Acting - Classical

The structure of the course draws on the hugely influential theories of the great French acting teacher Michel Saint-Denis, training the expressive body, voice and imagination. Methodologies are drawn from a range of European and other theatrical thinkers: from Stanislavsky and his inheritors Vakhtangov, Demidov, Adler, Hagen, Meisner and Strasberg; from the physical theatre, improvisation and mask work of Lecoq and Johnstone; from the psycho-physical expressionism of Laban and Meyerhold; from the post-Brechtian and post-Grotowskian experimental traditions; and from radical contemporary dramaturgical practices. Working with some of the greatest dramatic texts ever written, you are asked to consider what they mean now, and how their 21st century reinterpretation and re-imagining still holds a ‘mirror up to nature’.

You are encouraged to understand the demands of both art and craft as participants in the European theatrical tradition; and to envision the recreation and reimagining of that tradition for the future. The course rests on three structural pillars, three key moments of dramatic innovation and social transition, encountered in chronological order: Greek theatre, early modern English theatre, and 19th/20th century Russian and European theatre.