Silvia Petrelli

“It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career”. Cate Blanchett.

 

I could say that acting is my life, because it is. I have been involved in theatre since I was eight years old. I have always needed to be part of something that would allow me to develop my creativity and my ambition to learn. In this quest, I’ve practiced karate for fifteen years, where I learned firstly that if you do not listen to your partner you are lost, and, secondly, just how important the attributes of discipline and perseverance really are. During part of this period I also played the piano, as I wanted to learn about music and how to express myself through it. In the last three years, I have also been trained in contemporary dance and lyrical jazz. I felt the need to communicate without words, using only my body. With this, the horizon of physical theatre and the importance of knowing how the human body works —biomechanically speaking— was opened to me. But, I believe the most important thing for me is that being an actress allows me to get closer to, value, and better understand the human condition, because as an artist, or as the member of an audience, we can sit there and experience someone else’s journey; we witness it and It is through empathy, a profoundly and immutably human emotional capacity that I believe we can truly come to see and understand both ourselves and others more deeply.

 

I believe that every generation finds a kind of comfort in storytelling, I think that storytelling has a certain medicinal quality that helps us understand what we are experiencing or have experienced throughout our lives; and that is what I want to do with my work. I want to be part of projects that permit the audience —and myself— to realise the underlying connection and common values that we can share with those whose lives are so different to our own. I want to be part of projects that help us understand that we are not so different from each other. I want us to leave a play, or a movie, reflecting on what surrounds us and to leave being more honest and better people than when we entered. My hope is that through my work, I can help people to challenge their own biases, to be more reflective, more open to and aware of their surroundings and others.

 

Acting, art in general, enriches you and makes you humble and honest as a human being.

I am here, because I want to be a better actress, and to face new challenges. I want to learn more about this wonderful career and the people who are part of it, because I believe that constantly studying and working with different people, who have different points of view, is how you learn the most and how you best develop your skills as a creative artist. And I want to do it here, with you, because I want to dedicate myself to do this for the rest of my life.