Most showbiz careers start with a show in the family home and some continue there.
Auckland actor Lara Fischel-Chisholm (32) returned to her Roslyn family home to perform the show This Is My Real Job at the Dunedin Fringe Festival on Thursday night.
''The show pays homage to the idea of the living room performance that most of us did - or were dragged into - as kids.''
As a child, she was always the producer/director/lead actor of the living room performance and her younger brother and cousins were ''dragged in, bossed around and dressed up''.
Her parents paid 50c to watch a performance, she said.
The show used her experiences of growing up in Dunedin ''as a child of '80s and '90s'' and investigated the childhood ''dreams and delusions'' of being an actor.
''The dream and the reality are quite different and I love the idea of an adult holding on to that dream.''
Sometimes, the mortgage and motherhood had her doubting her career choice but doubt was a natural part of being creative.
''You do need to learn to function with a certain level of anxiety.''
But she needed to perform and could not stop acting.
''You're driven by this compulsion and you can't stop ...
''If I just hang in there longer than anyone else, it will all be OK and all the other actresses in my age group will move overseas or drop out and I'll be the only one left they can employ,'' she said laughing.
Before the ''world premiere'' on Thursday, she peeked out from an upstairs window and watched the audience enter her family home. The childhood nerves returned, too.
''I really believed in the shows I made as a kid ... There was the performance anxiety, thinking 'I'm going to do my best show for Mum and Dad'.''
The main difference between performing as a child and an adult was the review in the newspaper the next day, she said.
Here's the review - see this show.
