Graduation.

I came to the UK after I finished my studies in Chisinau. It was a spontaneous decision as I wanted to do an acting degree in ‘the place’ (London) that kept haunting my dreams.

I still remember getting accepted into the Staffordshire University (which is almost 300km from London) and leaving behind everything I was so used to in order to make a childish dream come true. I felt alienated from each one of my classmates and people in general, my English was quite broken, I was shy, had too much free time on my hands, couldn’t cook and was quite bad at making friends. I was scared, yet there was something out there, calling, so I decided to apply for drama schools again. For your personal knowledge, they usually accept 16 people per course.

I kept traveling back and forth, during most of my weekends, from Stoke-on-Trent to London, just to try my luck into getting where I wanted to be. I remember getting lost so many times in this jungle of a city, delivering my monologues while being a chicken or a Nazi, spending my days alone near Thames and hoping. I kept on dreaming. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream. To live hoping that one day you’ll make it.

I finally got accepted into East 15 Acting School, Cert HE course, which is just one year of training before applying again to get a ‘proper’ degree. It wasn’t what I wanted but sometimes you just have to take every drop of courage that you have and just go for it. Eventually, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

It was still far away from London. Southend-on-Sea swallowed into its seashore not only the mesmerising sunsets, but also me. Later that year, being accepted into BA Acting (International), in London, I realised that I had lost myself somewhere on the way. I had the prize in my hands, yet there was nothing to be happy about. I stepped through the gates of East 15 and acknowledged, for the first time, that i had an enormous hole eating me from the inside. I was lonely. There were always two women, at least, inside of me: one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, dance like there is no tomorrow, wild and spontaneous, masking her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest…

During my first year it got worse and I wanted to drop everything, yet I found people that made me realise that all of us grow in different dimensions, unevenly. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, but it fixes us all, eventually. I understood that we are made up of layers, cells, constellations. All of us. Through their love, I finally realised that I should love and accept myself. I started to create, write, play, act, exist, live, love, give, take and simply be. I made friends, fell in love (deeply and genuinely), wrote a play, got to be f*cking Hamlet (ahhh!) and explored myself.

Five years later I finally graduated. YAY! And I also signed with HARVEY STEIN ASSOCIATES at the end of this May, so double or even triple YAY!

Just a little reminder: Sometimes we should be a little proud of ourselves, because when we look back at things, they actually matter.

More pictures:
EAST 15 Acting School
HAMLET
AMISSA ALMA