With fair skin and an oval face, Oum Puthy Theary, 25, is already an accomplished dramatic voice actor.

She’s proudly done voice-overs for many Metfone audio plays, ranging from ghost stories, to romances, to comedies.

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“Radio stage play is more difficult than dramatic acting. As you know, drama has the visuals – when they smile, the audience sees. But with radio, the audience has to imagine, and the actors have to make them understand by painting a picture with voice,” Theary explained.

“When I’m contracted, I have to write and produce 16 stories, each at 15 minutes or more. This requires a lot of creativity, talent and effort,” she said.

In addition to voice acting, Theary dabbles in stage drama as well – a type of Khmer drama where only the voice is heard and the people are not seen.

“On stage, we have to perform with lots of livelihood. You have to imagine how to difficult it is to act with only your voice,” Theary said. “We have to think and prepare a lot.”

Theary continued: “Of course, we’re concerned that this art is losing popularity on the market. People usually equate drama with cinema and television, and don’t usually think about this kind of stage play.”

Also, Theary works behind the scenes writing scripts for voice-overs. She’s written three for the education sector.

As a fourth-year student at Royal University of Fine Art, Theary’s chosen to write her thesis on directing.

However, she’s noted that directing is “a hard job for artists, since all we get from the audience is clapping”.

“However,” Theary professed, “I still love and support what I do.”