NAFA Chat: A Japanese actor in Australia
Monday, 9 October 2023
6.30pm – 7.30pm (doors open 6pm)
Upstairs at Forrester’s, Surry Hills
Guest Speaker: Shingo Usami
Actor Shingo Usami was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. Dreaming of becoming an actor since childhood, he nevertheless could not see a path towards his goal.
While at university in Tokyo he joined an amateur theatre group and performed in small productions. After graduation in 1992 he moved to Milwaukee in the US as a part of a volunteer programme and taught Japanese at high schools.
It was Shingo’s first experience living overseas and his English was quite limited, so his acting dream seemed more distant than ever.
Three years later he had an opportunity to teach Japanese in Australia, a country he had never imagined living in. During his second year in this job Shingo saw an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald for an Asian actor in a co-op play. He auditioned for it, got the role, and that was his Australian debut.
Although the production was not successful, his love for performing had been reignited. He signed with an agent and started doing occasional work.
When Shingo gained permanent residency he quit his full-time job at the Department of Education and committed himself to acting. He was 31 years old.
Shingo has been fortunate to have had many acting opportunities over the past 25 years, but this hasn’t been without some difficulties. Roles for a Japanese actor with English as a second language were generally limited to the one-dimensional, as could be expected of the time.
He eventually tired of the mean Japanese soldier and the stereotypical Japanese businessman. This was the impetus for creating a role for himself in his 2016 short film Riceballs. Telling the story of a Japanese father and his half-Australian son, the film screened in many festivals around the world.
In 2019 Shingo won his first recurring TV role in AMC’s “The Terror: Infamy”. It was a historical horror series which depicted the hardship and survival of Japanese Americans following the Pearl Harbor attack.
Shingo portrayed a fisherman who lost everything to the internment policy. Playing such a significant and meaningful role was a career highlight and honour. He felt particularly lucky to have a role which embodied the way he looked and sounded.
