Crisel Consunji came to prominence for her portrayal of a Filipina domestic worker named Evelyn Santos in the 2018 award-winning Hong Kong film Still Human. But her first love is the theater.

Starting young

As a child growing up in Manila, the Philippines, she always wanted to sing and perform. When she was 10, Consunji saw a newspaper advertisement inviting children to audition for a part in Evita. The ad was placed by Repertory Philippines, a theater company that would produce English musicals, straight plays and dramas. Despite having no training or experience, Consunji was chosen for the show and subsequently got a chance to train with the company, which, at the time, was a pioneer in exposing talented young people to different forms of performance art.

"As part of a professional theater company, I wasn't given any particularly special treatment for being a child because for them, it's a job," says Consunji. "I learned the rudiments from scratch, such as how to communicate, how to stand on stage, how to use your voice properly. I think it benefited me a lot because you're very impressionable as a child."

She worked with the company until she was 23, and by that time she was more or less reconciled with the idea that not everybody who trained to be an actor went on to become one. However, when Consunji was completing her master's degree in political science, she was offered a job as a performing artist with Hong Kong Disneyland.

"I remember being so stressed from finishing my thesis that I thought, 'What harm would it do? I can finish editing my thesis in Hong Kong'. So, I took the eight-month contract, which became three years," she says.