Q: Why are you an actor?

Peter: My earliest memories from when I was a kid relate to films and TV in some way. Always when I was a kid acting was my thing. All through school and high school I acted but round about 17 or 18 I dismissed it as something that you couldn’t do as a career. So, for 4 or 5 years I didn’t do any acting. And during that time I wasn’t particularly happy and couldn’t work out why.

And then I did an acting course out of the blue and I realized that I had forgotten something I was passionate about. When I realized that, it felt weird. It is weird to forget something that’s important to you. That acting course made me feel that I was back doing what I was supposed to do. Although in the time that I wasn’t doing any acting I had started writing again – which is another passion of mine. So, I had spent the time investing in something else and that was good.

But when I went back to acting I found I was REALLY passionate about it and I wanted to keep doing it.

Q: How did you go about ‘keeping doing it’?

Q: And then writing came back to visit you?

Peter: Yeah, but that began as way of facilitating more acting work for myself. I did the Foundation Director’s course at the VCA and I wrote short films that I wanted to perform in because I wanted to create my own work.

Q: That’s why you wrote them? So you could perform in them?

Peter: Partly. It was a mixture between wanting to perform and wanting to direct because I enjoyed the directing and writing processes as well. But the biggest challenge would have been the acting, I guess.

I then went through the long drawn out business of creating a TV series based on a job I used to do. I shot a promotional reel for that show. That was something else I was passionate about and I wanted to be involved in as an actor – and perhaps still will if it ever happens.

Q: Will it ever happen?

But having done that and found that writing was also really creatively fulfilling I realized I could do both. So, I attended a writing course on writing for soaps at AFTRS. It was great. The supervising script editor from Neighbours ran it.

I did it because I wanted to understand the regimented structure of soap. I was interested in ‘hooks’ and ‘cliff-hangers’ because I thought they would help the series I was creating. I did this course on a whim and ended up really enjoying it. Plus, I got on really well with the guy who ran it who then invited me on to Neighbours. That’s where I have been writing ever since. I hadn’t done much professional writing before so that has been a great learning curve. It has been exciting and fun to do.

But, acting is still my passion and I’m really excited about doing Hobson’s Choice.

Q: What excites you about Hobson’s Choice?

Peter: Lots of things excite me about it. I love the tone of it. I like the humour it has. At this stage we have only had a couple of tentative rehearsals but I find it an engaging and humorous play and I love the character.

Q: What do you like about the character?

Peter: I like his naivety and I like the journey – he has quite a journey learning to have faith in himself. Seeing some else’s belief in him enables him believe in his own abilities. It’s an optimistic story.

Peter: That’s an interesting question - probably both actually. But, if I have to choose I think I enjoy it most as an actor. He has such a huge journey to make because he ends up quite a different person by the end of the play to the way he was at the start. It will be very interesting to create that metamorphosis. It’s very challenging, I think. How he’s affected by relationships is interesting, too. As the workshop bound cobbler he is quite an isolated person and by the end he has a number of new relationships and they change him significantly. So, it’s a journey of some magnitude and plotting and creating those changes is, for the actor, a big and exciting challenge.