From suits to stars: featuring James Yan (playing Josh)

James Yan will be starring in the upcoming Musical Theatre Company show “Mad, Crazy, Love” this weekend at the Tower Theatre.

From suits to stars is a blog segment featuring students at Stage & the City, and pulls back the curtain on their lives and experiences as adults participating on our courses. This feature aims to remove the common misconceptions about performing arts classes as only being for professional actors or dancers, but instead that most of our students are from all walks of life. As our slogan says, classes for adults who just want to have fun!

Please tell us a little bit about your background and what you do for a living

I’m James Yan, I’m 26 and I’m a trade deal negotiator for the UK government.

What inspired you to join our Musical Theatre Company?

I’ve always loved musical theatre since I was at school and I thought Stage and City was a really good company for young professionals to do musical theatre and have fun after work.

What do you love the most about performing arts?

I love expressing myself on stage, being free and exploring sides of me that I haven’t even found out about yet.

What do you enjoy the most about being a member of our Musical Theatre Company?

The people! It’s such a great group of lovely and supportive people and we have a good laugh.

Soon you will be performing in our musical production at the Tower Theatre, is this going to be the first time you’ve performed in front of an audience?

I’ve performed in various school and university productions before but this is my first musical theatre performance in 5 years so I’m very excited!

James will be performing in the Musical Theatre Company show, “Mad, Crazy, Love” which debuts this Friday the 22nd of November at the Tower Theatre.