This summer, indie artist Effie Spence cements her position as one of the most thought-provoking voices on the creative scene, showcasing her talent and authenticity across theater, film, and literature. A writer, director, actress, and producer, she presents two shows at the Fringe Theatre Festival — including the solo piece Actorholics Anonymous, which explores the highs and lows of life in the arts — and prepares for the premiere of the documentary series Motherlands, which delves into identity and cultural heritage. With her short film Le Petit Saint on the festival circuit and the poetry book A Bloody Mess recently released on Amazon, Effie is living a defining moment in her career, blending femininity, vulnerability, and a striking poetic aesthetic in all of her projects.
You have an intense and multifaceted presence in theater, film, and literature. How do you manage to balance these different forms of artistic expression while maintaining your authenticity in each of them?
Thank you! I think being an actor first has really helped. After receiving possibly thousands of no’s, I have built a thick skin from just constantly going back to training and learning to trust my talent and work ethic. I think also having people in my corner that never nay say me is huge. I will get a crazy idea but none of my friends make me feel crazy or like I am reaching, we all just see how we can support one another to get there. I think I have also built a level of (and this will sound corny, but it’s important for us all) self-love and forgiveness. Sometimes having so many facets of expression can feel overwhelming or like I am not committing enough and should focus, but I ultimately know I need to trust the process and know everything has its own timing.
Your solo show Actorholics Anonymous deals with the emotional cost of life in the arts. What would you like people to understand about this behind-the-scenes reality?
I love this question, it really cuts to the heart of the play. It is a tragi-comic satire but the crux of it is that I have personally felt like an addict pursuing this career. I have lost friends, missed out on my niece and nephew’s birthday, cause rifts in my family, stole money to feed my need to go to another acting class, the list of parallels goes on, so what I want people to clean from it is that you can reach for the stars without needing to lose yourself in the dust. Hollywood has some of the most toxic hustle cultures and people are burnt out. I want people to know the best role they can play is truly themselves, that they don’t need to rely on external validation. You hear it all the time, that in order to “make it” you need to find your branding, be authentic, etc. but no one tells you how hard that journey can to then only realize how simple it really is; do what makes you happy.
When creating Motherlands, a documentary series about family and identity, what emotional and creative challenges did you face while diving so deeply into these personal stories?
Where to start! Being Greek is a beautiful thing but there’s a lot of shame, fear and guilt that has been passed down through the generations. The making of Motherlands could be its own film, honestly. It’s such a special idea I was willing to give everything up for it and I did. I created it during a particularly low point in my life and career. It felt like nothing in my life was moving forward, the American Dream my parents got to live seemed impossible to attain and it felt like I was on the wrong train. What kept me strong was just this vision I had of myself, in a linen dress, filming in Greece. I gave up my comfortable and affordable apartment in Burbank to afford leaving for Greece for that long and used personal funds I didn’t have at the time to complete it. Going back to my mother’s village is always a joy but the day I booked my flight to go to Greece, my paternal grandmother past. I had felt this intense pressure to get this work done because of that possibility, that the women and wisdom I so need to capture are in their later years. Luckily, last time I was in Greece I interviewed my grandmother for fun, so I do have some footage of her. Creatively it was a huge lesson in how to advocate for what I want as a filmmaker. I was blessed with my producer, Anna Engel, who helped take it from concept to set in two months of meeting her and she is a huge supporter of my more avant-garde ways of filming. She really trusts me and I her, so that is a huge blessing. I remember just a few days before I was to leave for Greece to begin research, my gut told me I didn’t want to work with a certain DP, who was lovely, but just had a download that they weren’t the right person. Instead of panicking, Anna helped me just redirect and as she has film experience told me she would film it if she had to and we would do it on iPhones if need be, but as luck and destiny would have it, instagram recommended a new friend to me and she happened to be an incredible DP (Christiana Charalambous) who was able to join us on the shoot. She was truly a godsend. There were definitely moments where my family members in Greece were trepidatious to be on camera, as I said, shame is a big thing and it is still quite a patriarchal country where women (especially of that age) were not allowed to have loud opinions, lest they embarrass the family. It was such a pleasure to assure each woman that the film is aimed at preserving their beauty, their wisdom and our culture. I definitely used my own little Greek guilt by usually tacking on, “think of the children, my future children, who want to hear your stories” and then they would invite us in for an interview, coffee and whatever food they wanted to serve us.
Your short film Le Petit Saint has been described as lyrical and poetic. How do you blend cinema and poetry to engage the audience in a sensory experience?
Le Petit Saint is my most “narrative” film but it still couldn’t escape my love for magical realism and bending time. It is based off the life and works of Albertine Sarrazin, an author in France who died quite young after a fascinating life of petty crime and creating fabulous works from prison and the film felt like in order to capture her style of writing, it had to be lyrical. She had this incredible sense of humor and sort of split reality so I wanted to capture that. I am often not concerned with whether an audience understand everything that is happening on screen, I care about if they feel something and poetry is very much like that. I’ll often read from poetry magazine and think, “well, I have no idea what they meant but that was so pretty.” I hope the film does that for people, I find it is easier to attach yourself to a character when their lines are not so defined and it is felt rather than spelt.
Your poetry book A Bloody Mess explores themes like vulnerability and resilience in a raw way. How do you use writing to process your own emotions and transform them into art?
A Bloody Mess was born out of a personal practice of writing poetry during my menstrual cycle as a way to cope. I would write poetry instead of journaling as I found that because my body was so present in my cramps and period, my brain was really open to connecting the dots and unique imagery. I later read this book called “Wild Power” which completely shifted my life and how I relate to my womb. It’s become my master thesis in how to tell stories, in general, from what I am coining as the feminine lens. It asks the creatrix/creator how can I approach this story/poem/dance/film/art from where I am in my cycle, how things can move subconsciously and can I bio hack my menstrual cycle to create from an even more authentic place. For example, I write poetry when I bleed, but send my most important emails when I am ovulating and I don’t do anything when I am PMSing unless it is pilates and a hot, hot, hot bath. Writing is valuable for anyone to process emotions, some of my best poems come from just writing without thinking. I’ll write stream of consciousness first thing when I wake up sometimes and through all the mud and petty complaints, a brilliant line will appear and from there I will expand on the concept and dig as to what else is going on under the surface. And then once it is written, that emotion has moved and she has a little home now on the page and I can move on.
You developed your own methodology that incorporates dreams, nonlinear narratives, and somatic work. How does this approach change the way you create and tell stories?
To expand on the previous question that I touched on, the feminine lens also incorporates dreams, nonlinear narratives and somatic work. For example, when I was in pre-production with Motherlands, I had to dance the pilot episode while I talked it out. As much as I love writing, we need many methods to get into the blood and guts of a piece. We have it filmed somewhere I’m sure my producer will use a blackmail to embarrass me some day. The concept for Motherlands came from a dream/vision. I’m not afraid to sound woo woo when I say I come from a long line of “seers’ or psychics in my family, from both parents, actually. So one morning, I was meditating and this image of myself in a linen dress in Greece, holding a camera came to me and I knew the feeling of Motherlands. I didn’t know what it was yet, so my methodology to excavate it included writing poetry about my grandmother, dancing, going to Greece early to just be Greek again and to focus on flow rather than outcomes. A lot of type A might find it hard to work with me because on my sets I don’t have anything really planned. I have mapped and manifested in my head, but on the day, especially in documentary, my whole vibe is, “don’t worry, we’ll somehow get it” and we always do. My methodology is a sort of bridge between the practical (writing, dancing, playing) and the magical (dreaming, manifesting, trusting) as its form. The magical is held in as high esteem as the practical.
Your production company Pixie Logic embraces a non-hierarchical vision of filmmaking, especially through a female lens. How does this influence the impact your works have on the audience?
Being an actress in the industry deeply influenced by move into wanting to form a produciton company where every one is treated equally. Even now, when I introduce myself as a filmmaker, I immediately get more respect and attention than when I introduce myself as an actress. People have very often left me with a backhanded complement when I say I am an actor where they go, “Oh yeah, that’s not surprising,” in a way that feels…well..shitty. Whether I am producing for a peer or for myself, Pixie Logic aims at the idea that we can all be supported in our goals. My collaborator and dear friend, Stefani Rose Lah and I are really good at this balancing act. We began working together as co-directors where we navigated our power dynamics, then I directed and she AD’d for me, then she directed and I AD’d for her and now we are back to co-directing my play. Having a company that focuses on just telling the best story rather than appeasing egos makes for great stuff. We put ourselves through the shoes of the audience and make creative choices based off what we know the project wants. It isn’t about us, it’s about the project. We just get to help carve it. The feminine lens helps us do that because we rely on intuition and understanding where we are all at emotionally, cyclically, energetically etc and taking that all into account as to how we operate together.
Considering your Greek roots and the influences of filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos and Sofia Coppola, how do you blend these references to create something that is entirely your own yet universal at the same time?
I’m not above straight up copying the greats, although, my film Le Petit Saint has a funny bubble moment like in Poor Things but I filmed mine before Yorgos so maybe he’s copying me. I’m joking, mostly, but I think all great artists take from the people that inspire them until their maturity, taste, and access start to align with their visions and goals. I think I differ in that my ultimate goal with any of my works, no matter the genre, is to remind people that life is beautiful and we deserve to be happy. My name roughly translates to “good mood” and “well spoken’ in Greek so I want my works to be beautiful, grotesque, over the top, sumptuous but ultimately to make people feel good. My name in philosophy also means, “a condition according to which the soul lives calmly and steadily, being disturbed by no fear, or superstition, or other passion” (Democritus). While Yorgos paved the way for the Greek Weird Wave and brought experimental surrealism to the screen and Sofia Coppola wove her signature feminine storytelling aesthetics, I want to blend it into the Femme Weird Wave, but weird in its original sense of being associated with magic. My work is universal because they all ask, “how do we live well?” The journey there is the fun part.
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