and was in the house museum of Leal da Câmara; I was the wife, had the costumes of the era and loved this project.
At this time you are focusing on training actors.
PL: I'm betting on multiple sides, i.e. I think the more time in advance and not on age, the more I perceive that the human being has enormous potential. What we feel about us, not only refers to it, but can be five or six things at once. We can even set the master profession, but then you have lots to explore and come to the conclusion that before being an actress, teacher and writer, I 'm a creative who can go to the areas that I wish. Its how I feel, because it gives me immense pleasure to be on the scene outside to help people find their artistic path, I 'm not a teacher, I am guide to help them find a creative space. I like to be immersed in the computer writing up stories and characters, but also I did not let the science go, I'm a fan of quantum physics and this new type of thinking, which is the quantum spirituality and also I am a fan of natural medicine, so I'm training in herbal medicine, which is another side I like to work.
You got all these aspects, but people see you as an actress of television, you feel that there is a certain bias?
PL: No, I have never seen such a bias. I think to label me as an actress in television is a good is a sign of a work I have done over the years , is a consequence of an action , if I actually worked as a television actress is normal for people to associate me with that and I'm very happy for develop that work backwards . Hope is to continue to develop myself forward, but it is something that I thank all the people who helped me grow as an actor and already the next who will help me to build this process. I will launch in February 2014 a novel, my first, the first time I'll give myself known as a writer.
You have a novel, but you never wrote a play?
PL: I have written six.
But we never talk about this facet of your playwright.
PL: Because I do not make it know. It is work that happens in a more invisible way.
In Portugal we never speak of female authors on the theater.
PL: No, but it begins to be so, because I'm working on it.
But these plays have placed all went on stage?
PL: All, why? I make an introductory course format for theatrical practice that to me makes sense, a first part with the basic exercises for students to begin to understand what the basic tools of the theater, which is to create. I rely on Stanislavsky, like this format for creating and building the character. In the second part, I begin to write a play for them very much based on what I observe what students give, the aim is to deliver the best of them in and after the third stage is the show itself and it stays three days on a stage. I've done "the joy of the cavern", "exoteristas " which is a joke , almost all turn out to be comedies , always appear in groups that kind f energy. Never been able to make a drama, well done yet, "Guess Who " which was based on " cluedo " , was meant to be a more dramatic play, but they gave him such a turn that also became a comedy . Also wrote "headhunter" and now I'm preparing the fifth play, I am in the process of writing the" haunted house" .It is not visible work because it's something I do with the students and that is inserted in the training that I develop . In this aspect I explore my drama capabilities, my writing and acting.
It's funny because all the actors I interviewed complain that there are no Portuguese dramatists, however you write.
PL : It's a job that is not visible to people of my environment I did a play called " immortal in seven days " , then I was doing it, was not written for my students . Until now it was the only project that I undertook as author, theater director, actress and producer and suddenly I realize I assumed more functions than those that should have taken, I came to this conclusion despite having wanted to make this experience for only two weeks. The audience enjoyed immensely, because touched the issues of life beyond death, begins in this tunnel that people goes through, to reach a space and question what is that, there was the person who was reviewing all the good times in it lives and all are near-death experiences where my character was there for the third time, she had already several trips. I based it on the experience of my mother who participated in a book about the experiences of almost deaths and all of them are cross-sectional, all passed through the tunnel and all feel that sense of peace and love.
Now you launch a novel.
PL: It's called "Glory Game", will be launched in Lisbon in February 2014, the romance in the background is a portrait of a woman who wants to leave the "status quo ". She will get a call to go to an address that from there she begins a great adventure. In this address they offered her to make a trip around the world, a great crossing where she will have to pass through several countries and several puzzles with all the learning that comes with it. Proofs are ciphers with secret codes and she has to go and has a help, a support, who is a teacher, scholar and philosopher, who basically is never physically with her during the travel, is always in Lisbon, but which will help her to decipher them all. It is a great trip for the soul; it passes through various places where she makes very deep learning about what are the mysteries of life. We are all here in this status quo and forget to rip the horizons and it is proposed to go into the unknown, the novelty is to rediscover a state we had when we are teenagers and it is: the world is a great place where we can do everything and we forget it from a certain age and become instituted.
