Acting can lead you to fascinating and perilous places. While searching for the ultimate acting technique, an artist can be driven by emotions and physical actions that push him to the limit. Alan McKenna is walking down a dark road and falling into dangerous worlds, both as a writer and actor. He declares that “Without Name (Lorcan Finnegan, 2016) was one such journey, having to play a character (Eric) who slowly loses his grip on reality, thus isolating himself from normality and conventional society. He’s slipping away, he knows it, but is seemingly unable to prevent his descent.

Without Name is an Irish production about a land surveyor hired by a private contractor to assess an isolated woodland construction. His work is intriguing. It is not clear what he is doing and why he is attracted by a place that looks like a void in the map. The feature is a sensory experience with a magnetic photography.

It is not the first time that McKenna gets involved in films that lead him and the audience to the arms of Morpheus. He produced The Somnanbulists (Richard Jobson, 2011), that likewise Without Name was presented at London Film Festival. It portrays 15 testimonies from British serviceman and women who went to the Iraq conflict in Basra. They look like ghosts as they talk, but in fact they reflect society. We are the Somnambulists, as we are sleepwalking in the build-up to the war.

As a writer, he has a number of scripts completed and in development. Slammer, which was on the Brit List 2015, is a dark tale centring on a man’s determination to protect his family, despite being very ill-equipped to do so. His reluctance to accept that things are outside of his control sends him spiralling out of control and haunted by the demons of his own past. This script is being produced by McKenna and Carole Sheridan, and they are looking to shoot in New Zealand. Animals (2017) is another dark tale about a man hellbent on revenge, who is forced to team up with the last person he would want to in order to carry out his revenge. The film twists the revenge thriller genre and is a slice of modern Noir.

You can write to him at alanmckenna@mac.com or follow him @ALMckenna.