Monster was originally a 50 minute stage play toured around the UK.

Escape Artists have performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Picollo Teatro, Milan and the Volksbuhne Theatre, Berlin. Patrons include Harold Pinter and Beryl Bainbridge.

This is the second Big Issue Film Festival. It is compered by Empire film critic Anna Smith, who led a panel of judges including Michael Deeley, director Nicholas Roeg and actress Jenny Agutter. Also judging was Matt Ford from the Big Issue, Lee Shulman, winner of the Sky Short Film Festival, and Simon Young who bought an entry last year.

Escape Artists recently launched the Prison Arts Network: an international information exchange for all those working in the arts in prisons and the criminal justice system.

Dina Mufti spoke to Paul about the challenges of portraying a man on the social margins...

Paul Malcolm as Alfred

How was it to play Monster and what did you have to put into it emotionally and psychologically? It is quite a draining role. It’s a monologue and it’s basically an old down and out, homeless alcoholic and in the course of the play you think maybe this person’s a paedophile, you think there’s something nasty lurking in the background.

But in the course of the play you learn about the tragedies that have happened in this man's life and what’s propelled him on to this park bench where he sits every day, claiming to be security looking out for the kids in the park and it’s a very, very draining role.

What attracted me to it was that Dominic the writer used to work in this office and on his lunch break he used to go to this park and an old man was there drinking super lager and ranting and raving and Dominic actually went up and started to talk him. People in his work would say ‘what are you talking to this guy for?’

Dominic said that this guy had an incredible life, some incredible things had happened to him and he saw him as a person not as a stereotype or as a caricature and that’s what attracted me to Monster; you see down and outs, you see them at 9 o’clock in the morning drinking super lager, you see people begging in the streets.

But these people aren’t born that way, they had a life before that. Some things have happened to them that have created a situation that has made them down and out and they tend to be stigmatised. You have to look deeper at what these people are going through and where they’ve come from.

It’s very similar to being a prisoner or being an ex-prisoner, you do tend to get stereotyped. That happened to us in prison, we managed to break some of those stereotypes down through the drama group and we managed to do it as well through Escape Artists and I think that’s very important.

Why do you and other ex-offenders see acting as such a powerful tool. Were you sitting in your cell and decided it was something you wanted to do, or was it part of a discussion. How did the idea come about?
I didn’t have any acting background. My involvement started in the Scrubs (Wormwood) in an alternative theatre group there. A couple of the group left and some friends of mine on the wing asked me if I’d go along and make up the numbers and I thought it was a positive thing.

They were casting for The Homecoming (Harold Pinter) and I got a part in that. I just found that for me acting was something I could do, people said I had ability to do and it was just a great form of expression for me. And then I was transferred to Wayland, which was a pretty miserable experience because it was just before we were going to perform The Homecoming and I’d got all my lines down for my character and it was snatched away from me.

So I was determined that I would try and recreate that group in Wayland. Also I found there were other aspects to it that were non artistic. Prisons are a very individualistic mode of existence, it’s very much look after number one. But I found that when I went to the group there was a collective there almost like a sacrifice of self for the greater good which was so different from normal prison life.

I saw the way the other prisoners really benefited from that, the social aspect of theatre, the collective responsibility of getting the show from conception to production, and it wasn’t just the actors it was everybody, you know the person who makes the tea.

We had prisoners who were attracted to the group because it was almost like a surrogate family, and it wasn’t just within the confines of rehearsal or production, it was actually back in the wing - that feeling fed through and it was totally opposed to everything that prison seems to promote.

Since you left prison and moved on, how’s it affected your life to be involved in this? It has affected my life enormously. I think when I came out of prison I had friends and family who were enormously supportive throughout my sentence and when I was released, but I think being involved in Escape Artists gave me a sense of purpose and a direction. I’ve done other work, some TV work and now I’ve been out of prison for 7 years and I see myself as a professional actor and not so much as an ex-prisoner.