Taking A Leap

"If you need someone to play a golfer in a movie then you get a guy who can play golf; if you need someone to play an armed robber in a movie, you probably get someone who's done a few hold-ups.”

It seems simple enough, but actor and casting agent Grant Thompson realised not everyone had yet seen his logic, and in doing so found a way to help ex-criminals get in touch with their artistic side. “I was working on the Underbelly series, so I was doing all the extras, all the background casting for those shows, and I hired a couple of blokes to play a couple of armed robbers, and they'd actually been armed robbers before,” Thompson explains.

“It came with an authenticity, mate,” Thompson continues. “There's nothing worse than seeing shows on TV where you've got a bikie gang and they look like a bunch of Mosman fucking acting graduates. After doing the Underbelly series all the blokes that have done a bit of crime before come and see you and say, 'I could do that,' so I said, 'Okay, well let's see if you can.'”

It was then that Thompson started training up former incarcerates in the art of acting, and the cohort soon grew as Knockabouts, an agency for former criminals turning their hands to acting, established itself and Thompson's team landed more and more roles in the series. McKenzie got his start during Underbelly: Razor, which gave the one-time Parramatta inmate and father of actor Luke McKenzie (Rescue Special Ops) his first taste of the business. “It was fascinating for me, I loved it. I was an extra then, and for me that was perfect – just mulling about in the 1920s, 1930s clobber, just being part of it.”

For many former inmates being part of something isn't as simple as it sounds – the openness and trust required in Thompson's classes run counter to the protective self-sufficiency many practice while serving time. “There is a lot of gangs inside, but I didn't affiliate and never have. I just stayed on my own,” McKenzie explains. “As we assess human beings, and read them from our experience and find where blokes are at, when you've come from the same place and you recognise that, that's when it feels comfortable and feels good – then you can guide each other, trust each other.”

“There's a passion and a dedication that the blokes I work with have towards acting that you don't get from a lot of actors here in Australia,” Thompson chimes in. “These guys worked their arses off. They turned up every week to class and wanted to get better, and to teach the boys to be part of a team is really important.”

Teamwork became even more crucial when, late last year, a team of Thompson's actors turned their hand to theatre. The work, fittingly, is Jim McNeil's The Chocolate Frog, written during McNeil's time in Parramatta Gaol; its title references prison slang for 'dog', or a snitch, and in it two seasoned cellmates subject a new inmate to a revealing mock trial. At the same facility, Macca and company had a one-off performance to a crowd of actors, media and family after intensive rehearsals. “Mate, it was nerve-racking, tense, wonderful…” Thompson recalls in a blur. “It's a task that was, looking back on it, you'd think that's impossible. Like Macca – he'd never done ten lines of dialogue, live on stage, in front of a hundred people before, ever.”

“I'd never even been on stage, mate!” interjects Macca.

“He's been in front of a judge before!” Thompson half-jests, before continuing: “He's told some great stories, and we just used that experience – just speak from your heart, and allowing them to stand there and to feel what that's like, mate, I pushed them and they responded every time.”

The entire process from rehearsal to show night was filmed and the resulting documentary, Taking On The Chocolate Frog, will air in June. While the performance proved successful, and provided a powerful closing chapter to the documentary following the progression of the group of actors, Thompson doesn't want to stop there. “I want to have the blokes to feel what it's like to do a six-week run of a play, to learn form that, to experience what it's like to be a working theatre actor; that's the next journey I want to take them on.”