Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Masurkevitch

Hi Michael, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

I was five years old when I fell in love with acting.
My uncle, Patrick Masurkevitch, and my aunt Charlotte Moore, are actors. My uncle was playing Billy Bones in Treasure Island, and pulled some strings to have me chosen as one of the kids who got to come on stage as one of the ‘Pirate Crew.’ I yarr’d my heart out. From then on, I knew I wanted to either be an actor, or a pirate. In some circles I’m actually currently known as Pirate Mike, because of a web series I did with some friends by that title where I played a depressed addicted failed actor dressing as a pirate for parties, so arguably I’m working on both. But the ride, to both, has been no straight sailing.

In school I was awkward and shy, and uncomfortable in my own skin. Only my closest friends knew me as a wild, creative, singing songwriting poet-weirdo. In grade 10 I came out as myself to the world – tearing off my tearaway pants to reveal funny pyjamas in class presentations and hosting passive protests. In grade 12, my girlfriend and I had a baby. Looking back, the birth of my son is the best thing that ever happened to me. At the time, it was – to say the least – stressful.
I was convinced that I couldn’t follow my dreams and needed a real job. So I did the normal thing, for my suburban upbringing – pursuing a bachelor (in Environtmental Studies) working co-op jobs, and landing in a call centre. After a few years of depressed survival, hating my job and internally resenting myself and even my innocent child, the city bus changed and I started biking to work – and the excercise and mental processing time changed my life. I realized that because my son and I were still living with my parents, allowing me to save some cash, I actually could go part-time and follow my dreams.

I began acting thinking that as a funny, charming and creative guy who did lots of community theatre and made videos for every highschool project, I would be ‘naturally talented.’ It took almost a year of bad acting and very little paid gigs before I happened on my first real acting class – the kind that breaks you down to your basic humanity, to the wellspring of human love and empathy from which all art must come, and forces you to hold as much of it as you can carry and crawl back up to the light of consciousness. It was taught by the director of the Tunisian National Theatre, Fadhel Jiabi, at MT Space theatre in Kitchener – run by the amazing Majdi Boumatter, a visionary who left this world too soon, but left it a better place. When the class was over, I saw how much depth and craft and catharsis and pain actually goes in to the craft – and how little I knew about it.
That was the first time I almost gave up on acting, when I realized how much work there is to it, how bad at it I was, and how fame and fortune are so elusive. But the intensity and beauty of the moments where real emotions and real character flowed through me were so intoxicating that I had to keep going.

Since then, I like to have a ‘healthy emotional crisis’ at least once a year. Sometimes my mindset and skill and luck are all resonating on the same wavelength, and the gigs come easily and fill me with joy and allow me to pour my love and my soul into every moment between ‘action’ and ‘cut.’ Sometimes, my inner child or emotional body has things to heal and process, and needs the space to do it, and lets me know this by putting me through months of rejection from auditions, financial instability, and the self-doubt and worry that it needs me to process. When that happens, I’m writing my own work, or making zero-budget projects with my friends, to have that rush of being fully in character.

Acting has forced me to face my sense of self worth and my entitlement, and make deep connections with my emotions and those of others, countless times. It has made me a better person. Meditation has helped even more, and helped my acting in turn. I still have issues, and I am still healing them, but the healing process – in all of it’s pain and glory – has become a deeply fulfilling process, and one that sings in harmony with my creative efforts, and my joyous gratitude to get to continue to live with my son – still in the home of my wonderful, generous and kind parents – so that I can be his dad while still following my dreams. When I write, it’s like acting but in several different characters at once, and having their emotions live through my fingers on the keyboard instead of my own body. When I write songs, it’s letting my own emotions speak but through music instead of characters. The more I meditate and allow myself time for yoga, martial arts, and time alone in nature, the better of an actor, writer, singer, song-writer, father and son I find myself able to be.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

The funny thing is, after years of meditation and growing self awareness, all of the obstacles I’ve ever faced turn out to have been parts of me helping me learn what parts of my inner self need love.

That being said, did I mention that I have a bi-annual crisis of self doubt under the crushing weight of rejection and financial instability?
As one does.

My second year of acting, I was starting to get better – but still wasn’t booking any acting gigs with good paycheques. This time, not because of skill (although I’m still improving and always will be) – but the weirdest things would happen that brought the results of the audition out of hands. One time, I showed up to Toronto in my dirty old sweatpants that I use for driving and forest-meditations, and realized I had left my pants – for the audition of a Doctor role – behind in Kitchener. I spent my hour before the audition at a thrift store finding pants, the hour I had meant to spend learning lines, and showed up with no idea what I was doing.
At that point I realized, hey, this might actually be self sabotage.
Fortunately, around that time, a series of breakups had left me with the techniques of meditation and self awareness, so I went inwards and spent some time alone trying to still my mind enough to ask it, what the heck it was doing.
Turns out, that my beautiful sweet vulnerable inner self, was terrified of rejection.
Because when I nailed an audition, and gave it my best, and they still picked someone else? It would hurt.
And to motivate myself to be better, I would tear myself a new one internally, belittling and berating myself.
To the point that my subconscious was doing things to make sure I couldn’t possibly actually do my best, so that when I didn’t book, it wasn’t about my performance ability – which I had tied to my dreams, and my sense of self worth.

That was when I started paying attention to my inner self-talk. And that helped a lot. Motivating myself with anger and bullying, was making it impossible to allow the creative flow. Turns out the part of me doing that was just scared, and needed a hug. A lot of hugs. A few long baths, a lot of tears, and ultimately – a gradual convincing that we are worthy for who we are, not for our successes, so that I could just enjoy the journey of auditions instead of putting pressure on the results.

The rejection and financial instability still get me down regularly. Sometimes it’s great, and in one month I’ll book two commercials and a narrative role, or be brought to somewhere cool like Owen Sound or Parry Sound to film a feature. Sometimes it feels like, something in my energy is holding me back. Usually the way forwards is a combination of deep self exploration to find the parts holding me back, and then giving a “fine whatever if it doesn’t work out I’ll get a real job for a while” letting go of the results I want.
I think it’s because, the parts of me that desire things – things like being a good dad and having my dreams work out and my family be happy – want them so badly they start getting down on themselves, putting pressure on themselves, holding too tightly to the results. And if you go into an audition trying to look happy to get the part – you look like someone trying to look happy. One must release ones’ own emotions to fully channel the character, and that’s a lot of letting go.
And that letting go, hurts so good, and opens so much creative freedom.

I am deeply honoured to get to pursue this, and to have the passion driving me to keep going against those odds. And I’m very grateful to have gotten some really fun opportunities to do the work that I love, and show off my training in some really fun projects.
So the obstacles never stop until I let them go – because they come from me. And the passion, drive and love of what I do, don’t stop either, because they also come from me. And I’m learning to let them flow.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

I absolutely love to play normal, grounded dudes who are forced to encounter, face and process extraordinary circumstances, to rise up as a hero or fall into darkness and villany. Of course, that’s pretty broad strokes…

In “Snow Blinded” (which I also co-produced) I played a charming, working-class every-man who descends into depraved violent madness.
In “Jim’s Room” (which I also wrote and co-produced) I played a lonely homeless man with a good heart under his addictions, offered a job only to be trapped by a sadistic kidnapper.
In “Regicide” I played the husband of the lead, who starts out as a huge arrogant dick, but then you find out in the end about the pain it comes from, and he redeems himself to save his wife.
In “The Hyperborean” I play the husband of the lead who starts out as a sad, overly-sincere, trying-too-hard loser, is given a chance to prove himself, has it taken away, and descends into greed and violence.
In “Beyond the Veil” I played a racist misogynist drug-addicted cab driver living in his parent’s basement, forced to confront his beliefs on a wild ride with a female Muslim passenger.
In “The Last Anniversary” I played a weirdo hippie who dresses in silk robes, rubs snow on his body, talks about spiritual topics (and all three of those were written based on me) but has been running from deeply repressed emotions that he must face, or die.

And those are just the feature films, in commercials I’ve played as a guy who wears a shark costume and loves to place bets, a boring office worker, a cynical pizza-guy, a loser on a date, an amateur lion tamer, a dad trying to impress his teenager with pancakes, and the lead singer of a rock-band obsessed with dental hygiene. To name a few.
In shorts and web series… A vampire twice, a zombie who falls in love, a medieval warlord, a gangster, a serial killer, the victim of a snuff film, a closeted homosexual cheating on his wife with a man, a detective, an FBI agent dating the daughter of an international art thief, a reformed mafia-killer on the run… and so forth.

That’s part of what I love – the variety. No two roles or characters are the same. Every day, every audition, every story or scene of a story that play in or I write, is unique.

In both my acting and my writing – and even my music – I think my defining quality is empathy. Story is about love, because every character – even the darkest villain – feels emotion, and every emotion – even the most tortured – comes from that seed of basic humanity, love.

I love humans – every one that I meet. And at parties, I get people talking and hear life stories, and I go out with friends and we talk about deep stuff- because I love humans, and our feelings and stories.

When I’m writing, or developing a characters’ backstory (emotional landscaping, I call it), I’m channelling people’s stories and emotions, and my own.
When I’m writing a character, or playing in character on camera, I’m living in and feeling those emotions.
And when people listen to my music or watch my acting, or read my writing, I’m sharing those emotions – that pain and joy and love and worry and insecurity and anger and catharsis, all of it – with other humans, in the hopes that they will have, in my work, a space to feel emotions of their own.

And there’s nothing like it.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?

As a child, I was weird.

I would write songs, and sing them for my friends or their parents. My childhood best friend’s mother still describes the time I started telling them at the dinner table about a dream, that got more and more weird, until she began to wonder at what point I had left describing the dream and just entered the most surreal fantasy involving being on another planet with aliens.

I definitely had some self worth issues. I couldn’t take a compliment, my best friend had to train me to say ‘thank you’ instead of brushing it off. He and I would play chess, and I would put up a good fight but still lose, and then I would cry, and then he’d be like ‘are you ok’ and my tears would turn into hysterical laughter. He was a long suffering, and most excellent and generous friend. Once my parents couldn’t get me from under a table because I was “feeling flat and brown today.” I felt things deeply.

I also loved attention. Apparently when i was five I dressed in my mother’s clothing and beads and sunglasses to give my aunts and uncles a concert.

My father loves camping and fishing and canoeing and hiking, so I spend a lot of time in nature. I would talk to the trees, and sing to them, and get ridiculously mad at kids who killed bugs instead of taking them outside. Except for that one time I sadistically and methodically killed dozens of ants in the house, feeling like some sort of avenging force of darkness. After which, I prayed for forgiveness with tears running down my face. I used to hide in this one set of bushes wearing a poncho and rubber gloves pretending to be a ghost, and then drew pictures of all of my ghostly friends.

My sister and I were encouraged to go play outside by parents who were tired of fighting over television, so I would make up imaginary friends for her and I to play with, and we would interact with our friends in elaborate worlds. Sometimes our imaginary friends would get into fights with each other, and we would have to break them up. Other times, our imaginary friends would watch as my sister and I fought with each other. This tendency to live with real emotions in imaginary circumstances is probably still part of my life as an actor.

At the age of five my family watched the Ninja Turtle movies, and I was hooked, begging my parents to let me find a dojo and become a ninja, or at least inject myself with Ooze to become a mutant turtle. When I was eight, a karate dojo opened up near our house, and I have enjoyed the spiritual-physical connection of martial arts ever since.

When I was in grade 10 I was conservative and Christian, awkward in public, hiding my sensitive creativity from my highschool, walking with slumped shoulders, afraid of talking to girls except about chemistry or Shakespeare. My best friend – same guy, great guy – took me aside and said “Michael, the people who love you – they’re gonna love you because you are you, so why not just be yourself? And the people who don’t like the things you do when you are being yourself, are the people who won’t like you anyway – so why give a **** about them, why not just be yourself?”

The sun came out that day.
I came out, too, with a floral vengeance, chatting up strangers, singing in the hallways, and wearing my old hand-me-down tearaway pants over funny boxers and pyjama pants to rip them off in the halls or class presentations. I joined the drama class, rekindled my five-year-old’s dream of acting, started dating, and then before I turned 18 was a father. That brought a whole new world of stresses and pressures – and ultimately, love.

And now, I get to have a relationship with my amazing son, who is an adult and still my pride and joy, while still getting to feel things deeply and be showy and dress up and play with imaginary friends in my writing or on camera. And I am so, so grateful for what this journey has allowed me to experience.

Pricing:

• I’ve made $6K from a single (US National) commercial, $2K from a day of acting on a tv-show, $400 from an internal commercial, and from $400/day to $50/day for narrative stuff. I also sometimes work with friends for free, or co-produce my own work (meaning I’m literally paying to do my job) but that’s what happens when you love your craft this much.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7727960/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/actor.michael/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.masurkevitch.5
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQOlRJ-vO6q2mGtJl7msc7g
• Other: https://borrowedthoughts.hearnow.com/

Image Credits

Still Frame (eyes) from Terra Joy Northcott’s “The Supreme Gentleman”
Headshot by Youssef Abdelmalak
Druid Photoshoot by Jessica Chin King
Still Frame (with the bottle) from Jesse Thomas Cook’s “The Hyperborean”
“Pirate Mike” Poster from Director Brian Lockyer
“Beyond the Veil” Poster from Pariovita Films and Director Manish Ragunath
“Decompress” album cover, Borrowed Thoughts – taken by Brian Lockyer
Still Frame (blood and tree) from 9983 Films’ “Snow Blinded”
Frame Grab from Charles Whals’ “Odds Shark” commercial spot
BDSM photoshoot from Kyles Wilkes’ “Bad Filmmaker” short film
“Tsuike” promotional photo for Borrowed Thoughts music, taken by Zachary King