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| |  | | 2007 ARTICLE ABOUT MANUEL IN THE BULLETIN
OF THE ALBERTA MOTION PICTURES ASSOCIATION
From Keep It Rolling - July 2007 |
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| | | | | | 2007 ARTICLE ABOUT MANUEL IN THE BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
By Shelagh Kubish - July 8, 2007 |
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All's well for Manuel Manuel Sinor, ’06 PhD, has played many parts in his life. A native of France, he trained as a military signal operator in the French Navy. He learned English when he was young and perfected an Irish accent while studying and working in Dublin. At the U of A he did a doctorate in linguistics and taught and researched at Campus Saint-Jean. Now he’s taking on a new role as a stage and film actor.
“The interest in acting was always there, since age nine,” but it took a few years of doing other things before he decided to plot a change of scenery. “Half way through my PhD I decided I will become a professional actor,” he says. “So on the side I’ve been exploring, but no way I was going to stop doing my PhD.”
Doctorate in hand and with a day job teaching at the Campus Saint-Jean, Sinor took advantage of the vibrant theatre community in Edmonton and started acting in both English and French theatre and film productions.
He has already appeared in many productions, including a principal role in Studio Theatre’s After the Fall, and the lead in Nataraja Studio’s Antigone. In June he officially saw his name on a marquee when the dramatic comedy feature film Fitz (with Manuel in the star role) premiered at the Garneau Theatre. At the end of the summer he will be part of Edmonton’s Fringe Festival, playing four roles in the same production of George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah.
And this is just Act One. Good thing Sinor has a lot of energy and relishes a challenge. “I like what is complicated and difficult,” he says, “as opposed to glorifying the simple and immediate.” His attitude, he’s finding, is a good fit for his new home base. “I’m loving every minute of my time in Edmonton,” he says, “there are so many possibilities here. It takes audacity but the environment is there and it is a welcoming atmosphere.”
Through all his adventures, one role Sinor has played frequently is that of outsider. “I’ve always been attracted to the foreign,” he says, “and I don’t want to lose that.” His insight into what it is like to be the “other,” along with his academic area of expertise in language, has helped him in both his acting pursuit as well as his academic research in the Department of Linguistics. Recently he has focused his study on the use of theatre in language acquisition--how acting could help someone to learn a second language.
Both pursuits take “patience, patience, patience, and lots of hard work,” but there are other crossovers. For one thing, performing in theatre gives someone practice in speaking words and understanding their nuances. Sinor asserts that second-language speakers could learn from the way actors analyze language, and then empathize with the work.
But mostly he says the way theatre breaks down inhibitions would help second-language speakers immensely. They, too, have to drop fears to move forward and learn a second language.
Referring to what is known as “the paradox of the actor” — that while putting yourself and parts of yourself aside to play the role of a character, you draw on those same parts to make the character believable — Sinor notes that the same thing happens when learning a new language. “When you move to a new place and learn a new language,” he says, “to move forward, to take that leap, you have to put part of yourself aside, the self that speaks the first language.”
In both acting and learning a language, Sinor says, “you need to forget yourself to discover a new person.”
Twists and turns and subplots will almost certainly keep Sinor’s life interesting. Catch him at the Fringe in August and keep up with his acting adventures through updates on his website, www.manuelsinor.com.
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