Why Theatre?

 Ever since I was a little boy, I was quite certain of what I wanted to do in the future: make films. However, I only became a fanatic of the 7^th art when I turned thirteen. Even though by that time it was a habit of mine to go to the movies every week, I was still uncertain about what made a great movie. It was at that time that my father, realizing my interest on this subject, opened the doors for me that would later lead me to take Theatre HL in the IB (introducing me the great directors, writers and books). I spent a rather long time watching the classics (Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca…) but it was only until I watched Pulp Fiction that I started to pay a closer attention to the script and performances of a film (which meant I had to watch the classics all over again). Tarantino was also responsible for my fascination for dialogues, which lead me to start reading plays and start analyzing the meaning of words. A couple of years later, after reading as many books, plays and watching as many movies I could, I started to become jealous of the people on stage and on screen. Even though I knew I wanted to make films, I had this urge to know if I too could perform in a credible way. I started memorizing poems and book lines by heart and performing them to my family to get some feedback.  They obviously couldn’t criticize me in a negative way in order not to offend me, so I didn’t really have a reliable “judge”. However I decided to figure that out when I had a conversation with someone, and that conversation was the second main event that made take Theatre HL. I was in a café with my father, when all of a sudden Nicolau Breyner (one of the greatest Portuguese actors alive) walked in. I had just seen the best Portuguese movie in the last 50 years (“Os Imortais”) and since he starred in that movie, my anxiety was evident. What I didn’t know was that my father knew him and he pushed me to chat with him. I started by saying that I loved his work and wanted to be a film director when I grew up. Hearing this, he said “But are you a good or a bad actor?” I became speechless. How could I know? I went with my honest opinion at that time and said no. “You need to figure that out, because you’re either a good actor or a bad actor”. Therefore, in a quest to find the answer to that question, here I am taking Theatre HL.