I'm not sure if it's an applet issue (I don't deal with applets too much), but you should be able to call the main function as you would any other static function.
So, if your class was called TestClass, you would run the function with:
TestClass.main(null);
The null argument is necessary since the standard argument set for the main function is String[] args.
I know this works outside an applet. Let me know if that works for you in an applet.
Hope that helps,
Mike Lundin
michael.lundin@summitsite.com