Carolina Amaral

RB – My questions are going to sound very basic in the beginning, but we will arrive somewhere. I would like to know why are you an actress, what brought you here?

CA – Do you want to know something funny? You were just talking about my energy, my phonetics, and it is something that accompanies me since I was a child, always feeling inadequate in the places I frequented.  It was often portrayed, on one hand, as if it were a compliment, I was outgoing, but on the other hand, it could also be overcompensated. I could be almost crazy.
Always very agitated, very curious, wouldn’t shut up, talking, talking, talking and, sometimes, in the contexts I was, I ended up not feeling adjusted or integrated – not that I felt such as an affront, but I was very criticized. I lived up in the Azores, São Miguel, until the age of four because my father is Azorean, and came to the north of Portugal, Guimarães, to a new school, and there was a party at the end of the year in which I was invited to participate. My mom told me that at the time she was very worried and went to speak with the Sisters and the educators, ‘she will ruin the show because she has so much energy, she is going to wreck it. It’s not a good idea”, but they told her they knew what they were doing. I still have the physical and sensorial memory of being very flushed and feeling this big rush of energy through me, but in a surrealistic context, since it was a play that had many characters and almost everything was mime, but there was Sister doing voices, moving around from one side to the other, always there. And I remember feeling very included. Of course, it is only possible to realize what happened with some distance, but, in fact, looking back, I felt very at ease, very loose, free and not at all condemned. So much that at the end of the show, I remember different parents went up to my mother and told her that I had “a knack for becoming an artist”. I was strangely appreciated and not only associated that moment with well-being and creative freedom, but also with a sense of inclusion in a place. Neither more, nor less, I felt adequate, and I believe it was the first time I felt accepted by others somehow, but I also saw my energy serving a bigger purpose than me and reaching out to others. Following the parties and entering ballet, that possibility of integrating an imaginary, a project that touches others and where I don’t feel inadequate, on the contrary, that I can use it and take this imaginary with me, it was something transformative. The flesh, the thought, the intuition. It was almost encrusted. So much that despite everything - and I don’t belong to a family of artists, I have family members with great sensibilities, but I never had big examples and references around me – when the time came, to me, it was as clear as water, – and I am someone interested in several areas, I love literature, philosophy, so, I could have gone that way, and it would certainly have stimulated and satisfied me. That choice was not exactly determined, it was something obvious, and at the same time intimidating because it was imposed by my nature and imaginary, otherwise I would be frustrating myself and withering.                        

RB – It’s funny because there are many points in common. Well, I never felt much pleasure, I hate it, but still.

CA – Do you know that sometimes I think: what if I stop now? What if I don’t go on? It was much easier to stay comfortably at home, doing my readings, writing…           

RB – Precisely: I believe you are a diligent reader, isn’t it? You love reading books. I became an actress – we are not here to talk about me – because of books. Do you think this has also influenced you?

CA – My mother calmed me down through the habit of reading. It was the only way to control me, my agitation, my will, my “unstopability”, if that word exists, I like to make up words (laughs).

          
RB – It does now.

CA – Reading has always soothed and nourished me immensely. It is a fundamental part of my day-to-day life, of my experience, and I believe that the sensibility was also exacerbated by my reading habits.            

RB – Imagination?

CA – It seems I get addicted to this expansion of the imagination through books. It’s a consuming thing.          

RB – It consoles you, too!

CA – And it soothes me while simulating me tremendously. As a child, my mother instigated this habit to see if it would calm me down. And, suddenly, a phenomenon happened, which was my mother asking me to read less. That annoyed me. Nobody ever reads too much, reading is endless. I made lists and lists of books that I know that even if I lived every day reading a book, I wouldn’t read them all. I believe it is something that, in our profession, contributes to nurturing the imagination, the sensibility, something which hardens and enriches.          

RB – Give us more texture. Through reading, we get to know millions of people, millions of viewpoints, which we would never access otherwise for more experiences we had.

CA – I have just finished reading Fiódor Dostoiévski Humiliated and Insulted, which left a great impression on me.  It was a writer I started discovering when I was 15 years old and picked up its Crime and Punishment by impulse. In the one I just read, for example, he speaks about one of the feelings, love, that we believe we know a lot about it because it is around us throughout our lives. And suddenly, while reading a Russian writer of the XIX century talking about love, it seems like someone has slapped me. The unpretentious and simple way he used to speak about this unrequited love between two characters, and still calling it love, left me KO, and all the comprehension I had about the world seems to have widened in a way I was not expecting at all. He got me off the mat in a very positive way. So, this issue of the presence of the literature and its ability to help us densify while letting us more vulnerable is something that it’s not only poetic, but effective in my daily life as a human being and in the work I do.           

RB – When I look at an actor that I love, whatever that means, I like to know what he eats, what goes through his mind and so on. I want to see his choices somehow. And your choices, obviously, are ‘stuffed’, come with weight and density.

CA – I am capable of speaking about the books I read, but often they enter that place, which is filled with dreams, nightmares and frights, and a certain restlessness that is better tackled in terms of images and sensations more than speech. They work a lot on the dark side for me, too.          

RB – So, isn’t that what we live for? Isn’t theatre the art of the error, of failing? Now, let me ask you something, what do you think is it for? I don’t care what you think is good for you, or it can be that as well, and there is no harm in it.  My question is, do you believe it is a mission, that there is an ethical dimension that is important to respect? To become an actor, I mean. Nowadays, ethically speaking, all professional activities seem somewhat distorted.  I ask you if you feel this is significant, or not, and then we’ll move to the international.  

CA – I think it is crucial that we remain connected to our motivations and to what brings us there. Being, let’s say, almost faithful and continue believing. On the why we are doing it.  

RB – And why? 

CA – What I see, my truth, is a sense of mission to serve. To me, an artistic object has to touch the other, the public, change them, disturb them, challenge them, so that in these endless provocations that art stirs and allows us to reflect on the existence and human condition. So that we can actually be a part of the community, find our place in the world and assist each spectator, each person contacting with a work, to be more in himself while having the possibility of getting lost – because many times in this society which is almost 100% monitored, in which we monitor one another, we give very few spaces to error, to that obscurity. To fall into a kind of abyss that sometimes make us find each other more. I believe that in art objects, when there is that provocation, and we manage to reach the people, people can find a powerful version of themselves, contributing to a necessarily better or more awake world, a more alert one.           

RB – In fact, more and more, if an artist is unable to stir and to be socially active, the world does not evolve in the practical sense of the thing, of the people well-being. An artist must have utility, otherwise… An example that I love is Matisse. It is impressive how his revolt and aggressiveness was so creative and disturbing. And it made us think – it makes us think even today. How is that possible? How good it is that artists and people are standing out and changing our lives. But, well, it doesn’t matter now.  
Silly question, in this profession, what do you like the most, and what do you not like at all? One that is fun for you, another that you don’t like at all.  

CA – The part that crosses me while having to do with a sort of sacrifice, surrender, a vortex that consumes me and makes me lose control. At the same time, it almost launches me into another dimension, which nourishes and fascinates me. Only when I leave the mood, when I am not in it. When I am crossed, I am not exactly quite aware of it. I am just enjoying and surrendering and that can happen in an improvisation rehearsal, it can happen in a very subtle or simple moment, an encounter, even in something smaller.
Something I don’t like very much, but only when I think about it, when I don’t, it doesn’t hurt me. If I stop to think about it – which is something that sometimes is not good – it’s the issue of the exposure. What frustrates me the most or leaves me restless, in a bad sense, has to do with my return to the faculties of the day-to-day life of Carolina, real, the everyday life. If I start thinking a lot, “why do I do this? Why do I expose myself this way?”, it prompts embarrassment, awkwardness, shame. But if I stop and think that the Carolina who is falling is still me.

           
RB – You better not.

CA – But transported to an imaginary story and vision. I am lost from the centre, my ego, it’s almost like I am in service. I am telling a story, so I am behind. I am showing a front, I am instigating, but really if I stop a little and observe from a distance, I think “but what do I think I am to summon people’s time?”            .  

RB – But sometimes it can also feel shameful to enjoy experiencing this so much. This thing of the ego, in an actor, must be muzzled all the time. We have to live with it, so if there is no muzzle…

CA – I think it is good from the moment you reflect on it and question yourself. Question our place, if we are still serving. There are many conjuring tricks, especially when we have many eyes on us. We can lose focus of what is important, so we must remain vigilant.