My happy place: Bronwyn Turei, actor

Bronwyn Turei appears in the Blue Baths Comedy Cabaret. Photo / GOTYA PHOTOGRAPHY

My happy place is where I'm performing, so I get to take my happy place with me wherever I work. It always changes. At the moment it's performing at the Blue Baths in Rotorua. I'm doing a comedy cabaret here so all my happy places are wrapped into one.

It's just such a gorgeous building with so much history, and lovingly restored and revamped. It was quite a romantic place in its day; a lot of romances started here.

You drive up and see this absolutely gorgeous facade and, as soon as you walk in, there is this wonderful energy, this really beautiful feeling that it's got lots of stories to tell. And I'm getting to add to that - to tell my own stories.

The stage is where the diving boards used to be, and we're running on and off it and around the back, throwing gorgeous costumes around everywhere and getting changed where the original changing rooms were.

I discovered that performing was my happy place when I was very young. When I was about 9 I saw an ad in the local newspaper for auditions for Oliver Twist at the operatic society in Gisborne, where I grew up.

After the audition, I felt really ill and Mum took me home - I'd worked myself up so much and was so anxious about the whole thing that I got a migraine, threw up and went to sleep.

But I did get in. It just went from there - whenever anything else popped up I'd audition for it.

I carried on with it through high school, then auditioned for Unitec's Performing for Stage and Screen degree, and went off and did that. And that gave me the opportunities that started me in the right direction.

Even as a child, I liked the camaraderie - the group dynamic you get with performing - and the rush of excitement and adrenalin when you get to create a character and tell a story and be a part of something. It's the same feeling I get today.

I get so nervous beforehand. I start to wonder, "Why do I do this to myself?"

And then you get out there and perform and, for me, it's like the feeling of being on a swing.

You're at the peak of that swing and the adrenalin rush happens and you have butterflies in your stomach, and you're just so happy.

- as told to Bronwyn Sell

And you say, "That's why I do it. I just love this, so much."

The Blue Baths Comedy Cabaret is on until February 15.
Bronwyn Turei is an ambassador for Unitec's My Success Campaign, which is offering three $10,000 grants to help New Zealanders achieve their goals. See www.mysuccess.ac.nz.