Notes to a Younger Actor

Dear younger actor,

I’ve been doing this for 28 years. I started performing in 1998, and I’m still learning. So take this as notes from a colleague who has made a lot of mistakes, not a lecture from a master.

Where I’m writing from

I was born in Madrid to a Spanish father and a Filipina mother. As a kid I watched my family’s rehearsals at Repertory, and that is where the theatre bug bit me.

I studied voice and acting in Spain, competing against the whole world, without family around. I sang in around 30 zarzuelas and operas across Spain and Portugal. When the 2008 crisis dried up work in Spain, I went further: six months in China, at the Universal Expo in Shanghai.

Then in 2011, passing through Manila, I dropped by a rehearsal. They were auditioning for someone who could sing opera. I got the part, and the Philippines has been home ever since.

I tell you this because none of it was a straight line. Yours won’t be either. That is normal.

1. Talent gets you in the room. Daily work keeps you there.

My Tita Baby, Baby Barredo, used to say theatre is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. I only understood it when she pushed me so hard in Guadalupe the musical that I wanted to quit. I didn’t. It became the best performance of my life. The whole story is in The Toughest Director I Ever Had.

2. Turn what they tease you about into a tool

When I arrived in Manila, I barely spoke English or Tagalog, and people teased my accent. That same accent later helped get me cast as a Spanish priest. I wrote about that this week in why I always get cast as the priest or the soldier.

3. Build relationships before you need them

The phone call usually comes from someone who already trusts you. Be on time. Know your lines. Be kind to everyone, because the assistant today might be the producer tomorrow. I learned that the funny way, in what it really takes to get cast in a commercial.

4. Say yes to the reasonable things

They change the call time. They want you shaved. They need photos in 30 minutes. Each small yes quietly answers one question: can this person be trusted on a busy set?

5. Tap, learn, go again

You will lose castings. You will get notes you don’t like. You will watch someone else get the role you wanted. On the jiu-jitsu mats we call that tapping. Tap, smile, ask how they did it, and go again.

6. Choose your voices

Listen to your director. Respect your fellow actors. But don’t rebuild your character every time someone has a new idea. Commit to a direction and go deep.

7. Take care of the instrument

Your body and your voice are the only tools you carry everywhere. Warm up even when the schedule says there is no time. Train. Sleep when you can. Tired actors get dramatic offstage, not only onstage.

8. Nothing comes in one big jump

Nothing in my career came in one big jump. It was a lot of small days stacked on top of each other: zarzuela ensembles, a stage in Shanghai, a musical on a school campus in Cavite, films, series, commercials, and now a circus tent in General Santos. Every stage counts.

So start where you are. Do the work today. Then do it again tomorrow.

With love from the road,

Kuya

P.S. If you want to see where all those small days led, my full list of roles is on my Work History page, and the longer story is in Life on Tour.