Classes in London
London Acting Classes
INTENSIVE METHOD ACTING UNITS
These are the heart of the acting training program. Each unit runs for an intensive four-week period specifically designed to engage and challenge your acting, building the muscles and techniques that bring real depth to your work. The month-long session will give you a proper understanding of Method as an approach to the actor’s craft, the ability to take away and practice the tools and techniques in a foundation form, and give you the means to take your acting further. Method is about living from your thoughts impulses and emotions creatively, the intensity of the month is specifically designed to engage a real practical journey. With an in-depth introduction and repetition in both the TECHNIQUE and SCENE CLASS classes, you can truly acquire and assess the validity of this process and how it fits in with your journey as an actor. There are many acting courses London provides. However many focus on results, which means how to develop a career, before you can really develop your craft. The focus and philosophy of method acting are centred around the actor’s instrument, or to put it another way your creative muscles. The most important creative muscle being the unconscious, which fuels each thing you do as an actor. How you say a line, how you react. All the creative detail that informs the quality of your work, is motivated by the flow of your thoughts impulses and emotions. In practical terms, the unconscious is quicker than the conscious mind. If you’re only working from conscious ideas, it reads to an audience. However, when you work more intuitively, instinctively, organically, authentically, this comes across in the quality of your acting. Therefore over the last 18 years, Method acting has developed a robust programme of acting units which truly grows and strengthens these creative muscles.
ACTING CRAFT UNITS
Once a proper understanding and engagement with the actors craft has been enabled, we can then effectively bring in the focus and endgame of an actor’s career. Much of what you will do as an actor is not based upon what you should do, but what you choose to do. The acting craft units such as, AUDITION TECHNIQUE or BUILDING A CHARACTER are designed to develop your ability to understand the material that the actor works with in the industry. More importantly to present a imaginative and more truthful interpretation of the material. In each of our London acting classes you can focus upon the script text you are working with, as well as constructing and building the character within that text. That way when you come into the audition, or you are working in front of the camera, you have a clear sense of what it is that you need to do as well as what you want to do.
AUDITION TECH/ SCRIPT WORK UNIT
Apart from developing a proper methodology for auditioning, the auditioning technique unit will look at the important components of textual work. How to put ACTIONS into the text, this is where you add a verb to each line to inform its dramatic expression, more importantly consider what is alive sub textually in the script. Also how to understand the scripts dramatic construct by the use of breaking the text into small units, known as uniting. It also develops the important context of the Given Circumstances. Therefore the audition technique class develops your script analysis skills as well.
VOICE & MOVEMENT UNITS
In our London acting classes, another important component is the use of your voice and body in your work. The voice and movement units bring alive a much more expressive and creative way to uses these core acting muscles. Apart from the important connection your thought impulses and emotions have to your voice, as well as the flow of your movements. There are some very important character skills that you require. Otherwise each character will walk and talk just like you. However interesting you may be that is limiting. Success on both the creative and professional level is strongly connected to how flexible you are as an actor. Therefore your voice and body and how professionally you can use them can be the difference between success and failure in this industry.
CORE CREATIVE MUSCLES
Your ability to establish, develop, and prosper professionally will rest primarily on how much you developed the core muscles covered in the available acting craft units. As you grow the more powerful and creative muscles of your thoughts impulses and emotions in the Main Method Acting unit. You can bring this more developed acting ability into the other acting units. That way we are truly developing your acting craft. A craft which you can then really use in the industry. That way you have a true Method, i.e. methodology. You will have both the technical and craft skills required to unlock and prosper with your greater potential. Each acting class in London is designed to take that potential into your acting career.
Acting is a misunderstood craft, the whole job is to make it look easy. The framework of the job is not complicated in comparison to brain surgery or sending a rocket to the moon. The true complexity is how much work you have put into your creative muscles groups. The creative and professional rewards are in proportion to how much you have invested in your training. The acting courses in London we provide our structure as units so that you can specifically focus on each component. That way you are truly working each muscle. As would a professional athlete focus on the specific muscles, to develop each component required. The true fun and creative inspiration of acting is having trained yourself to such a degree that it’s no longer a struggle but an inspiring challenge. Each unit challenges you in such a way that you can inevitably become inspired from the amount of work you have put in.
INTENSIVE METHOD MONTH
 All the craft needs an acting instrument that can bring life to the craft. So under specific guidance in the acting courses in London, each month intensively develops your capacity to relax and, then by various means, turns your creative thoughts into an acting reality, whether on Stage or in front of the camera. It improves, expands, and strengthens your ability, by developing your talents in working with approach, technique, and acting skills. Given the intense nature of the industry in the 21st century, this facility is designed to offer the space where you deepen your mastery of the craft and develop your career.
RELAXATION
Central to any fulfilled ability, is the ability to relax. Acting has been scientifically likened to experiencing a car crash every time you work professionally. On a psychological level the conflicts and contradictions between you the human being and you the creative and professional entity as actor, at times are quite profound. Firstly as human beings we like to stay private when things become emotional or embarrassing. The drama we hope to get professionally paid for will present us with challenging characters and material that is both emotional and at times embarrassing. So our natural human instinct when we start to work with this material, on an unconscious level, is to stay safe. In simple terms when your conscious brain is trying to do the task your unconscious brain is trying to do the opposite. It sees no productive value to exposing yourself to public examination.
Another important component to consider is that we are so pathologically wired as human beings to be social. These are primary needs which are very important and very normal, but again they are conflictual to the risks we need to take creatively when we’re working as actors. Both of these psychological truths affect the amount of irrational tension that comes alive when we are trying to be creative and playful with the material. The central TOOLS and techniques of Lee Strasberg are designed to address these fundamental challenges. Without them you are simply trying to swim upstream. Each exercise, known as tools, are designed to bring the psychological components of ourselves into our work. The time you take in the relaxation exercise transcends the powerful feelings which are first overwhelm you, into a rich sensitive and intuitive flow of thought impulses and emotions which you can work with. This is one of the specific and unique components that we train you in, which separates Method Acting from most of the acting classes in London
SENSE MEMORY
Sense memory is the expansion from the relaxation work. To translate our interpretation of the material into a living breathing truth in front of the camera or on stage. The actor needs to find a psychological connection that can turn what is fiction, into a truth. As much as we would want to believe in the material we are working with, the reality that we are actors and that our careers and success depend upon the quality of our work. These dominant truths make it very hard to escape the reality of the camera or the stage. Sense memory however can unlock and shift the actor’s sense of relationship in the imaginary given circumstances of the material. That way we find a bridge or key that shifts our sense of relationship. In such a way the material becomes more truthful to us and we no longer have two perform or pretend. You unlock spontaneous thought impulses and emotions which are logical to the character and the material we are working with.
It is this creative inspiration which is the fuel that truly brings alive great acting. Without it the actor can only work from a limited resource of the conscious intellect. In practical terms the conscious mind is much smaller and slower than the unconscious. Just like an athlete cannot perform to their best when having to overthink things. An actor can only truly create within the imaginary world of the character, if they truthfully believe in the material they are working with. Both sense memory and basic relaxation work have a very simple and repeatable structure. This is vital for your ability to apply it in your work. If it was too complicated or too conceptual it simply would be ineffectual to unlock the creative flow of your acting. The power and creative potential of these two tools, along with its technical application, blossom with practice.
PROCESS AND TECHNIQUE
It is important to consider that in both the relaxation and sense memory work, the repetition and application of these TOOLS and TECHNIQUES are much more than making our auditions work better. By the continued practice on an ongoing basis. Just as we would work muscles as an athlete in the gym. Your acting ability can be effectively unlocked. That way in the pressure of the professional environment instead of being predominately overwhelmed and only working from a limited amount of your ability. The greater capacity of your acting comes alive in the text and the character. This is what we call a body of work. Your practice that grows the greatest asset which you work from as your career grows
STUDIO TRAINING
Finally the whole focus on the acting classes in London at Method Acting, is based around a studio training. Unlike an acting training in London, in a drama school, the focus of each unit is to work the core craft components of acting to a greater detail. A drama training, is by definition a training where the demands of the industry are increasingly set out in a linear path. Very much like training to be a soldier which replicates the demands of combat. Studio training the other hand takes the time to really develop the core craft components which enable much more creative relationship with the demands of the industry, both creatively and professionally. Without a proper path where the actor can really grow, the actor will fundamentally be crushed or limited in their true potential. The evolutionary nature by the repetition builds up a much more substantial actor with an instrument capable of taking on the greater professional challenges while developing your authentic creative vision. The other greater benefit of the studio system is that you can repeatedly come as you grow industry to find tune and deepen your relationship with acting as a profession. Like world-class athletes who continue to train as they reached the pinnacle of their abilities. The studio system in Method Acting is specifically structured to enable you to grow completely the creative abilities which leads to a greater professional career.