We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Giulia Eve Flores. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Giulia below.
Giulia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I believe some things are in our blood, in our DNA. They live as inevitable, unsuppressable instincts in our hearts, and they flower out of us as simply and as naturally as blossoms bloom in springtime. I don’t remember ever being taught or encouraged to devise, write, or perform as a child. I just did. It was the ultimate form of play for me, always. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of writing, directing and performing in my own plays. Initially, these pieces were inspired by Harry Potter (age 9) and Saved by the Bell (age 11), but quickly, I delved into more psychologically excavating topics like suffering domestic abuse (age 13), feeling guilt over losing a brother in the war (age 14), and questioning the meaning of life and what we’re all really doing here (age 17). Where I always found most naturalness, most fulfilment, and most stellar and surprising success with audiences, was when I created and performed original work; when I was the Actor-Creator, the full Storyteller embodied.
I grew up spending almost every Saturday at the Amsterdam Youth Theatre school, playing, exploring, delighting and obsessing over my craft. The true catalyst for me, however, happened while attending a summer intensive at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London when I was 17. Being immersed at, arguably, the best acting school in the world and feeling myself thrive in this setting, awakened my desire for Craft at Its Finest. A year later, I found myself at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama for a One-Year Foundation Degree in Acting.
For my Bachelor’s, I opted for a pioneering company called Fourth Monkey Theatre Company and their (now) flagship BA (Hons) Two-Year Accelerated Acting Degree. As much as I adored the classics and classical training, the natural born innovator in me, the side of me that learns best on its feet, in the action, in the thick of it, wanted to learn in a setting that was revolutionising actor training. I wanted to be thrown into it, I wanted to learn live on stage, not hidden in the back of a stuffy classroom. “Fourth Monkey” called forward the “actor-creator”; the well-rounded, empowered performer-producer capable of creating deeply visceral, alive, bold, relevant and original work. The training was intensive, demanding, multidisciplinary, varied, international and multicultural. It asked all of me and allowed very little time off in two years, as summers were also spent in training (the first summer doing a one-month Commedia Dell’Arte residency in Reggio Emilia, Italy, learning from a maestro, and the second summer performing at the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a month – in a 4-star, sell-out production). We performed classics such as Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (in which I played the lead, Zenocrate), brilliant and obscure surrealist pieces such as Lorca’s The Public, as well as evocative original productions that we, as a company, collaboratively devised. I emerged from the program a ready, full, versatile artist.
After graduation, I moved to New York City where I worked professionally, repped by both an agent and a manager. What I haven’t mentioned yet, and what had happened in parallel to my professional creative development over the years, was an undeniable spiritual awakening. At age 19 I had been unexpectedly struck by a life-changing mystical experience that defied all logic as I knew it. It completely transformed me and put me knee-deep on a path of self-realization. The spiritual path within me unfolded naturally over the years through a personal practice of meditation, but was propelled forwards, once again, by a revelatory ayahuasca experience at age 23, which worked like a chiropractor on the spinal structure of my life, and launched me to create a nonprofit theatre company called the Conscious Performers Collective soon after. This is where a lot of the pieces for me, artistically, started coming together.
For years I had felt and experienced the intimate and intricate connection between the spiritual and the creative; between the performance techniques that trigger the inspired peak performance flow state, and the internal technologies it accessed and activated in order to enter into this timeless realm of the free, of the flying, of the no-mind. These methods all sought to open up the Self so much so that Artistry Itself channeled through you; they drew upon other realities, upon higher, eternal truths and dimensions – all to be interpreted, distilled and expressed through the ultimate and most resonant instrument in existence: the canvas of the human body and voice. All to communicate the incommunicable; the inexpressible existential heartache of the human experience, and the unfathomable, kaleidoscopic beauty of its underpinnings; of the Spirit behind it all.
The most essential epiphany of my life was exactly this: The realization that one must be the Alchemist to be the true Artist. That one must be transliminal and live in the realm of the shamanic in order to “download” the templates for the next highest form of artistic expression (true Innovation), as well as to receive and translate the messages the aching collective psyche of humanity is asking for at each point in time. A true artist is the one that really listens to and speaks to the hearts of humanity, the one that functions as the voice and expression for what lingers unexpressed in the collective unconscious and brings it to light, the one that creates the most powerfully felt ripples across the ocean of consciousness that we all are, thereby transforming and evolving us all – for the better. We evolve one another through our art.
It was through these realizations and the culmination of all my skills that I started creating my own methodologies. Inspired by the psycho-physical performance techniques I had learned at drama school, I interwove them with spiritual practices and internal technologies, thereby creating a whole new landscape and pathway for artists to activate that which we all wish to activate, that which we all are truly meant to be: Deliberate Creators in the Playground of Consciousness. Conscious Actors in the Divine Play (Lila).
What obstacles stood in the way on my journey? Many. Most fundamentally, the unavoidable grapple of the young performer with their own self-worth. “Am I good enough/talented enough/X, Y and Z enough” etc. It was only because of the grace of my anchoring to the deeper dimension within me, my own soul, and the friendship I built with it, that I was able to rise and rise and rise again after countless setbacks, detours and rejections, which no one can avoid on a path like this and which truly are a part of the process. I sometimes felt like all doors were shut or that “it was all taking too long” or that my life and career were progressing in unexpected and nonlinear ways, so different from everyone else, that I couldn’t make any sense of it. It’s only in hindsight sometimes that we can connect all the dots and see the greater picture of how all these different threads of experiences become synthesized and woven into one beautiful, distinctly unique, and colorful tapestry that becomes your life and your artistry. And even now, I’m only just beginning.
Giulia Eve, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a professional actress, writer and producer, and a budding narrative filmmaker. My nonprofit work has been on the backburner since 2020, patiently awaiting its renaissance. Over the past three years, my focus has been elsewhere: I’ve co-produced ten series for Gaia TV, completed my debut feature screenplay, and freelanced as an actress. Only now am I returning my full focus, energy and passion back to my first love, which is writing, directing and performing in my own pieces.
My first project is a romantic comedy-drama I wrote, Becoming the One. It has elements of an on-the-road Himalayan adventure, with spirituality and humour, but is ultimately a deep and delightful exploration of the importance of “becoming the one”. Firstly, to ourselves (by becoming the hero in our own story), and then – through that radical act of self-love – to be able to “become the one” for someone else (romantically), and then ultimately of course, to become one with all things, as the movie dips its toes into Eastern advaita vedanta (nonduality), underscoring the eons-long traverse of “the One Being” split into trillions of us back towards its original unity consciousness. I’m currently securing funding for this project.
While pitching and getting this first film off the ground, I am also writing a second feature: a multi-narrative, hyperlink Magical Realist piece; a Love Letter to my Bolivian ancestry. It follows three characters across two different timelines, one in our modern day world and the other during the Conquistador time. The story is frameworked by authentic Bolivian history, but also – in Magical Realist style – explores themes of ancestry, mental time travel, the indigenous concept of “blood memory”, quantum biology and epigenetics, intergenerational trauma and healing, and ultimately, the unconquerable power of forgiveness.
What sets my work apart is tone. I write dramedies because I love them. Because life, to me, is both devastatingly tragic (when you really look at it) and thigh-slappingly hilarious. Because we are all such heroes and such anti-heroes. Because one moment we’re all howling laughing and the next minute we’re in uncontrollable sobs at the harshness and futility of it all. Life, to me, is a tragic comedy. A precious, delicate gift with infinite facets to be explored, and so many perspectives to be appreciated and integrated. I write Magical Realism because that’s how I experience and view the world. My life has definitely not always been easy, but also has never been short of magical. Being so deeply shamanic by nature, I experience life as someone who dances between realms – deeply invested and yet semi-non-attached, ready and willing to open eyes, minds and hearts to truly beautiful and enriching ways to perceive this holographic reality we all co-create. Hence, what I create and write is truly original and, I hope, has its finger on the pulse of evolution. I believe I have the ability to intuit “what’s next” when it comes to both content and form, and I look forward to the day I can share that with people around the world at the scale I imagine.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My mission is to inspire, uplift and empower people through the incomparable power of story, of cinema. To pioneer a “Cinema of Self-Realization” so to speak. That all sounds a little heavy and cult-ish perhaps for someone that just wants to create enchanting, delightful, moving and thought-provoking films, but there’s something to it. I think the mission is so innate to who I am and what flows out of me that I don’t sit down to create according to “guidelines of a mission”. It happens organically, of its own accord, by virtue of the vision I’ve held in my heart for as long as I can remember. So, yes, beyond the pure childlike joy I experience when I’m crafting and/or performing new stories, I am most definitely driven by a greater vision and mission:
I want to create cinematic worlds that feel good. Maybe not all the time or throughout the whole Hero’s Journey, but ultimately, I want people to walk away from my movies and projects standing more upright within themselves. Most media nowadays has both obvious and subliminal messaging that disempowers people constantly, and movies are no exception. This happens through story, through casting choices, through subject matter; by projecting a facade of impossible standards and creating distance between the audience and who and what is on the screen, by selling ways of thinking and being that degrade our innate worth and humanity, and that erode our relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the greater mystery of life.
If audience members walk away from a piece of art not moved to the core by the specifics of a human experience, and they somehow feel slightly more down, slightly more deflated, slightly more disempowered, slightly more disconnected from their truth, their essence, their beauty, their worth, their soul, then, to me, that is not art. Art, to me, is a portal into the meaning of it all, into ourselves, into Love in all its capacity. Art isn’t the subtle-and-almost-imperceptible-yet-somehow-widely-accepted bombardment of “you, your life, your relationship, your [fill in the blank] are not good enough”. It’s this type of “programming” that feeds on a crazed and dazed society that never feels good enough, so we can be more susceptible to buying products and services we don’t need to “patch ourselves up” and fill the God-sized hole within, which could never be filled by the fluff that lies on the surface of life anyway, but only by the substance that lives deep within.
My mission embraces creating the subconscious templates – all hidden within a wonderful story, of course – that seamlessly and invisibly inspire our incredible, borderline-miraculous human potential, even in the most dire of circumstances. My stories will always explore the indomitable power of the human spirit and end in triumph, even when heavily tinged by inevitable tragedy. They will also always celebrate the whole spectrum of the human experience, and invite, expose and celebrate the raw, the real, the honest, the intimate, the flaws, the perfection in the imperfections. I want to make movies that love hard on our common humanity, without leaving anyone out, while also gently pointing us towards our common divinity and the greater cosmic context within which we all exist. I want to make movies where people come out highly entertained and enthralled and not even fully sure perhaps why they have more of a pep in their step, why they feel better about themselves, their prospects, their relationships, their potential, but somehow, they do. That, to me, is a Cinema of Self-Realization.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The beauty of being an artist for me is born from being constantly in tune and in expression of our most fundamental nature as human beings: our creativity. The ability to open my mind, soften my heart, and allow the floodgates of consciousness to open up and fill me with inspiration, concepts, and ideas, is an utterly priceless way of being that I wish for everyone and which I would never give up.
Being an artist calls me forward constantly into my leading edge power, where I can create things that never existed before, where I can create beauty where others only see ugliness, where I can resurrect the disowned parts of ourselves so we can all heal from our collectively shared wounds. We hold the honour and privilege as artists to hold up a mirror – to ourselves, to society – to show us who we are. And most importantly, who we are capable of becoming. The main way we do that is through emotion. Emotion is the way in which we, humans, “download” information at a cellular level; it’s how we experience meaning, breakthrough, revelation. Emotion is the sacred gateway for us to experience our truth, and it, quite literally, changes our DNA. DNA has now been scientifically proven to function as fractal antennas that respond and adapt to emotion, and so, emotion fundamentally transforms who we are at a genetic level. If we can experience healing catharsis; a heightened emotional release which triggers a sudden expansion of awareness, a peak experience of higher consciousness that elevates us to a new level of understanding and leaves us feeling “high”, we are literally rewiring ourselves for the better. Who wouldn’t want to create, curate and share that as a gift to humanity?
For me, being able to live in a way that invites so much openness, receptivity, playfulness and expressiveness from me, where I may fetch oracular messages from the unseen realms and bring them, translated into art, to this world for the highest good of all, encompasses the function of both the Shaman and the Artist. It points back to a time where this was all one role; the role of the Sacred Storyteller around the fire, communing with the celestial heavens and channeling and expressing through myth and archetype the journey of the soul we are all on, extending their hand out to the rest of the tribe to reassure them, and to affirm that, yes indeed, we are all in this together. That is how I view my role in this world, and that’s why I’m so grateful to be an artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.giuliaeveflores.com
- Instagram: @giuliaeveflores
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giulia-eve-flores-985243202/
Image Credits
Laura Mariani, Joshua Dorfman, Jon Logan, Billy Rood