Entrepreneurs, spouse, temporary or established: this section paints the portraits of expatriates in New York.
Today, Luca and the Julliard School.
‘Cause when I’m scared I go
“I vividly remember that afternoon in 2018. I was walking up Fifth Avenue. I had passed Trump Tower, and it was when I sat down on a bench in Central Park that I took my phone. I had missed a call. The call I was waiting for.
“Luca, this is the Juilliard School. Call us back soon!
My application was accepted. I joined the Juilliard.
The Juilliard School is an institution. A conservatory. Within its walls, actors like Robin Williams and Kevin Spacey have been trained. Dancers, choreographers, composers. Pina Bausch, Philip Glass… and me.
I was born to a French father and an Italian mother. My grandmother always loved to sing. I lived all my childhood in the countryside.
From the United States, I knew California and Disneyland in Orlando, where I had worked for two months. A hell of a slap for a child from Yvelines. I wanted to be an actor. I had done the conservatory of Versailles and the Simon course in Paris.
In 2014, while I was watching a fascinating documentary on the Juilliard School on Arte, my mother asked me: “Why don’t you apply? » I don’t believe it at all but I still send the two requested videos. One in French and two others in English. I’m selected for a series of auditions in New York.
I have always had a sports mentality. I never said to myself, “What if it doesn’t work? “I always wanted to be the best in everything I did because the second is the loser. Finally, I am one of the students authorized to pass the last hearings in New York. We are 50. They will keep 18. We spend three days in total immersion, with the teachers. 9am-10pm. We do not know at all on what criterion we are evaluated. I am not restrained.
I then moved to London. I don’t have a job. I manage. I go to castings, shoot in a short film in Budapest.
A few years later, I had completely abandoned the Juilliard project when a friend told me about it. Why not try again? The first time, I did everything to make them love me. Not this time. I just wanted to enjoy the present moment, not to project myself, to be happy to be there. I again pass a series of auditions and I am taken.
I leave London for New York and launch an online kitty to finance my return. I choose to write my story in the form of a letter addressed to my former self. A letter that tells everything I’ve learned and that you always have to go where it’s most scary. I receive many donations, from my relatives but also from strangers, like this actress from the Comédie Française.
My first year is a revelation. The work is very physical, very centered on the body, on how to stand, how to move. Actors do a lot of research on the character they play. Where is he from ? What is his story ? The French language is so rich that you use your body less. We are less in preparation and perhaps more in poetry and freedom. At the Juilliard, you learn to embody a role and how you prepare for it.
Financially, the school helps me with a scholarship system that pays for my rent and my trips. I have priority because a foreigner. The only French in the drama section.
The repertoire is essentially American: Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Tennessee William, August Wilson. I tried to get a French author, Florian Zeller, to play, but it didn’t work. We need rooms likely to occupy the eighteen students. Creations that “sell” us to film and theater professionals.
Now that I have graduated, that I have all the “Juilliard” tools, I would like to regain my former freedom, my ability to question things, to continue to be curious and above all to be myself, which is never easy but always the most important.
The visa countdown has begun. I have little time to find roles, a company. Otherwise I would have to leave the country, for France, perhaps. Or Italy. However, I still remain confident.
The fear is still there and that’s a good sign. Because as soon as I’m scared, I go.”
