What sparked your interest in acting?
I was the youngest in a busy immigrant family, so I was raised by TV. Through the performances of heroes like: Robin Williams, John Ritter, Optimus Prime and Megatron, I’d soak up all the memorable lines and scenes and characters and add them to my recess and lunch time activities. This lead to doing sketches, and playing with recording audio and video pieces. After high school I delved into training and eventually found David C. Jones, my improv mentor, and joined The Bobbers Improv Comedy group, and met and got to create with the Assaulted Fish sketch comedy group. These groups shared perspectives from being queer, and being Asian-Canadian respectively, and I’m honoured to have spent over a decade with each of them having a focus, an outlet, and an opportunity to hone my craft and passion. I’m also honoured to have worked closely with Frank Theatre and writer C.E. Gatchalian on several pieces including work-shopping and originating the part of Chang Hyun in Falling In Time. I continue my training in Vancouver with many coaches, and am grateful to have been mentored into teaching by Carole Tarlington, Trevor Roberts, David C. Jones, Noel Johansen and Benjamin Ratner with whom I work presently at Haven Studios Acting School. In TV I have the life-affirming, miraculous honour of working with, writer director exttraordinaire, Ron Oliver, who also was one of my heroes from Canadian television, and who took me under his wing. We’ve made 27 movies together (and counting), and it’s a creative partnership that I’m happy to say is a wonderfully intergral part of my art and my life.
What do you love about your job?
Aside from meeting new people, learning new things, and it always being fresh, scary, and exciting? I love the community of artists who look deeper than surface behaviour into what drives and motivates people. I love the safety to explore all sides of humanity from the honourable to the downright ugly. I love the search for truths and the universal recognition in the specific. I think acting and theatre gives me and the audience a safe place to belong and to be.
During these interesting times, what keeps you inspired?
My students, nature, music, other great art and artists, dreams, and my own emotional process.
For more info:
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