TOM Edwards is an actor and director who is based in Wivenhoe.

His latest theatre production is performing in Alls Well That Ends Well with Twas Theatre. It runs at St Martin's Church, Colchester, from September 29 to October 1 at 7.30pm. For tickets or more information go to www.twastheatre.co.uk

What or who got you interested theatre? Did you take part in any productions at school?

It took me a while to realise I was into theatre as I spent most of my school life a musician of sorts. I auditioned for a Cartwright play in college and got a good part. It was game over after that. Theatre and performance became the only thing I wanted.

Are or were any members of your immediate family involved in the theatre?

No so much really, both my parents engaged a little with performing. Mum was (and still is) in a choir, dad never did. Although in retrospect I think he would have been excellent. My siblings and I were in a marching band when we were young so we were no stranger to crowds and drawing attention to ourselves.

Who is the most inspiring person you’ve worked with and why?

Dan Sherer is an extraordinary artist and has profoundly changed the way I approach acting and the making of theatre. Everything I do is many-fold better for working with him. And Pasco Kevlin (who I think is now at Norwich Arts Centre) was a vital influence during and after my time at Essex University. I went to him in my third year, he had just started as artistic director, and said I want to produce a festival of performing arts. So we did.

What formal training have you done?

Drama at Essex, many years after that I got a place on the Mercury Theatre's Early Career Training program. Both of which were enormously valuable.

Do you have any specialist skills – anything from stilt walking to dress-making – which you work into your repertoire?

I play one or two musical instruments which is useful as I'm working with TWAS theatre right now on As You Like It for which I have learned to play the bodhran, one of three instruments I'll be playing, and singing, and I am making my own costume!

Which experience/role do you regard as the highlight of your career to date?

It's difficult to decide because I direct and have performed in so many different mediums it's difficult to compare them. Directing the students of Essex University's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2012 was enormously satisfying as they came such a long way, and got so much out of it. And of course the recent Romeo and Juliet on which I was the Assistant Director, those kids smashed it, I did some really good work with them. But then I played Macbeth in 2011, which was the hardest I ever worked. Last year I was doing stand-up though, and one gig at Firstsite really killed, I mean really. The stars aligned or something. It was beautiful.

What role would you most like to play and why?

Hamlet. I've been trying to get it done for years. It's something I'm desperate to get in to, not just because of the emotional resonance the character holds, but because the depths of his darkness haven't properly been explored. It's common knowledge that Hamlet is no hero, but it goes further than that, he's a deeply destructive force, and so completely self involved that he doesn't know the damage he's doing. Ophelia is the true tragic hero of Hamlet.