Alice Vilanculo wants to bring Brazilian culture to British stages.
The award-winning actor on the National Youth Theatre, new show Splintered, and her plan to produce plays in Portuguese.
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Award-winning actor Alice Vilanculo has just got back from a three-and-a-half-month trip travelling around Mexico. It was necessary, she says, after the professional difficulties of the last two years.
“I needed to get out of the UK,” Vilanculo says. “I needed to channel other cultures and other languages, and to put stuff into perspective, and figure out what I am really passionate about. I realised I am passionate about the Portuguese language. I realised I want to make my own work and tell the stories that matter to me.”
Born in Portugal in 1993 to a Brazilian mum and a Mozambican dad, Vilanculo moved to the UK with her mum when she was four years old, growing up amid south London’s Portuguese and Brazilian community. It was at primary school that she first found her passion for performance, but it was not until she was in her late teens that she started thinking seriously about becoming an actor.
“We all did something at our year six graduation ceremony thing, and I sang a Whitney Houston song,” Vilanculo remembers. “That was the first thing I’d done on stage. That was when I caught the bug, but I couldn’t pursue it as a teenager because I had to work. I worked as a cleaner from a very young age, and drama school was just never part of the conversation.”
In 2013, Vilanculo took part in a community programme run by the Young Vic. Then, she was told about Playing Up, the National Youth Theatre’s free, nine-month course for 19–24-year-olds not in employment, education or training, and – after backing out of several auditions due to nerves – was accepted onto it in 2016. A year later, and she joined NYT’s REP company.
“It was intense,” Vilanculo remembers. “I had a job in a bar and got home at one o’clock in the morning, then had to be warming up, ready to rehearse at nine o’clock. I’m happy I took the route that I did, though.”
“Obviously there are things you experience at drama school that I would love to have experienced, but I think NYT suited me,” she continues. “Drama school is all about stripping away your originality and individuality, but NYT is much more about learning on the job, and I know that is how I learn best.”
“I am Alice, stood on stage. I am my height, my body shape, my skin, and I don’t want to neglect or ignore any of that…”
Vilanculo appeared in several shows as a member of NYT’s REP company, including starring as Queen Victoria in Ned Bennett’s production of Josh Azouz’s historical comedy Victoria’s Knickers. After leaving, she landed a part in Ian Rickson’s 2019 West End staging of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, alongside Tom Burke and Hayley Attwell, which she swiftly followed with a run at the Edinburgh Fringe in Marika McKennell’s school-set play E8 – a performance that earned her one of The Stage’s Edinburgh Awards.
Along the way – perhaps, she wonders, because of the type of training she did at NYT – Vilanculo developed a style of acting that is instinctive and authentic. Whether doing comedy like Victoria’s Knickers, or drama like E8, or audio work like McKennell’s Cunch or Ava Wong Davies’ Rime of the Second Sister, she has a disarmingly blunt and blithe delivery that can draw both laughs and tears.
“Of course, I prioritise the character and try to step into their shoes,” she says of her approach to acting. “At the same time, though, I am Alice, stood on stage. I am my height, my body shape, my skin, and I don’t want to neglect or ignore any of that.”
Now, recently returned from Mexico, Vilanculo is rehearsing for Splintered, which runs at the Soho Theatre next week, after successful stints at in Edinburgh and at VAULT Festival. Written and directed by Emily Aboud, and produced by Lagahoo Productions, it is a “part-play, part-cabaret”, says Vilanculo, and definitely the sort of story she wants to be telling.
“It’s about the relationship between Caribbean culture and the LGBT community, and being queer in Trinidad and Tobago, where LGBT people face a lot of oppression,” she explains. “Emily is Trinidadian, and the show is based on interviews she did with LGBT people over there. It’s about lots of stuff – slavery, colonialism, the French, the Spanish, and Carnival, too – and it’s definitely in the realm of stuff I want to do more of.”
Beyond Splintered, Vilanculo has another acting job lined up – an exciting one that hasn’t been announced yet – and is planning on writing and producing her own work, based on her own experiences.
“I’ve started writing,” she says. “We’ll see where it goes. I want to write a story that is somewhat autobiographical, and has Brazilian culture right at the fore. I feel like, both on stage and on screen, Latin America doesn’t really get much of a look in, and I want to change that.”
What do you want to do?
I have a five-year plan. I want to keep acting in stories that matter to me, and I want to write and produce my own work, centred on Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language. In general, I just want more autonomy.
What support do you need to get there?
Space and time and knowledge and guidance. I want someone to mentor me in how to structure a story, and how to get it produced, and where to produce it, whether that is on stage or screen. I think I would really benefit from being part of some sort of writers’ group.
How can people find out more about you?
I like to keep my private life private, but I have a website, where people can find out about all my past and upcoming stuff. And they can come see me in Splintered at the Soho Theatre from next week.
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Fergus Morgan