Being the only guy in the group, it was agreed that I would act in both scenes that we were to recreate as there is a guy in each. I was pretty nervous to be honest – I’ve done a lot of acting in the past so I feel like I have a standard I need to reach but I’m totally out of practise at the moment so it’s not as easy as it could be.

Another problem is that I would consider myself a comfortable stage actor, drawing energy from the audience and the continuous nature of the performance, so screen acting is something that I don’t find that I can settle into as naturally. It’s a completely different ballpark – trying to maintain a character for a single scene that, given that you account for all of the equipment being set up and the myriad of takes that are required to get the right material, typically spans over the same amount of time that an entire play would be run from start to finish. So many new challenges present themselves, for instance, how much do you vary your performance across the takes? You have to be thinking about your character in relation to other scenes, which you may also be doing as a stage actor but it’s a lot easier to be caught up in the moment when all attention is focused on it.

The final essential problem was that I hadn’t learnt my lines, meaning that I hadn’t had any time to think about my characters or how I would go about portraying them. In between takes I was glancing over my shoulder at the script and forcing myself to go over them in my head, even during the takes themselves, so the performances turned out to be pretty contrived as I was thinking about what lines were coming up rather than just responding to what was said to me in character. I became so focused on this and where I was standing in relation to the camera, if I was speaking loud enough/too loudly, etc.

It was a great experience despite the discomfort I find in screen acting as it forces you to be aware of the entire process – all eyes are on you, and you have to be conscious of your performance in many more ways than stage acting begs of you I find.