My name is Alper Chochev, and I am 28 years old. I am born in Sevlievo, Bulgaria. I am currently doing what I have dreamed of, and I fought to achieve for many years.
What is it and how did I get here… Stay turned to the end!
I was 15 years old and confused about what I want to do in life. On a personal level, my parents were divorced, and I lived only with my father. From a young age, he kept telling me that I should work at the state administration. To be more specific – army, fire department or the Ministry of the Interior. Of course, I really liked this idea. Why not, I said to myself… I will be respected, it doesn’t require much of my efforts, just a desire, and it will happen. At that point I decided to fight for it. I started regularly to go to the gym, box and many other sports. I started preparing myself little by little to study in one of the most respected Academies in Bulgaria named “Simeonovo”. If you get accepted there you will come out with a rank of an officer and your life will be well arranged. This had become my dream.
Annually, however, in my school we had a day of the amateur. On that day, all classes prepared sketches and presented them to the whole school. It wasn’t that interesting to me at the time, but we were a few guys who gathered together and decided to introduce the class to everyone. Surprisingly, we performed very well and the jury possessed us on the 2nd place. I enjoyed it… Everyone was congratulating us and wanted to talk to us. We were the stars of the school. That is how the invitations from back then the director of the regional Theater – Mr. Uzunov – began. He kept inviting me to play in the theater, but instead I was telling to myself “I’m not crazy”. Everyone will laugh at me…”. At that time, to tell you honestly, I have already gained strength and I weighed about 90 kilograms and I was close to my goal – Simeonovo!
However, the next academic year started and again there was the day of the self-made man (amateur) at school. We did a sketch again, and this time we won the first place, I also received an award for the best male role. Back then I thought: “These people are crazy, what do I understand of acting”. Again and again Mr. Uzunov was trying to get me into the theater, and I was keep refusing him diligently. It’s time for my prom (for those who don’t know what this event is – we are celebrating the end of the high school education). During the prom, someone from each class had to come out in front of the school board and say a final speech. To admit, I was artistic in class and in life, but somehow I didn’t imagine myself in it. Despite everything, my class selected me to represent them in our final speech.
No matter if I wanted…I came out and I started talking and to my surprise everyone started laughing. Also, someone had taken a video and as a joke I decided to upload it to social networks. On the next day only the video had collected over 100k views, and I was even more speechless.
At that moment, Mr. Uzunov called me again and asked me to replace a boy, who had a minor role in a play. Ironically, the role was exactly what I want to become – a police officer… I agreed. I only had 2 lines, so what could go wrong… This role turned everything around. The feeling was unique, I saw the audience were happy, and they congratulated me, and then I said to myself that this is awesome… That’s how a new dream began to emerge in me, namely to be on the stage, to be an actor, to entertain people… So I continued with the theater, I played a few more roles and I travelled all over the country, meeting different people from different background. Despite everything, I still decided to apply to Simeonovo, but they did not accept me. Then, I decided to take everything in my hands. I remembered the prom video, how in a day it got 100 thousand views, and decided to start shooting videos. Literally in a very short time I made over 10k followers on Facebook. I continued to not believe what was happening. My videos were viewed hundreds of times, even some of them had millions of views. That is how my second dream began to come true. I was stubborn. I worked tirelessly.
Coming to the current moment. I have my YouTube channel in which I have almost 120 thousand subscribers. I did 7 shows that were watched by thousands of people. I met unique personalities who are lovely by many in Bulgaria. In general, the best moments are yet to come…
At the end of this story, I want to tell you one thing. You never know what will happen to you along the way. You never know who will point you in the right direction. Who will give you a hand… Everything happens for a reason. I believe in this. So dream to the end, fight and sooner or later everything will come true. No matter what things you dream about. You just have to prove that you really want it!