Tell us more about yourself & your background. 

I work in Advertising as a day job to make money and all that good stuff, then I give all my money to Kamil to take classes.

I recently performed in Giovanni Ortega’s WOMB and will be taking part in the Monologue Slam in September. Otherwise I do a lot of random stuff. I paint, do yoga, practice my monologues in the bathroom, birdwatch, etc etc.

Tell us more about your HCAC experience.

In Strasberg, I was suddenly made aware of how much of the way my body works is a mystery to me. However, the craft of acting demands for you to increase the control you have over how the body expresses. I was introduced to the world of sense memory, and the importance of being able to recreate and focus on the specificity of your five senses. I learned the concept of affective memory, a sense that whenever revisited evokes a very strong emotional response, of great anger or sadness/disgust or happiness. My affective memory that I’ve found so far, which made it to my actor tool belt is that of my childhood home.

In the Creation of My Body, I learned that love is always the strongest intention. When we work with memory, it’s easy to mull over the things that cause us pain. Gio gently pushed me further, he asked about the people who were our role models, the people who are the reason we are who we are today. I was suddenly struck by a memory that was almost laid forgotten. I was raised not by my mother, but mostly by a household helper who worked with us since my birth until I was 20 years old–she even  breastfed me when I was a baby. I told this story through the show we presented, my love for her but also my regret that she was unable to raise her child because she worked for us.

What does HCAC give to you that you cant really find anywhere else or would be harder to find elsewhere?

A diverse community of all ages, races, and backgrounds. A lot of people don’t have the privilege that I have to learn. In some ways, there is no dominant culture in HCAC, so everyone comes in bringing their full selves and being super open to everyone else.

Would you like to share anything else?

I do a lot of random stuff with a lot of random people. I’m the South East Asia producer for the David Glass Ensemble, and I’ve been assistant-teaching for David at Lasalle on a project based on Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. I work with the Wahid Foundation in Indonesia to fight terrorism by managing Google search results for keywords that are correlated with radicalization. I’m working on my Strala yoga teacher training. I sell ads.