Peter Bankole must have been born under a lucky star. Just weeks after leaving drama school the former Kings Norton schoolboy bagged a part in the hit television series The Rotters' Club and this spring he will be treading the boards at one of the country's premier theatres in Stratford-upon-Avon. And the two parts could not be further apart. In the adaptation of Jonathan Coe's best-selling novel, 23-year-old Peter played Steve Richards, the only black pupil in a private school, and with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre he is Cobweb, a fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream. The past 18 months really have been a dream come true for Peter. Ever since he was small he had a love of acting but Peter also knew it could be tough to find work. "I guess I was about four when I knew I wanted to act and I always had a real drive for the future," he says. "In many ways it seemed a bit far-fetched but when I was about 15 I realised that all the various ideas for careers which had been round and round in my head just weren't what I wanted and I really wanted to act. My parents were really supportive and everything has turned out brilliantly so far." Peter attended St Thomas Aquinas School in Kings Norton before taking a BTEC National Diploma in Performing Arts at Solihull College and a BA Honours degree in Acting at Rose Bruford College in Kent. But even before completing his degree, he had appeared on the small screen gaining parts in the Birmingham-filmed series Doctors, in Casualty and in a staged reading of The Fireworks Party at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. "They were all good fun," he says. "In Casualty I had a road accident and lost an arm and in The Fireworks Party I had to come in to quell a neighbourhood dispute with a very angry Blues fan. I was the social worker type character." ar But Peter's big break came with The Rotters' Club. "I landed that role just a month out of drama school," he says. "And it was a role I really identified with. It wasn't like that at my school but even then there would always be the odd joke that people would make. I actually based that role a lot around my brother as he is older than me and he was the only black male in his school. I was forever asking him about it." And then came the call from the Royal Shakespeare Company. "I had just auditioned for two months' filming for a children's drama but when I was told I had been offered this part with the RSC I couldn't turn it down. I couldn't believe it," he says. Alongside the part of Cobweb, Peter is also understudy for Demetrius and will form part of the cast of The Comedy of Errors, working with the RSC until next year in Stratford, London and Tokyo. And it is proving to be a punishing, if exciting schedule. "We are in rehearsal pretty much all day every day," he says. "And it is very physical. As a group the fairies are carrying people around the stage, creating shapes from shadows and doing all kinds of gymnastics. I taught myself a few backwards somersaults when I was training, using a mattress round a friend's house - I am grateful for that now." * Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on various dates between March 31-October 8, contact 0870 609 1110 or the www.rsc.org.uk website for details. | 
