Inspirations

Inspirations. You never know when you're going to find one, or when one is going to find you. Sometimes, entire lives are moulded from mere seconds of observing or hearing something that appeals to a part of you that wishes to blossom. Such was how I ended up as a Master Student in Screen Performance.

My journey started long ago when, one day, I happened upon an episode of Dexter's Laboratory, where the boy genius decided to make his own comic books. Instead of using the equipment at his disposal in his laboratory, Dexter put pen to paper to craft his fiction. Realising that I too could do the same, I began making various comic books by stapling paper together and drawing and writing sections of them based on other cartoons I watched, such as Mucha Lucha, Xiaolin Showdown, Thomas the Tank Engine and Pokémon. The fact I never finished one is beside the point, as the mere act of doing so endured me into a creative profession, such as writing and acting. In fact, it was because writing those comics made me understand character motivation at an early age that I was able to captivate my form teacher, Mr. McGiven, with my performance as an Ambulance Driver in an assembly play about… road safety, I think.

Telling me that I had a talent for performance, he recommended I attend the after school Drama Club, which I did for a few weeks. I stopped going not because I lost interest in performing, but because I had told my parents about how much I enjoyed it, and they signed me up for the Chaplin Theatre Arts After School Club. I attended the club for the duration of my Secondary School days until Year 11, when I think I graduated or the After School Club got cancelled. Reasons aside, my time at the club inspired me to take up Performing Arts at the Milton Keynes College, where I learned about voice acting for a presentation, and made it my goal to become a professional voice actor. Learning that I required a Masters' Degree in Performance to attend special voice acting training, I moved on into Theatre and Professional Practice to obtain a Theatre degree, only for the Masters' course to be cancelled before I could join it. Undeterred, I simply applied for a different Masters' course that I qualified for; Screen Performance at Luton, where I learned that they would allow me to specialise in voice acting, and help me break into the industry any way they could.

All this from watching a single episode of children's cartoon at precisely the right moment at the right time of my life, completely without foreshadowing, as if an act of destiny itself.

My path was forged from that moment. When was yours?

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