Welcome!
I am Constantine Pavlou, an aspiring feature film writer and I run the Youtube channel Story Maniac. While you look around you’ll be able to find out all about how I got here, what projects I’m working on as well as find writing samples from things I am work(ing)/(ed) on.
About Me
This crazy mess of a career started in earnest when I was 14 and swapped Geography for Drama mid way through my first year taking my GCSE's. That's where I realized that my love of movies and TV could come in handy with my life. I enjoyed performing and disappointed my parents by deciding to take Theatre Studies rather than Maths and Economics (my original course pick) at university. Don't worry my parents came around in the end and are as supportive as can be.
During university I was able to go to the Edinburgh Fringe festival twice with the Lincoln Company, the university's theater company, performing twice a day for the full month of the festival. This was a huge learning curve but most importantly where I realized that the arts was where I wanted to be professionally.
And realizing that in the cauldron of literally thousands of shows, performing with and living with the same people during it all. It was an incredibly intense experience. It was also where I first admitted to wanting to do stand up comedy. This was the first of many things I would try over the years.
When I left university (with a 2-1 hons degree, not too shabby) I went to London to move back in with my parents. One of my professors, Ben, saw some potential in me and took me on as his assistant. I was lucky enough at the tender age of 21 to be going into some of the biggest production companies in the UK and helping pitch TV shows and got to work on the Science Museums first ever touring stage show. Ben really helped to open my eye to the idea that I could do so much more than just stand up.
The stand up didn't last, I had been performing for 6 months in London and had found it difficult to make friends. Turns out the stand up community where just not my people. I gave improv a try instead to feed my need for stage time and after one class I knew I had found my people. After studying at the Comedy School and Hoopla Improv I became over the next four years a performer on the London Improv circuit, often on stage almost every night of the week. When I was 24 I went to Chicago for a month to study at iO and travel North America for a few months. It gave me a chance to re-evaluate things.
A year later I had moved to Toronto. I had saved up some cash and had a buddy's couch to sleep on and that was it. I wanted to study at Second City and within a 3 months I was in the conservatory program. And had gotten a job at Bad Dog Comedy Theatre in the box office. I learned a lot over the next few years. Mostly about the business end of show business and quickly realized that for all the fun improv gave me there wasn't a career to be had there unless I wanted to build my own improv school. But during my time in Second City's conservatory I had managed to get an acting agent and started to go on auditions.
I booked a few commercials and docudramas. I always had fun on set and finally being able to say that I was getting paid for my creative ability was a dream come true in itself. But the next step was being able to take these odd jobs and be able to pay rent and bills with them. Over the next 4 years I persevered despite not being able to dedicate as much time and resources as I would have liked. I wanted to stay in Canada and had to curb the amount of time I was spending being creative in order to work enough hours to meet the criteria to get my residency and stay in Toronto.
This way maybe the hardest part of my life. Not being able to get on stage even months at a time was tough, watching my peers grow and grow and me stagnate was rough to say the least. But I got my residency and with renewed vigor I pressed forward but it wasn't the same. Something had changed and the auditions were no longer a labor of love but just a labor. But determined I pushed on.
Then in March 2020 the bar I'm bussing tables at shuts down. Covid 19 and well you know what happened there. So there I am, at home, no job, no idea when the world will come back. So I take the time to finally do a video series I always wanted to on Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey. I threw it all up on Youtube and started writing. I quickly followed up on that initial series with some case studies as well as learning more and more about screenwriting. What tools I actually need to write good movies (and made some videos about that too). I had actually written a feature length screenplay before. It was terrible, but a success in that I proved to myself that I could actually write something of that length.
