Return to event overviewCurrent Event
1. What is your favourite medium to work in Film/TV or theatre and why?
I really love both theatre and film. It is a gift to be able to do both. While there are many cross-overs between the two mediums, I thrive on the unique challenges of both.
Theatre is immediate and keeps you entirely present. You have to be ready for the unknown, for the different character of the audience each night. I am working on a play at the moment that also changes shape and mood every night, and I find that exciting. I also get so much out of the detail of the rehearsal period that theatre allows for. To be given at least a month to prepare a character and inhabit a play is brilliant. If only we were given such time with film.
With film, I so enjoy film sets – they are a community and a family that develop very rapidly. A film is only made possible by a large number of people each doing their job well – like a mega group project. I am inspired by being just one cog in the machine.
The stillness and intimacy of film also appeals to me as an actor. To be able to communicate large ideas and emotions through the smallest of gestures, which may potentially be missed on stage, is wonderful. I also really enjoy watching film, and so of course am inspired to be involved with projects that can potentially reach a large number of people, and hopefully move and maybe change them – which, for me, is what it is all about.
2. What has been the most challenging of the roles you have played so far and why?
I have been initially overwhelmed by all the roles I have played. To take on another person is, on one level, immense. Most of the time, I just don’t think it is possible! Of course it just takes a little time to let the story and person to be absorbed.
I did feel challenged by a film I did a few years ago now, called ‘Blackwater’. As a thriller I was particularly concerned that my acting would be limited and confined by the genre. I didn’t want to do it if I was just going to cry and scream. I needed it to be about the truth of the situation – which was essentially horrifically terrifying, and the relationships between the characters. The three of us in the cast worked hard to achieve this. We rehearsed the script like it was theatre. We hired a local hall, and went right through it, from top to bottom, over and over. I think it tied us together as actors, and also allowed us to explore dimensions of fear, for it is never one level, and levels of fear manifest differently in your body. Getting to a point where the terror felt honest was challenging, but also, as a result, taught me so much.
3. When did you know that Performing Art was the path you wanted to follow?
Since I finished school, five years ago now, it has slowly dawned on me that the performing arts is the field of work that makes me happy. There is such a diverse range of talented and passionate people in this industry. And I’m not just talking about the top tier, whose names we hear of all the time.
That people are prepared to really struggle and make substantial sacrifices to get creative work made, is inspiring, and proves that the stories being told are what it is all about.
As long as I feel extended and challenged by this work, with its potential ability to explore the human condition in a variety of ways, I believe it will sustain me.
4. What has been the most real/confronting/challenging moment in your acting career?
Again, this is hard to answer because I’d actually be concerned if any work didn’t feel real and confronting and challenging. There have certainly been times when I have been so exhausted and stretched, that I didn’t think I could keep going. And yet have had to keep going, frequently discovering a bit of magic along the way.
It often seems that so often things happen all at once (particularly when trying to complete a university degree, while working a fair amount, as I have been): work demanding a huge amount, personal life proving hard, time pressures abounding! To be able to manage an array of emotional and intellectual demands is real and confronting and challenging.
5. What are your thoughts in working in directing and other areas of production?
Certainly I would like to write, direct and produce my own work. At the moment I still feel like a bit of a spring chicken, who is breathing so many new lessons and experiences in. I feel like I have a lot of energy to contribute, so perhaps in time, there will be other ways I can give myself to this line of work.
6. How do you do to prepare for a role?
It really depends on the nature project. I don’t have a set way to prepare. I need time to sit with scripts, to dream my way into another mind, and body. I am a very heady person, so I try not to control and define too much with my mind. I use to write things down a lot – create words and thoughts for the character, but I do less of that now, and try to be more wholly integrated in my approach – so that it is in my body too. And yet, I love the research side of things too: any related history, or novels or poems that tie into the world of the script.
Like a lot of actors, I also find costume very useful. It makes the process more exploratory – where a particular shirt might make you hold your shoulders in a different way, which then makes you feel different mentally. I really do believe in psycho-somatic connections.
I also think it is very important to spend time with the other actors, outside of the rehearsal period. To form real relationships, which then feed into the work. Otherwise the connections in the script remain somewhat limited to your own mental construction of them.
7. What advice has been the most helpful for you on set?
Be honest, always. Be respectful of all the other people on the set, and what they personally need in order to do their work. And always listen, always.
8. What women in history would you love to play if you were given the chance and why?What a question! There are so many women whose skin i’d like to crawl into (that does sound funny, but you know what I mean) I am a huge reader, and have recently become obsessed by biographies on my most favorite female writers: Edith Wharton, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson. I would jump at any opportunity to play any of these women, in an attempt to further explore their truly fascinating minds, and lives.
As well, for namesake reasons, I would love to play Queen Maeve (often spelt Maebh in Celtic), who was a powerful mythic Irish Queen. I feel like I owe it to her!
9. What do you think the importance is of film/tv/theatre is in today’s society?
I think it is easy to underestimate the importance of the performing arts. I know personally I have, on occasion, been embarrassed by my involvement, when I could be studying medicine, or doing aid work (which seem to be more actively saving the world). I can justify my involvement though, because human beings need story. We need to be enlarged and provoked through ideas that may be beyond their scope of our experience. I know I need it. While I appreciate the entertainment quality of theatre/ tv/ film, I hope that more often than not the work moves people and affects their lives in an interesting way.
10. What is your favourite thing to do after a long day on set/in rehearsals?
Sleep! The nature of this kind of work is that it is truly exhausting. That is why it is primarily manageable in short, but very intense doses. I know I need downtime to recover: to read, to spend time with people, to swim in the sea.
Find out more about Maeve- http://www.yenmag.net/ywya/finalists_profile.php?name_id=15
Interview By Rhiannon Bulley
