As a kid, I’d spend my school year between West Chester, Pennsylvania, and my summers on the Bolivian frontier. My father, a Bolivian immigrant, owned a cattle ranching business deep in the Amazonian jungle. Being there was like going back in time 30 years. No electricity, no running water for weeks… Let me tell you. But from finding my kinship with the dangers of the jungle, to having tree frogs hop into your craw in the outhouse, I’d experience so much as a child that was so vastly different from my peers, that it felt like part of my life was a dream. What I got was a wide-lens of the natural world, and unbeknownst to me, an inimitable acquaintance with life that would become my context as an actor. I’d go on to study in various conservatories and schools of different ideology, but all the while drawing from my infatuation with life as my deepest source.

The projects I’ve done and the people I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with have all changed my life forever. Every opportunity to move forward on this journey has occurred at exactly the right time. My hope is that if there is anything you might take away from my work, past or future, is that its honest, deliberately human, and at the very least entertaining. I believe in the power of storytelling, perhaps, more than I believe in anything else.

Thanks for hanging, and I hope you enjoy some of my work.

Michael Alexander Monasterio