MEet Rod Lara

We were lucky to catch up with Rod Lara recently and have shared our conversation below.

Rod , looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
My work as a performer and mime artist has taught me that constant training and the polishing of one’s skills is key in order to succeed in one’s field.

Early in my career, I learnt to train the mind that I won’t take that break until I have accomplished a certain skill just right. Even if feeling exhausted – the task needs to be completed.

Anyhow, I love my job so much that it never feels that it’s a task or work.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am an Australian based mime artist, actor .and dancer who has been in show business for the past 24 years.

As a teenager, I stumbled into the art of mime by mere coincidence. I was the stereotypical nerd – Extremely shy and awkward.

This is how it all started, my year level coordinator accidentally placed me in Drama or Theater Studies. I had no idea what to expect.

At first, it involved playing games and such type of theater activities. Although, I wasn’t expecting for my skinny self to step onstage and say lines in font of everyone! You have to remember that I was a very shy and awkward 13 year-old kid, who at that time, have only been in Australia for a mere 2 years and was just grasping the English language (I am originally from Chile). So, I took a subconscious decision to perm every single role without uttering a single word. My teacher spotted this and suggested that I should get into mime!

The ‘Art of Visual Acting’ became more or less a hobby in high school.

When I graduated from high school, I took a gap year to work before getting into tertiary studies, which most likely it’d been a career in engineering or computers. Well, here’s where the Universe once again intervened. A friend invited me to gymnastics, in which my coach encouraged me to get into circus as he had connection and BOOM! I began my performing arts career.

At the start, it was tricky to find any type of employment (I had no agent), so busking was a nice way to polish my skills.. Fast forward to 2023, I have been able to perform for thousands of people in various productions (including my own shows), appear on TV, including a few fun TV ads, be invited by prestige performing arts institutes to run my very own mime workshops. Right now, I have also embarked in the art of filmmaking, where my short films have won various awards at film festivals around the globe.

Since embarking in this niche visual style of performing, I’ve been blessed to perform for people of every age and nationality, and be understood without the language barrier.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Resilience, consistency and always challenging yourself.

The road to obtaining any type of success is tough. I conquered a lot of rejection, which impacted for my work to become quite scarce and sparse at first. I was very green and I knew it. So, I decided to strengthen my skill sets.

My thought pattern was: Simply learning the technique of mime isn’t enough. If I want to express myself well visually, I need to study acting – DONE! If I want to learn to move well as a visual performer, I need to study dance – DONE! If I want to dabble into visual comedy, I need to go through Stunt Training – DONE! The skill sets may have taken years to master, but it was worth the journey.

Although, I never sit on my laurels and think I have accomplished everything in my area, I always challenge myself and step into the next phase. Step it up!

Having this mind set, it keeps your area of expertise at a high level.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Well, the challenge I faced in early 2020 (as I’m sure many encountered) was the unexpected global Covid-19.

Here in Melbourne, Australia, we were in strict lockdown for almost 2 years! It caused for all of my work for that year (including performing at Chaplin’s World in Switzerland) to dry up and completely disappear. It felt like I had grown a nice big farm and slowly every single animal was shot one by one.

Every morning, I would see the dreaded email that my next job was cancelled.

My thought was, “How can I keep my work alive?”

One morning, I received a link to enter a short film at a upcoming film festival. The Them? Covid-19 Isolation. Since I had nothing much to do, I got my camera out and created a little silent short film using my original character Banjo.

Thanks to DropBox, I was able to communicate with a friend of mine who is a composer (Evan Moxie) and able to create a musical soundtrack for my silly short film.

Weeks went past, and out of the blue, I received a phone call that my short film ‘Isolation’ had won 2nd prize at the Isolation Film Festival! From then on, a short film trilogy was created – ‘Isolation’, ‘Lockdown’ & ‘Rise’. These films have now won numerous awards and accolades around the world. My short films have even been screened at Silent Film Festivals.

Being a mime artist, my films have basically no dialogue, which are enjoyed by a vast audience around the world. A new venture has begun and many more films to come!

Of course, all of these could not have been achieved by the upmost support of my parents, family, agent, and friends. Forever grateful.

I’m a huge believer in finding one’s purpose, work hard at it, and thrive!

I have been blessed and able to grow as an artist post lockdown.

Aside from continuing making my short visual comedy films (maybe a feature film on the way?), I’ve been inundated with many more bookings to perform my shows and TV appearances, as well as, growing my mime workshops and be invited to present and talk about them at an upcoming performing arts conference in late 2023 here in Australia – Drama Victoria. It has been such a busy year! Stay tuned for more!

To those who which to embark on their passion, just dive in and take the plunge. Your persistency will be rewarded and trust your intuition. All the best on your journey.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Keith Porter Photography. Stephen Pong Photography. Christopher Boots Photography.

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