Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends...

When I was 14 and had to choose what extra subjects I was going to do for my GCSE's on top of the core subjects I decided to choose something I'd personally be interested in. And so it was that I picked art, creative design technology and drama.

In my early days I used to love to draw and it was my passion in drawing that allowed me to be accepted into the art class but now that I was doing it as a GCSE the rules changed - I was very much of the comic book background but now that I was studying it I had to learn art as whole and was constantly criticized by my teacher for my two dimensional Stan Lee inspired drawings. Even when I was sketching Salvador Dali at an art exhibition it still came across as two dimensional in my lecturers eyes. And painting? Bugger that. I was never good at painting. I liked pencils and pens and these new crafts just didn't compute.

Creative design technology was another subject where I wasn't wholly competent in. Whilst I had the creativity, knowledge of physics and the illustrative skills to design something, making it was another matter entirely. I had great designs, beautiful blueprints, intelligent and original machinations... and yet I couldn't even saw a piece of wood in half properly. In the end, my lowest grade of all during GCSE's was this subject.

Drama was something else, though. From an early age I was fascinated with film and acting - studying drama was the closest I could get to that field when it came to my GCSE's. A lot of the class was made up of kids who took the subject just to get an easy pass but I enjoyed every minute of it. I remember how often we'd all end up doing mostly comedy based sketches when given our own free reign to create something and I'll never forget our first full on performance of 'Sweeney Todd' (minus the singing since none of us could hold a note to save our lives).

When I was in university there was a drama society, and again I joined for the same reasons - closest I could get to the process of filmmaking. There would be actors and lights and writing and directing, hell, the only thing missing was the damn camera. In the first year we performed a comedy the director wrote which involved me running about in just my boxers for the entire third act and having water poured all over me, foot trodden on and smacked across the face by all the girls my character sleeps with in the play. In my second and third year I wrote and directed instead and it would be the first time I'd write something full length, first adapting Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" into a Kevin Smith inspired R-rated comedy and moving the story of "Alice in Wonderland" to a university student housing where the Cheshire Cat is a playa, the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Doormouse are drunken rugby players and the White Rabbit is a hot part-time waitress dressed in Playboy bunny mode.

Anything to get the punters in.

I bring this all up because since that last play I hadn't been involved in theatre at all. The entire time I've been back in Malaysia for good I've concentrated on the filmmaking side that I'd always wanted to pursue. I had acted a couple of times, yes, but only on screen where everything's split up.

Then, a few months ago, the Dorian rang. His friend, Ines, was doing a play as part of her finals and was looking for actors so he suggested me using, of all things, my cameo in Ghost Season 2 as my audition tape.

The play was called 'Potential For Violence' by Alex Broun and she needed someone to play The Man - a politician who is abducted by The Boy and tortured throughout the play, played by Ollie Johanan.

I scanned through the script and saw that my lines didn't really start till halfway through the second scene and I didn't have any major monologues in comparison to The Boy who had pages of speeches to memorize. I figured this should be fun. Never really thought about the whole 'torture' aspect much, though.

Not till rehearsals.

Throughout the entire play I'd have my hands tied behind my back. For the first two scenes I'd be blindfolded and for the first scene even gagged. By the second scene I'm blindfolded and tied, lead up a chair where a noose is tied around my neck and then pushed off.

Really should've thought this through, huh?

Regardless, it was a great experience. I'd almost forgotten after all these years how different theatre acting is, especially since I'm tied up and usually in one position throughout each scene. I remember video-ing the first scene where I'm blindfolded, gagged and tied to a chair and even though I was really feeling the moment and the scene when I watched the playback I realized that to the back row I'd look incredibly stiff. Body language, projection, legs apart, nipples out, roar - all the things one usually tries to subdue in favor of realism when acting for the screen, especially during close-ups. But we have no close-ups here. No close ups, no cutaways, no stunt men, no re-takes.

And as stressful and tiring and painful to the body as it was, I loved every minute of it.

For all those that came, thanks for watching. To the directors, thanks for having me. And to Ollie, thanks for being a great actor to work opposite. Fingers crossed I'll get to 'tread the boards' again.

My nipples could do with more exercise.