Vera Chok
| Vera Chok | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Vera Chok Petaling Jaya, Malaysia |
| Occupation | Actor / Writer |
| Years active | 2000–present |
| Website |
www |
Vera Chok is a London-based actor and writer, who has featured in stage, screen and radio roles.
Early life and education
Chok was born in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, of Chinese ancestry. After attending Assunta Primary and Secondary schools in Malaysia and Abbots Bromley School in Staffordshire, she graduated from Queens College, Oxford, before training as an actor at the Poor School[1] in London and with Philippe Gaulier in Paris.
Career
Chok's main theatre roles have included parts in the award-winning Lucy Kirkwood play Chimerica (2013), as part of the original cast at the Almeida and Harold Pinter theatres[2] and in The World of Extreme Happiness (The Shed at the National Theatre, 2013), in which she co-starred with Katie Leung. Chok played the part of Ming Ming, a female migrant worker, in a production about the world of migrant workers in rapidly emerging modern China.[3]
In 2015, Chok appeared in Nicholas Hytner's final production as artistic director for the National Theatre, Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem.[4] The play was Stoppard's first for the theatre since 2006 and a special screening was broadcast live to cinemas. She subsequently had roles in the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company production of The Winter's Tale at the Garrick Theatre in late 2015 [5] [6] and an associated work, Terence Rattigan's Harlequinade, also at the Garrick, which humorously depicts a postwar CEMA-sponsored theatrical troop at a provincial theatre in Brackley making a hash of Romeo and Juliet and "the intrigues and dalliances of the company members".[7]
Chok was nominated in the 2015 BBC Audio Drama Awards (Best Debut Performance In An Audio Drama)[8] for her performance in the BBC Radio 3 production of British Chinese novelist Xiaolu Guo's first play, Dostoevsky And The Chickens (2014), in which she co-starred.[9] In Liao Yimei's comedy drama Rhinoceros in Love, also for Radio 3, she plays the beautiful Mingming, the object of a zookeeper's longing, in a performance described by the Sunday Times as 'bewitching'.[10]
She appeared in Jingo (2008, Finborough Theatre, London) and played the lead role of Lila in the stage adaptation of Philip Pullman's The Firework-Maker's Daughter (2011, Theatre by the Lake) - described by The Stage as a 'poignant performance'.[11]
In addition, Chok has appeared in a number of independent and main release films and in the long-running ITV series Coronation Street.
Whatsonstage.com named her one of "15 theatre faces to look out for in 2015".[12] Asked by the magazine to give her advice on International Women's Day, Chok said "Play the long game: stay open, generous, and keep developing your craft."[13]
In 2016, she contributed a chapter to the widely publicised anthology of the personal accounts of members of immigrant and ethnic minorities in the UK, 'The Good Immigrant'.[14] Writing about her experiences as a Malaysian immigrant in Britain in the Guardian during Black History Month, Chok commented on the invisibility of 'East Asian' groups in Britain: "In the UK media, we don’t see south Asians portrayed in a way that reflects their position as the largest racial minority group in the UK (3 million to 1.9 million black British). East Asians, the third-largest and fastest-growing racial group at 1.2 million, people bear the damning “model minority” label which isolates them from other people of colour, and condemns them to an invisibility where violence against them is ignored."[15]
Producing
In 2010 Chok founded saltpeter, an independent theatre company. She produced and starred in their opera production Tonseisha - The Man Who Abandoned the World (2014 - Studio, Central Saint Martins), which is adapted from the play by Erik Patterson.[16] In the work, which features opera, dance and theatre, Chok played Yukiko, a Japanese woman haunted by the losses of her father and Beat writer Richard Brautigan. In 2011, she founded the Brautigan Book Club, which stimulates creative explorations based on Brautigan's work.
Filmography
Film
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Heartless | Lily | London Film School, Sasha Collington |
| 2007 | The Games | Athlete | Audience Award, East End Film Festival (2008), Optimistic Productions, Hilary Powell |
| 2008 | Son | Dancer | Sister Films, Daniel Mulloy |
| 2010 | The Heights | Mrs Watson | BBC/Shorthouse, Sue Dunderdale |
| 2011 | Random 11 | Candace | VertigoHeights, TS Ukpo |
| 2012 | Alice 3 | Alice | VertigoHeights, TS Ukpo |
| 2012 | After the World Ended | Anna | VertigoHeights, TS Ukpo |
| 2012 | Panic | Ling | White Night Films, Sean Spencer |
| 2013 | The Riot Club (released September 2014) | Banker | Blueprint, Lone Scherfig |
| 2014 | Alice in the City (working title) | Alice | TS Ukpo |
| 2014 | Lucky 13 | Mallory | TS Ukpo |
| 2015 | Miss You Already | Chang Zhe Tzung | New Sparta/S Films, Catherine Hardwicke |
| 2016 | Simana | VertigoHeights, TS Ukpo |
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Selamat Pagi Malaysia (Good Morning Malaysia) | Presenter | |
| 2009 | Future Perfect (pilot) | Sarah | Vertigo Heights, TS Ukpo |
| 2010 | Hacket Hill (pilot) | Spittlelick | Drowning Bee Productions, Dominic St Clair |
| 2012 | Coronation Street | Moira Bayley | ITV Granada, David Kester. Episode 8029. |
| 2016 | Chewing Gum | Ada Bau | E4, Michaela Coel. Series 2. |
Radio
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Dostoevsky and the Chickens | Nieu | BBC Radio 3, Emma Harding |
| 2014 | Brief Lives (Season 7, Episode 1)[17] | Anh | BBC Radio 4, Tom Fry / Sharon Kelly |
| 2014 | Rhinoceros in Love [18] | Mingming | BBC Radio 3, Emma Harding |
Theatre
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | The Winter's Tale (by William Shakespeare) | Time | Toured Japan with OUDS |
| 2007 | When the Lights Went Out | Samina | Tara Arts UK Tour, Vik Sivalingam |
| 2008 | Jingo by Charles Wood | Shirley | Finborough Theatre, Primavera Productions |
| 2009 | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, adapted from the translation by Simon Armitage | Guinevere / The Green Lady | New Perspectives (UK tour), Daniel Buckroyd |
| 2010 | Mansfield Park and Ride | Fanny Fitztightly/Lucy Bonnet | Eastern Angles, Ivan Cutting |
| 2010 | Uncle Vanya (by Anton Chekhov) | Yelena | Sturdy Beggars, Vik Sivalingam |
| 2010 | The Death of Tintagel | Ygraine | saltpeter, Vik Sivalingam |
| 2011 | Talking in Bed | Nadia | Theatre 503, Cecily Boys |
| 2011 | The Fever | Brighton Fringe, saltpeter, Gary Merry | |
| 2011 | The Firework-Maker's Daughter (theatre adaptation) | Lila | Theatre by the Lake, Stefan Escreet |
| 2012 | Upstairs (rehearsed reading) | Noi | Finborough Theatre, Steve Keyworth |
| 2013 | Chimerica (by Lucy Kirkwood) | Mary Chang/Michelle | Almeida Theatre, Harold Pinter Theatre, Sonia Friedman Productions, Lyndsey Turner |
| 2013 | The World of Extreme Happiness | Xiao Li / Ming - Ming / Qing Shu Min | National Theatre, Michael Longhurst |
| 2014 | Twelfth Night (by William Shakespeare) | Maria | Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, Max Webster |
| 2015 | The Hard Problem (by Tom Stoppard) | Bo | National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner |
| 2015 | The Winter's Tale (by William Shakespeare) | Dorcas | Garrick Theatre, Kenneth Branagh |
| 2015 | Harlequinade (by Terence Rattigan) | Miss Fishlock | Garrick Theatre, Kenneth Branagh |
External links
- Official website
- Vera Chok at the Internet Movie Database
- Vera Chok on Twitter
- Spotlight Actresses 2013/14 - Vera Chok
References
- ↑ "WHO'S THIS MALAYSIAN ACTRESS WHO'S ACTING WITH JAMES BONDS' BOSS?". Cil!sos.my. 2015. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
- ↑ "Spotlight Actresses 2013/2014". Spotlight. 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ↑ "The World of Extreme Happiness: A Story of China's Urban Migrants". The Culture Trip - China. 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ↑ "Casting, Plot and Dates Announced for National Theatre Production of Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem". Playbill.com. 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
- ↑ "The Winter's Tale". Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company. 2015. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
- ↑ "The Winter's Tale/Harlequinade (Garrick Theatre)". WhatsOnStage.com. 2015. Retrieved 13 Nov 2015.
- ↑ "Harlequinade". Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company. 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2015.
- ↑ "Doctor Who and Ian McKellen among BBC Audio Drama Award nominations". Digital Spy. 18 November 2014. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
- ↑ "The Wire - Dostoevsky and the Chickens". BBC. 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ↑ "Radio Reviews "Pick of the day"". The Sunday Times. London. 19 October 2014.
- ↑ "The Firework-Maker's Daughter". The Stage. 5 December 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ↑ "15 theatre faces to look out for in 2015". Whatsonstage.com. 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
- ↑ "26 leading ladies offer their advice on International Women's Day". Whatsonstage.com. 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
- ↑ "Sitting comfortably? The Good Immigrant will change that". The Spectator. 2016. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
- ↑ "Is political blackness still relevant today?". The Guardian. 2016. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
- ↑ "Malaysia has Talents - Abroad". New Straits Times. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
- ↑ "Radio Times - Brief Lives, Season 7, Episode 1". Radio Times. 2014. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
- ↑ "Drama on 3: Rhinoceros In Love". BBC Media Centre. 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2014.