In your acting classes you’ll be rehearsing and performing scenes every week. You’ll gain an all-round practical understanding of the art of acting. You will learn by doing, while at the same time understanding what you are doing. 

Developed from Stanislavski, our course will train you in the actor’s art of creation and expression – the ability ‘to create the inner life of a human spirit and to express it in artistic form’. 

We lay great stress on developing the imagination. The acting classes are very carefully structured, so that you develop your understanding of acting in an organic, methodical way. 

In the first term you will learn to create inner life, how to express in through physical action and the importance of creating background circumstances and finding and playing objectives. Later, you will start to write your own short scenes, devising these with the help of your peers. 

In the second term we stress the importance of interplay with other actors, and the development of emotional sensibility and the ability to improvise. You will be given the chance to explore characterisation, learning how to build a character step by step. It culminates in an informal presentation of a substantial exercise, giving you the chance to use all you have learned so far. 

In the third term we move on to text. You will work on three texts from well- known plays, and learn how to study a text and all the background work you need to do to build a performance, while at the same time learning how to rehearse in a practical, creative way. 

The year finishes with a presentation of work in progress to a paying audience. 

Dedicated body and movement classes will train you to understand the relationship between emotional and physical energy and how these energies are responsible for the development of character. 

In life, the body is hot-wired to react first and think later. By harnessing this power you will be able to create the strongest performance in the most natural, holistic and truthful manner. 

The training will teach you to read body language in others and to discover the powerful possibilities of true emotional interplay. 

Another important aspect of the work is a guided approach to learning about yourself in space: sensing an awareness of the space you are in and how to use it, as well as your physical relationship to others in that space. 

Your dedicated movement tutor will guide you through this over the year. 

Your voice is your instrument and you must learn how to build it, how to play it, and how to look after it. It is vital to do this in a methodical careful way. You will learn to develop your voice from first principles. 

Freedom from physical tensions, alignment, breath, resonance and articulation work are the cornerstones of the voice curriculum. 

Voice work helps build an instrument that has power and stamina, flexibility and expressiveness: a voice that effortlessly reveals the character’s inner life. 

You’ll gain an understanding of your own voice and speech habits, so that you can free yourself of habits that limit you in rehearsal or performance and craft new mannerisms for the characters you portray. 

Also important is learning how to approach text and how to express an author’s and a character’s words in an array of different ways. 

Your dedicated voice and speech tutor will guide you through this over the year.