Manjinder Virk⎪Actor/Director

Manjinder Virk is an actor, writer and director. As an actor she can currently be seen on The Beast Must Die with Jared Harris and Cush Jumbo on Britbox, and is shooting Jed Mercurio’s Trigger Point for ITV. On film she stars in the documentary The Arbor, for which she received acting nominations from the BFI and British Independent Film Awards. As a writer director one of her works, a short film Out of Darkness won Best of Fest award at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in 2013.

In this, the first episode of season 3, host Emma Lister and Manjinder discuss how her dance training enriches her acting, why she feels it’s important to be creative without judgement and what life event inspired her award winning short film.

Manjinder’s interview is another link in our ‘artist chain’ after having been nominated by Rhoda Ofori-Attah in season 1!


Watch Manjinder's film Out of Darkness HERE

Manjinder's Instagram:  @manjinder23

Twitter: manjinder_virk

The 3 Questions...

Was there a piece of art that changed everything?
Derervo, clown troupe

Is there a piece of art that you didn’t love, but you respect or think has value?
Comedy as a genre

Who should we check out that we may not know about?
Artists and writers:  Amber Lone, Sue Vincent, Rhiannon Tisse

Transcript

INTRO MUSIC PLAYS 

Movers shakers makers, what makes creative people tick and how do they find a developed their inspiration? Welcome to the podcast that draws back the curtain on the inventive mind and its artistic process I'm Emma Lister... 

EMMA LISTER 

Manjinder Virk is a writer, director and actor one of a small handful of actors chosen for BAFTA’s Elevate program. As an actor she’s appeared on TV in Brtiz, Skins, a reoccurring role in Midsommer Murders and can currently be seen on The Beast Must Die with Jared Harris and Cush Jumbo on Britbox, and is shooting Jed Mercurio’s Trigger Point for and ITV with Vicky McClure. On film she stars in the documentary The Arbor, for which she received acting nominations from the BFI and British Independent Film Awards….more on that in our chat. As a writer director one of her works, a short film Out of Darkness won Best of Fest award at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in 2013. She was nominated for our chat by previous guest Rhoda Offori-Attah in season one. 

So, I'm gonna jump in... because as you pointed out in one of our emails, I do interview quite a few people in the dance world, and you actually earned a degree in contemporary dance from Demontford University. So, you were obviously working towards a profession in the performing arts, but I just wonder what was it always acting per se?  in the chance was bolstering that or was there a career shift yeah tell me about the space between your contemporary dance degree and the acting career  

MANJINDER VIRK 

I had always known that wants to be an actress as long as I can remember, I remember even at Junior School I remember saying to one of my teachers that I want to be an actress, and she kind of just looked at me, and I don't think she thought it was a viable profession and she--my brother and my sister also went into the arts, and the three of us would always put on plays with our neighbours’ kids, so you know, you're playing and you're acting and you don't see it as a profession as such , you're just having fun doing it. I just thought this is something that I want to do. I come from a working class family, there wasn't a lot to do, like now my kids are doing after school clubs, and they've got so many activities, you almost have to make your free time...  and so we formed, like, a theater company with my brother, my sister and our friend, so we would put on plays every Monday. I remember it's in a hut that we hired every Monday and we even managed to get a drama teacher somehow! I don't know, I think that was my brother's incentive...we must’ve been somewhere around thirteen, twelve? So... but then we put on these really random plays for our friends and family. I remember one of our first place was a take on Sleeping Beauty, where we had the characters from Sleeping Beauty but then we had whoever we wanted to play so I played Madonna, my brother played Michael Jackson, and then the two ugly sisters were played by my brothers two male friends, and they were so brilliant and funny. And so I always had this idea that that's what I'm going to do. At school I would always take part in the plays. It was a massive focus, as well as art, actually drawing, I thought if I don't go performing arts, I will become an artist so those two things were my massive passion. And then I went to, I remember going to my career’s advice and telling them that I want to be an actress, and they said to me “OK that's not a profession”... that's not even have a career in, is there something else? And I thought, no, there isn't. So I went and did my own research-- I don't know how because we didn't have Internet then, we had newspapers! Oh my gosh I’m sounding old! But so I also joined the youth theater which is...so there's a theater in Coventry called the Belgrade Theatre and that again was another savior because you could go weekly and you could do proper plays, you could be part of plays and you perform in the theater and studio space and I must have heard about Coventry Center for Performing Arts through one of the people there... I think it was actually this guy called John von Jacobs... and he said “Oh you should apply and then I found out the course was a performing arts course, and is a two-year course, where you get to learn about dance, theatre, backstage, stagecraft, arts administration, singing, music--everything and to me growing up watching Fame the series it was my dream! So it's like “Oh my gosh I can go to a school that does all this!”... so, I applied myself and got a place and that's where I got introduced to contemporary dance. 

EMMA LISTER 

I mean, you know what? So many people that I interview I end up having to put one job title next to their name, and nowadays everyone is multi hyphenate, you know? And so many artists have so many feathers to their cap, and one tends to do most of one's work or be mostly known for one thing. So, when you got a degree in contemporary dance, did you ever consider making that your career? Or going into choreography or auditioning? And then if so, what made you do a swerve towards acting was it a gig? 

MANJINDER VIRK 

What you say is really interesting, it's really hard to define myself as one thing, and I find myself now fitting roles for specific jobs. I knew my training as a dancer wasn't strong enough to just get into a dance company. Because what I did learn from De Montford (University) was the ability to make stuff. I had a certain amount of ability to pick up stuff, pick up material, and to dance--it wasn't based on a strong technique, but they were big on creativity, they were big on making your own work. So, I did try and audition for companies in London and I found myself just going “I'm not strong enough I haven't had that core training” ... so there was a choice of pursuing that or working with everything that I had. So, I formed my own dance theater company called Pangran and that ran for about three years. I founded it with another student Katherine Lee, who is now a teacher, dance teacher, and she's a brilliant dancer and choreographer. The first dance piece I toured was my last year, piece which is called Tanz Two, and we managed to get funding from West Midlands, Coventry Arts Council. And then I got funding for my first full length piece Fear of Glass, which I put everything into. It was about obsessive-compulsive disorder, three dancers, I was dancing in it, and choreographing and id all the costumes and the set because we didn’t have much money!  Managed to do a small tour. And I pulled in so many favours, like I remember rehearsing for two weeks in a cupboard, like a small room but there was no sprung floor. I just remember setting up the camera and just doing repetition watching the work and choreographing like that, was a bit nuts actually! But we managed to create this full length, my first full length piece. That toured. Then I remember West Midlands are saying to me we need a three year plan for your company if you are to pursue it. And I'd also had to do all the administration, so I was applying for funding, doing the budget, and I felt like if I do this, the admin is so much, it's taking away from the creativity... and at the same time I was getting offered straight theater roles, so I basically I hit this crossroads of: do I continue with the dance theatre a company, make my own work, control my own work or do I perform? Because I'm getting the chance to perform all the time. And I basically didn't apply for the funding and took the theater work and I just thought well I don't have to stop creating work I just don't want to be administrator I just didn't want the paperwork! 

EMMA LISTER 

I can hear all my listeners who are freelance creatives nodding their head along to that, the admin is heavy. On this show I talk to people across the performing arts, but I’m particularly interested in people who make stuff, and it sounds like you were doing that from when you were 12, doing your meta Sleeping Beauty show. But I think that actually physicality, from the things of yours that I've watched so far, physicality still plays quite a strong role in in what you do roles as “just an actor” when it's not your your own material. So I'll use that brilliant segway to talk about The Arbor! So, The Arbor is is quite an unusual documentary about West Yorkshire playwright Andrea Dunbar, who rose to prominence during the early 1980s, when she had two plays staged at the Royal Court, when she was only 18. She went on to write two more plays, dealing with working class life in Bradford where she lived most of her short life. I think she died when she was 29. It's an unusual documentary because it takes the form of recorded audio interviews with Andrea’s family, concentrating on her daughters, but the audio is lip synced by actors. You play Andrea's daughter Lorraine, who had a strained relationship with her mother to say the least... and who becomes the focus of the last act. So it's a fascinating story of a life that turns into a story of lives. I'm going to start by asking had you heard of Andrew Dunbar before?  

MANJINDER VIRK 

Yes, I knew about her work, I had watched Rita, Sue and Bob Too, and it was a film that had really stayed with me. I think as a working-class playwright, as a female voice, it is totally known to me, so it's interesting the conversation we just had about the hybrid of stuff. But, when I initially read this, I just thought “this is so interesting” this is the kind of work I like and I'm fascinated by it because, you know...and Clio being a visual artist herself... 

EMMA LISTER 

This is Clio Barnard, the director  

MANJINDER VIRK 

Yeah, so she’s an artist herself. When I first read it, it wasn't a script as such, it was sort of a verbatim transcripts of text and then like a little small Bible of a vision of what's going to be...and I got given recordings to listen to her voice, so is quite unusual way of doing a casting. But things like that I love, so I was quite fascinated by this project. And not thinking that it's going to be...it'll be what it’ll be! I was at the time I was five months pregnant--  

EMMA LISTER 

That would be heavy-- sorry spoiler, but that would be very heavy to do! 

MANJINDER VIRK: 

On reflection... I'm not going to say too much in case people have seen it ...but on reflection when I when I did watch it after that... so my daughter was two months old when I went to see the screening, we had a screening at Bafta, and I watched it objectively for the first time and I remember having to leave the screening. There's a point where I just thought oh... and it hit me, yeah, the film hit me because it was all from real life experiences, hit me in quite profound way. I remember having to go out 'cause my daughter was outside with the childminder and just having to hold her. So, it's yeah, I think it was a really special project in so many ways because when you are pregnant you don't know what the future holds and I didn't know what the future would hold as a creative once I become a mother, whether I will have the same opportunities, so it was all kind of, you know, the unknown. I sort of allowed myself to be part of this process of...almost pure creativity. I'm just going to do this and I felt so in sync with what I was doing because it just felt like: oh I understand where this character is coming from. I could just kind of hear her voice and yeah, it's, it's special in many different ways and then the fact that it did go on to many festivals and win many awards...and yeah it, it kind of has a really special place as project. 

EMMA LISTER: 

I had to watch it in with some breaks, I'm going to admit-- I have a 2-year-old so parts of it resonated with me a lot and I think... I'm not going to really describe the story to the listeners, I think you really need to see the film. But it’s a very humane film and it really, it's not, for lack of a better term, “poverty porn”, you know? It's really empathizing with these mothers, these women who don't quite have the support--by women I mean Andrea, who is the mother of Lorraine your character, and your character as well as a mother--not actually having the correct support in place to live their lives to their fullest and raise their children in many, many, many tragic ways. So, it affected me a lot, I'm getting teary just talking about it! I want to talk about your performance in it: I found there was a lot of stillness in Lorraine almost as though she's so weighed down by her life situation that she's, it’s like you can't move. Do you think about physicality in that or was that the director’s input? 

MANJINDER VIRK: 

When you talk about physicality--I do think about physicality a lot with characters, and I do think because my movement background I'm very aware of stillness, as well. I think, with Lorraine because I listened to her tape over and over again I used to have them but my iPod, at the time, all downloaded and I used to literally just have her voice because I wanted to learn all the dialogue like a piece of music and then when it went to, 'cause we had little ear plugs in so we could hear her voice we could lip synch at the same time...but I kept thinking about what's, I suppose, as an actor you’re always thinking about what's going on beneath the words, but with her the pauses and the thoughts, I felt like there was so much going on for her which I could see but she wasn't saying. And I think that kind of helped make her still and also she's in this particular situation, that I won’t reveal, that I think was her being quite reflective, because she's having to talk about her experience and she's in a different place to the experience she's talking about. So, there's, I think there is a stillness in her remembering, and yeah, it's like when we... when we think about things, we kind of, we go inwards, and we contemplate, so I think there was something about that and the trauma of her experiences as well. I think her voice was so quiet it didn't to me, it didn't show that it needed too much physicality. I don't ...maybe towards the end it was more the fact that I was so huge! Clio was like doing mid shots and kind of cutting my bump out! You know, actually, probably that did affect my movement, really, because my body is different, I look at it I can see that was a very different person and that it probably did.  

EMMA LISTER 

Do you know if Lorraine Dunbar has seen it? 

MANJINDER VIRK 

Yes, she was at the screening and she was really part of the project. I made this decision not to meet her before because I felt like I had enough information. Some people who played the real-life people had chosen to meet them, but I kind of, I think it's because she wasn't someone who's a public figure, I didn't need to impersonate her. So, I decided this information, it is huge, and there's so many more transcripts that I listened to which didn't make it into the film. So I felt like I had a real sense of who she was and I thought if I meet her, I might try to imitate her, so I consciously decided not to do that. But I met her at the screening, the same screening when I took my baby, and she was lovely and we took a picture together and...and I was, yeah, it is a strange exchange because we kind of know each other so intimately-- I've been in her head for so long and then she’s seeing me portray her...it was an interesting moment  

EMMA LISTER 

Let's talk about your work as a director now. You've actually directed several short films. I was particularly struck by one called Out of Darkness which you filmed in 2013. It deals with mortality through the point of view of a young child witnessing a family member pass away in hospital and then that same character later on as an aid worker. It's shot in black and white and the story unfolds in a monologue delivered to camera, you know directly to camera, by several actors playing that one character. Let's listen to a clip of that now before we talk about it ...so this is the actor Noma Dumezweni in Out of Darkness : 

...and his eyes opened for a moment, and he saw me I smiled he let had his last breath and then it became stale right there looking at me everyone stopped as if we were all suspended in time then I put his hand down love behind me... 

MANJINDER VIRK 

So Out of Darkness came about from a monologue I'd written at the end of a play about grief and about losing someone. I’ve always been kind of fascinated about how people react to losing people and my first experience of losing someone very close to me is the beginnings of Out of Darkness. A family friend, me and my family we watched him take his last breaths-- he'd had a stroke and they had to take the life support machine off and so that whole first part of the monologue I wrote, was basically exactly how I saw it, but not as a child it was an adult. I remember it so clearly and I remember going outside and just drawing a picture of his face and it just, it just stayed with me. I didn't do anything for a few years and then I remember just, um finding out about someone else you lost someone at a very different reaction very angry reaction, so I'd written this play and at the end of it he's going to end with this huge monolgue and then I just had this idea that--again this comes back to trying things and experimenting --where I keep saying straight theater because it's just more conventional storytelling and it's not conventional but, I just like to see where we can go with storytelling and I think I've always been fascinated by film but we always had a big VHS camera we always had cameras in the house and we would make videos at home as well that's something else my brother was really into that just editing stuff and I think with Out of Darkness it was open up that part of me again that's there's OK what can I do? Nobody has to see it. Nobody has to see it and if I don't want anyone to watch it, it doesn't matter, I just tried something to see if it would work. So, I took the monologue...and that's one thing, no one can take things like that away from you, if you want to try something you don't have to judge it because no one has to see it. Especially with writing or anything artistic, I feel like we sometimes worry too much about what people think before we even tried ideas out and I think that can stop you from growing. So with this I took the monologue and I thought it would be really fascinating to hear lots of different voices tell the same story because at the end of the day we are all going to die and there is something about that doesn't matter what status you are what nationality you are, you know whoever you are, we are actually, we're all human ,we're all going to face death, and I remember just breaking it down into A B C D and break it down to like 5 different people saying this monologue. And I was at the time I was hiring a an office space in Brixton and they had a photography studio, Photofusion, which is a photography studio, but they had offices to let so me and my husband, who's also a writer and filmmaker, we had an office each, a desk space, and every month we got to use the studio for a couple of hours free so, so I thought and the camera... 

EMMA LISTER  

That's golden in London! 

MANJINDER VIRK 

Yes, so I was like great! So, what can I do? I will make a film that I can film in this studio with their camera equipment! So I learn how to use a Canon 5D, I think it was, and I just thought OK I can do monologues, I can just get people's faces and then I just emailed people I know and said would you mind saying a few lines, for like an afternoon? I'll give you tea and lunch. And then, you know, and then we'll see what happens. So I think as an overall piece, like an overall script it resonated with people, and I thought, oh that's really good and that trust of: it feels to me... it felt like something truthful because it came from something truthful. And then I'm really interested in, like the bigger sort of questions in society, about how we treat people who don't have the same access? How do we stop ourselves becoming immune to situations in the world? Because the idea of an aid worker who sees so much and has to deal with so much and then suddenly has a moment of PTSD and suddenly cannot take what they've seen anymore. I think that happens in situations where you've seen so much death. And also I think there's this moment where there's flickering of images of war and I was very deliberate about not seeing anything --but hearing it all. Because we see so much, we are constantly bombarded with stuff on the news, on social media, that we feel like we as a society have become immune to the horrors of what's going on, you know? And maybe it's just because people have so many worries of their own, and I try to understand why we can't feel anymore. I think that was something that I was really trying to understand, or just kind of explore. So I thought maybe the message was just having to listen to someone talking to you directly to you about an intimate experience might give us a way in, or might just move us in a different way  

EMMA LISTER 

As you mentioned there's a lot of very established actors in it, in Out of Darkness, so you have Riz Ahmed, Tom Hiddleston, Monica Dolan and many others. These are actors who are often in, like, really big movies and watching it I couldn't help think that it might be nice, or scary, or a good challenge to be doing a piece that was... you know, there is no green screen. You don't have to hit a mark. Like, it's just your face and the story and the words. You started to answer this a little bit, but I'd like to know as a director how you approached the actors doing quite emotional text. 

MANJINDER VIRK 

I think first of all, I think all the actors that came on board, there was a trust from them as well, to come on board a low budget, well literally no budget, film. And which is the passion project for me and it's because they resonated with the script, which was really lovely, and I suppose with everyone I know in some form either having worked with them, or met them, so I think I just wanted to make sure that the environment that was created just one of trust and play... and it was literally either me, and I I did have someone help me with the camera a couple of times, and then sometimes my editor would be in. Apart from that, there was no one else in the room, so it was, yeah, so I just wanted to create an atmosphere where I go: there's no failure, we’re just going to try things. And we did so many different takes, and I just got them to play and then I actually kept the camera running a lot of the times when I had them sat there and I didn't tell them so and it's something quite vulnerable and honest about catching moments where they’re in front of the camera and they're just having to wait. This actually, I think, I used everyone's one “unknown moment” where they're just thinking or...or they do something, or they look away and it's just them and just didn’t tell them I was recording. And I love, I just love moments where you get that honesty, it's like when you carry on, when you're recording a scene and you keep rolling and then you get something else from it. But everyone was very responsive. And um, Tom came in quite late on, he was shooting Thor and I had almost finished the film and he got in touch and said “I really like this, I've got two weeks off can I still take part?” and oddly, I'd done a cut and I was like there’s something slightly missing. So he came in and I just wrote this extra little bit and then just put together a shoot for a day and he came in and it was so lovely—and he said it was really good to that as an actor. I think as actors and performers and as artists we all just want to be able to do our craft and sometimes other things get in the way, and like, the purity of just being able to dance, or just to be able to play music and sing, I think sometimes you need these things just to remind you why did it the first place! Why I did theater and why I wanted to be an actress, and so sometimes the going for castings, or the admin, everything gets in the way-- you have to remind yourself that there's a reason for doing this and it's still there if you allow yourself to find it. But it's, you know, it's hard but, you have to give yourself that time, yeah, 

EMMA LISTER 

So actually you were speaking about editing, and I wanna talk to you about collaboration in terms of editing, because I noticed you used the same editor, Louise McGregor ,on I think several of your projects. Editing fascinates me I think having done the podcast I realize actually how much power an editor has when compiling material. Um yeah just briefly tell me about your relationship with, with her and with collaboration I'm assuming 'cause you use her lots, you like her!  

MANJINDER VIRK 

Well, basically we are both moms! So we both have children the same age and it's almost by chance that we ended up working together. Out of Darkness was edited after bedtimes, during play dates, actually to complete the film it was a nine month process so it feels like birth! There's a theme! So we met on an NCT course, we had our first child and then our second child at a similar age and we just found a way to work. Louise’s background is in commercials, and I think she was open to these ideas, so just say OK, just take the sound out and let's just have that as a voiceover... she was responsive to that way of working. So once I got very clear ideas, she would be very...we started to develop a shorthanded understanding-- “oh this is, this is what I want”, and in a strange how... I say that is experimental and in one sense some of it was very clear and I didn't realize how clear it was but to actually be able to communicate that to somebody is quite difficult thing, and I think the thing about Louise is there's no judgment. Also we both said, OK no one has to see this. So it was, you know, so when we got into London Film Festival and it premiered there and then it won Best Film Aesthetica, and best drama, again I was pregnant with my second child, and it was a bit surreal. So I feel like going back to what you said about, you know The Arbor, or going back to what I said about The Arbor, not knowing what's going to happen once The Arbor finishes. When l become a parent how will my creative process continue? And what will that be? And it feels like it's, for me, it's kind of getting deeper and more thoughtful and it doesn't stop. It's actually become a different... it's I relate so much to their age and how they inform the work that I do, and I think about them seeing the work that I do and I think about how to contribute stories that affect the society that we live in, and how does that help, or how does that, you know, I think more about what I'm leaving for them as well, you know, the stories that I'm leaving in and telling. 

MUSIC PLAYS 

EMMA LISTER 

Ok, so now’s the part of the episode where I ask you: was there a piece of art that changed everything for you? 

MANJINDER VIRK 

When I was I think I was 17 I was asked to represent England on a cultural exchange and there were people from all over the world young people from all over the world and we basically spent two weeks in Amsterdam at a theater and we had different events happening every day we saw different performances. It was quite impactful. And I also remember seeing performance I think shaped me without me realizing how much it was a Russian clown troupe called Derervo ,and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I remember the opening there was this amazingly toned woman with a shaven head and she said what really slowly across the stage and apparently, she had pigs blood on, uh, in a bucket or something and then this performance I can't remember the whole performance but I just remember the feeling: of oh this is what theater can be! Their commitment to what they were doing, these images... I remember a tree, I remember the use of water, but what I really remember is the physicality of these performers and their absolute just their commitment to what they are doing. And I think that years later I ended up finding out more about this company and seeing performances like I think it’s A Red Zone and Once and finding out more about the company and I also found out about one of the female performers she went on to do a solo show. And then I think about my final year show at university and it was heavily influenced by Butoh and I think maybe it was because of that that moment of seeing that performance. 

EMMA LISTER 

Is there a piece of art or a work that you didn't love or even like but that you think still has value? 

MANJINDER VIRK 

This is tricky I couldn't think of a piece of art but I could think of an art form which over the years I have begun to really appreciate, and I realize it's value. And that's comedy. I think it's been such a part of my life and you don't see it, it seems like such an easy thing to get right, but it's so difficult and now having worked with incredible standups and funny people and screenwriters, how to perfect the art of comedy and I think I have massive respect for it. 

EMMA LISTER 

Lovely, last question so can you give us an artist that all listeners check out someone maybe they don't know about yet? 

MANJINDER VIRK 

Three artists, three writers I think you should all know about and check out are Amber Lone, Sue Vincent and Rhiannon Tisse they are all amazing in their own right, with a very distinctive voice. Amber Lone is a playwright, poet and a screen writer whose play I saw Dead Eye at Soho theatre, an incredibly honest and brutal piece of writing about the Muslim community. Rhiannon Tisse who has done many, many plays, radio plays, theater plays I remember seeing Rhiannon's play Head Stone about the aftermath of a teenage asylum seeker and it was really powerful 3 hander that stayed with me. And also Sue Vincent who is an incredibly accomplished actress-- when I talk about commitment, I see it into Vincent as an actress, also she has just written her first series with Sally Lindsay called Madame Blanc and she's also one to watch and they're all pretty inspirational. 

EMMA LISTER 

Listeners I would urge you to check out managers work Out of Darkness we will link to her Vimeo and YouTube channels in the show notes where you can find that at her other short films. I'm really happy to be able to tell you as well that she is working on her very first feature film Things We Never Said for the British Film Institute and Wild Swim. The Arbor the Clio Barnard documentary about Andrea Dunbar starring Manjinder is available to rent online--for example I found it on iTunes. 

MUSIC PLAYS 

OK closing credits --this has been a Makeshift Company production follow us on Instagram at makeshift company or check out our website makeshiftcompany.com. Please subscribe to the show on apple podcast Spotify or wherever you listen if you give us a rating and review there we would be most grateful especially if you say nice stuff. Many thanks to Sakari Mannisto for all the music in this and previous seasons.