‘Be the person people want to remember’
Found on local stages captivating an audience, actor, Tumelo Kope-Baloyi talks about his love for the stage.
To some, the stage might look intimidating but to Tumelo Kope-Baloyi, it’s where he loves to firmly plant himself. With a performing career that spans two decades so far, this is only the beginning for this actor.
Many might have seen Kope-Baloyi recently on stage at the National Children’s Theatre (NCT) as part of the cast of Zoë and The Gnomes, a whimsical play that is said to follow the adventure Zoë, a cat, and her owner, Emma, together with their friends, the Gnomes.
He plays the character of a gnome named Fred – a character he finds interesting because of the accent. “To this day, I still don’t know what accent he has, and it is amazing,” he said.
He jokingly added that even though the character is said to be Scandinavian, sometimes he sounds Jamaican.
The first production he remembers being part of was a Christmas piece he starred in while at Northcliff Primary School. In it, he played Peter, though it was a very small solo role in the overall production, he still remembers it today.
If his love for the stage was planted while in primary school, then it was his time at Northcliff High School where it was nurtured. This nurturing he owes to Nick Jourdan, the school’s head of the arts department and director of its plays.
“[He] directed, choreographed, planned, organised, and gave all us theatre kids the opportunity and experience to perform at what I believe to be a professional level.”
Kope-Baloyi hails Jourdan for pushing him to the absolute limit, attributing him to the sort of performer he is today.
Now, in the harvest of his career, the Tshwane University of Technology lecturer listed some of his best characters played so far as NCT’s 2016 production of A Year with Frog and Toad, where he played the title character and Oak Youth Theatre’s production of Aladdin, where played Genie.
To aspirant actors and actresses out there, Kope-Baloyi said to make sure people see you. “Do whatever you can, whatever you need to, to make sure that you get seen. If you are seen, you are remembered, and if you are remembered, that is how you get hired, and the more you are hired, the more you are seen.
Humility is the name of the game. Be the person people want to work with, be the person people want to remember.”
Related articles:
