Life – particularly in the arts – can take some wild and wonderful turns.
So it is with Semiahmoo Peninsula born-and-raised theatre and film actress Pamela Torres, a student at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, all set to star in her off-Broadway debut opening May 18.
Torres appears in Stop Kiss, a 1999 comedy-drama by New York playwright, Diana Son, which runs until May 21 at Theatre For The New City’s Cabaret Theatre.
But she freely admits her involvement in the production – and her emergence as a dramatic actress – would have seemed a very unlikely development for anyone who knew her at the time she graduated from Earl Marriott Secondary in 2011.
She discovered her love of acting only after she got involved in the Vancouver film industry as a production assistant, she explained – which led indirectly to a scholarship to study in New York.
Co-produced by Torres and her co-star Luisa Galatti, Stop Kiss is described in their press release as “the story of Sara and Callie, two women who meet in New York City and form an unlikely bond that quickly blossoms into a beautiful romance.”
Callie is a traffic reporter who, after a decade in New York, knows her way around town, while Sara has only recently moved from St. Louis to accept a teaching fellowship at an elementary school in the Bronx.
As they become friends, discovering shared interests, and comparing experiences with boyfriends, they begin to experience – if not openly acknowledge – a mutual attraction.
Amping up the powerful drama of the story – told in non-linear fashion – is the fact that Torres’ character, Sara, becomes the victim of a hate crime which leaves her in a coma.
But, by travelling back and forth in time, the play allows the audience to become emotionally invested in the lives of the characters, and their former partners, in a way that is ultimately uplifting.
“It’s a love story,” Torres explained. “There are other themes, but above all it’s a really fun love story.”
The dramatic possibilities of Stop Kiss resonated with Torres and Galatti – also a Strasberg colleague – and they began investigating the logistics of presenting a revival, she said.
“The two of us decided we would put it on ourselves – although I don’t think we knew just how challenging that would be,” Torres.
Fortunately help from many sources – including other theatre companies and a crowd-funding campaign – allowed their passion project to become a reality.
Highly-respected director Suzanne DiDonna, one of Torres’ Strasberg mentors, agreed to helm the limited-run production, which also received a lot of help and support from the institute, Torres said – including providing all-important rehearsal space.
“It gathered a momentum,” she said. “All of a sudden we had this really huge director doing it – and an awesome cast.”
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Ironically, although Torres, who was born at Peace Arch Hospital, attended White Rock Elementary’s Fine Arts program, and graduated from a high school well-known for its theatre program and productions, her theatre talents were well under the radar during her school years – she was mainly cast in crowd or chorus roles and was usually a behind-the-scenes participant, she said.
“I loved Fine Arts at White Rock Elementary, and while I wasn’t the best high school student I loved anything to do with the fine arts,” she acknowledged, explaining that although she attended Semiahmoo Secondary she switched to Marriott for her senior year.
“I took photography at Earl Marriott, and I still also do photography – I take head shots for my actor friends, which helps them out,” she added.
“I always thought it would be photography that would be my way into the arts.”
While she has been a New York resident for the last year, she still has many highly supportive relatives in the White Rock-South Surrey who are cheering her on, she said.
And although her mother now lives in Vancouver, her father and brother live just on the Surrey side of North Bluff Road, and a large extended family is also still in the area, she added.
“There’s a lot of us around,” she laughed.
Getting into acting was the result of a series of serendipitous steps, she said – not any grand plan.
A brief involvement with a small production company opened her eyes to the possibilities of film, she said, and, subsequently, a family friend involved in the industry was able to get her a job as a production assistant on Vancouver movie sets.
“My whole world changed,” she said, adding that it set her on a new path – pursuing acting as a career.
“It was a happy accident of circumstances that changed my life – it seems that my life has worked out that way.”
The life of a P.A. would not, on the face of it, seem a way into the acting profession.
“As a P.A. on big-budget films, I was literally sweeping up cigarette butts at first,” she said. “Luckily, I’m quite chatty – I’m a people person – so I ended up getting promoted to assisting people higher up in the business, including a handful of very successful actors.”
One of these was actor-producer-director Vincent D’Onofrio (Jurassic World, The Cell, Men In Black, Full Metal Jacket) who studied at the Actors’ Studio and the American Stanislavski Theatre and made his Broadway debut in 1984.
He also teaches and sponsors a scholarship at the Strasberg institute – named for the legendary acting teacher who worked with such stars as Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Geraldine Page and Eli Wallach.
“He became my acting mentor,” Torres said, adding that she traces her interest in acting to the example set by D’Onofrio – long considered an ‘actor’s actor’ in the business for his intensity, presence, and versatility.
“He was teaching a class on method acting in Vancouver and invited me to sit in on it. I was so moved by the talented people in that room– they were incredible. I’d never seen anything that jumped out at me and pulled at my heart strings that way. I said ‘I think I want to do this.’”
After a year and a half of classes at Vancouver’s Rail Town Acting Studio, she felt ready to apply for the D’Onofrio scholarship to the Strasberg institute, she said – and won it.
“I’m the kind of person that, when I know what I want, I don’t stop until I get it,” she said.
What she found at the Strasberg institute, she said, was a safe space to develop as an actor and grow as a human being.
“I have to give (the institute) so much credit,” she said. “They welcomed me with open arms. It’s a small group, but it’s amazing what they do – they have students from all over the world.”
As an advocate of The Method, she hopes to eventually audition for the Actors Studio, she said. In the meantime, she’s cutting her teeth on any suitable acting work that comes her way – including a number of independent film projects.
“Method acting is known for many things, but it lends itself to a naturalistic style of performance,” she noted.
“It’s coming from within you – it’s internal, not just about being loud or big. We actually get a lot of training in technique – I’ve taken classes in voice production and classes in singing, for example.
“But what it does allow you to do is go to places in your life that fuel your performance in the scene,” she said.
alex.browne@peacearchnews.com
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