Class Description

ACTING FOR COMPLETE BEGINNERS 

Saturdays 11am-1pm. Fee just £250

Caravanserai are pleased to present an exciting 10 week course for people completely new to acting. Members of the Caravanserai ensemble take people on a fun-packed journey into the art of acting.

Here you can learn exactly what acting is from many perspectives. You are introduced to the technical skills of voice and movement, expand your imaginative powers, learn how to use yourself and your experiences in your acting, how to breathe life into characters, how to break down a script and much much more!

Who knows, by the end of the course you may well uncover the ‘Al Pacino’ within and decide to explore acting on a deeper level in regular Caravanserai classes. Even if not, you will be able to apply many of these skills in other walks of life, and hopefully, will feel far more confident in your ability to communicate in public.

The Caravanserai is one of the best institutions for studying acting in London and the technique taught is drawn from the work of the great acting teachers of the world from Stanislavski himself through to Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler.

Part of the course is taught by top UK acting coach Giles Foreman and at only £250 it is more than £100 cheaper than some of our competitor courses – incredible value for money.


REGULAR CLASSES AT THE CARAVANSERAI

An actor’s training does not cease the moment he or she leaves Drama School – in fact in many ways it has only just begun. Stanislavski believed that it was impossible to become a truly accomplished actor before the age of 40. It is vitally important that actors, like great athletes or musicians continue to practise and refine their skills and to develop new ones.

As we all know acting is a ruthlessly competitive industry – increasingly so. Few of us get the opportunity to work all the time – this was where actors used to develop themselves. Nowadays it is important to find a forum where one can practise, tune ones skills and essentially stay competitive while feeling creative and hopefully inspired.

The Caravanserai aims to supply high level classes in various disciplines at very reasonable prices. It is also at the centre of a community of actors, and many projects and working partnerships arise out of these sessions.


STUDENT CLASSES - INTRODUCTORY AND ADVANCED 

Acting Intro Class is open to anyone interested in finding out more about acting and entrance is through an interview. (See above for full information).

 

After some time in Acting Intro individuals are invited to audition for the ADVANCED CLASS in front of a panel of teachers and students. Successful candidates are considered to have some potential to develop. This class is altogether more demanding and rigorous than the beginners. Every student in this class is eligible to take part in Caravanserai productions and workshops. They are also encouraged to develop pieces for our performance evenings.

  

Students who develop to the point of becoming professionals are invited to join the CARAVANSERAI MEMBERS CLASS. Here the students are presented to the profession through showcases, leading roles in productions and short films. They lead workshops in schools on behalf of the Caravanserai and become involved in the development of the studio and the many projects that it undertakes. They join a vibrant and evolving ensemble, providing them with a creative home – essential in the notoriously precarious and lonely world of the actor. They engage in professional work outside and come back to the studio to ensure that they are working and developing themselves all the time.  

 

ACTING FOR PROFESSIONALS 

This class offers professional actors the opportunity to keep tuned in when not working, run through audition pieces, work on specific acting problems they have encountered and continue to develop their range and abilities as expressive artists. The class is led by acting coach Giles Foreman and the basic technique draws on the work of Strasberg, Meisner, Uta Hagen, Stella Adler and Susan Batson. It mainly deals with realistic acting processes. It encourages actors to push their limits, increase their capacity to use themselves and open up, to enhance their creative abilities in rehearsal through exploring impulses, to develop complex and layered characters, to rigorously dissect text and to come to rehearsal or set thoroughly prepared.The class tends to be a mixture of exercises and scene work. Everyone contributes to feedback and the general atmosphere is one of serious fun. As we all know acting can be a terribly frustrating and isolated profession – so what better than a weekly workout! Many projects tend to be created out of these classes. 

This class provides professional actors with some experience of methodological work – be it Meisner, Strasberg, Hagen or Adler - to develop their skills still further. It is an opportunity to remain tuned between acting jobs, to prepare for auditions or roles and to widen ones range emotionally and psychologically. The class will look at a series of exercises - the song and dance, private moments, character private moments, preparations and much more. Scenes and monologues will also feature. The class is also a forum in which projects can be initiated that can tap into the resources of the studio. Entrance to the class is subject to an interview.


ONGOING DEVELOPMENT FOR PROFESSIONALS

An acting workout, an opportunity to practise and fine tune monologues in preparation for auditions or if you have that that job and you need some extra coaching to really nail it before the day of the shoot. 


ON CAMERA

Based on 20 years of camera experience we have created a course which teaches actors the essential techniques for acting in TV and Film. Over a period of 10 weeks you are given the opportunity to expand the various techniques you have learnt in class, and discover how to use them on camera. We explore the technicalities of the shooting process, focussing on framing, timing, hitting your mark, the constraints of continuity, how to tell a story with and without words, all while engaging with the camera. Each week you are given a scene or monologue and asked to prepare it. We then discuss the demands of the piece, explore the possible techniques of preparation, play with the importance of the thought process, and finally look at the results. There is then feedback and evaluation.

The aim of the course is to enable the actors; to give them a good grounding in the elements they will be confronted with on set. It increases their knowledge and gives them the tools they will need to bring a scene alive in front of the camera. In doing so, it furnishes them with the confidence to produce a daring and dramatic performance.The course runs for 10 weeks on Mondays 6 - 9 pm or Saturdays 2 - 5 pm. Places are limited and a deposit is required to confirm your place.

It is open to students who have already shown competence in acting technique.

VOICE

Learn the vocal tools of the professional actor. Actors need healthy, flexible, expressive voices with which to act: this course teaches you the tools from which to explore your voice safely and creatively. You will begin to release your voice from habitual tensions and develop appropriate breath connection, support and stamina for performance. Using the principles of general and specific resonance, you learn to develop vocal range and projection without strain. Exercises specially designed for developing precision and muscularity in the spoken word encourage you to build the essential skills for professional-level speech and sight-reading. Suitable for all levels. This course is taught by leading voice and dialect coach  Anne Walsh

 

MOVEMENT

Our leading movement coach Liana Nyquist takes the participants through principles of movement, the sensoric and the motoric nervous system, the spine, rhythms, the Laban concepts of working actions and animal characterisation work. The class, as well as building strength and flexibility, opens and expands the physical imagination. Liana is also available for private classes to help actors build their physical characterisation.

 

IMPROVISATION

This class is designed to help students approach the work without a script, and aims at helping students to have a broader understanding of the work of the actor, the power of the imagination and the poetry of the body. The course covers essential principles for improvisation based on the work of Jacques Lecoq such as complicity, major / minor, building up of narrative / rhythm / tension / energy, space awareness, openness, musicality in the scene and the importance of pleasure and sharing it with the audience and other actors when on stage. 

Classes start with a physical warm-up created to free the body and the mind and are structured through a variety of games, team-building exercises, scene work, devising (from themes, pictures, paintings), mask-work (neutral, larve, Commedia dell'Arte). 

The understanding of the power to communicate with the whole body is emphasised. With this comes a knowledge of what gives scenes dramatic strength and believability which aids students in audition situations, rehearsal improvisations and even in their text work. Best of all, the awareness, openness and understanding of the needs of the scene that improvisation skills can bring are invaluable goals for any actor.

MEISNER REPETITION TECHNIQUE

Meisner was one of the original members of the Group Theater along with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Harold Clurman, from 1931 until it disbanded in 1941.  After the Group Theatre's demise, Meisner led the acting department of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in Manhattan for nearly half a century. Among Meisner's students were Robert Duvall, David Mamet, Jon Voight, Diane Keaton, Lee Grant, Gregory Peck, Grace Kelly, Sydney Pollack, and Steve McQueen. 

Meisner's students acted on screen and stage across the United States using what had become known as the "Meisner Technique." Meisner's technique of acting is based on Constantin Stanislavski's method of acting, but is best known for the repetition exercises Meisner developed to strengthen an actor's capacity to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Meisner considered his technique to be a non-intellectual approach to truthful acting: the technique enables actors to pursue a deeper and far more intense exploration of the truth of each moment than the original version. 
Sanford Meisner - On Acting, by Sanford Meisner & Dennis Longwell
 
In the Repetition Technique acting partners face each other. One responds to something in the other person that prompts them to speak. The other partner reflects the sentence back. This continues until one of the partners changes the repetition, based on spontaneous observations. This is the foundation for dozens of exercises to follow. The free-form repetition exercises trigger spontaneous dialogue, which springs spontaneously from the emotional and physical truth of each moment, restricted only by the given circumstances of the improv or of the text. 

Claire Kaplan has trained extensively in the Meisner technique with Mike Bernardin amongst others.  She is a long-time believer and regularly uses Meisner exercises in the Acting and Improvisation classes she teaches. Claire has also used Meisner tools and preparation exercises for years in her own performance work. As a member of C Company, a Meisner-based theatre ensemble, she has appeared most recently in productions of Neil Simon and Shakespeare at the Bridewell Theatre. Claire has taught Acting and Improvisation for many years in Chicago: In London, as well as teaching Acting at Caravanserai Studio she has recently taught Improvisation at The Spontaneity Shop.
 
You are welcome to come and audit a class for free - who knows, you may be hooked for life!


ANALYSIS/ MOVEMENT PSYCHOLOGY: YAT MALMGREN/LABAN TECHNIQUE

 

Yat’s work offers a methodology to transform into another character. The method applies the psychology of movement developed by Rudolph Laban to acting. Malmgren's method of character development is concerned with a technique for expressing the inner state of a character through movement. The basis of the method is that each person has a specific rhythm and Yat’s methodology puts the Actor in touch with his/her energy /rhythm. 

Yat Malmgren (March 28 1916-June 6 2002) led, jointly with John Blatchley, the creation of the Drama Center in the autumn of 1963 and stayed as Director of Movement at the School.  Malmgren taught a number of famous actors including Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Anthony Hopkins, as well as Andrew Tiernan, Helen McCrory, Paul Bettany, Michael Fassbender, Russell Brand, Anne-Marie Duff, Craig Kelly, John Sim, Sean Harris, Ryan Early, Andrew Pleavin and Nicolas Tennant.

Born in Gavle, north of Stockholm in 1916, he went to went to drama school with Ingrid Berghman but possessed an exceptional talent for movement and dance and so he soon became a world famous “Character Dancer” of the 1930’s.  As the war broke out Yat found refuge in Dartington Hall in Devon where he met Hungarian character Dancer Rudolf Laban.  Laban took Yat under his wing and left him all his notations on the exploration of movement in everyday experience.  Yat later adapted Laban’s notations to acting and thus creating a revolutionary teaching tool as opposed to conventional theatrical dance.

For more information on Yat Malmgren and what some of his now famous students had to say about his method, follow the links below:

http://www.firth.com/articles/03backstagewest.html (Colin Firth Article)



YOGA FOR ACTORS

Yoga for actors is a yoga class centred on the actor. It incorporates elements of meditation and pranayama (breathing) within the framework of a dynamic asana (pose) practice. The class challenges the actor to remain present and in this moment as they are encouraged to go within and find the essence of themselves, whether that is in the midst of a challenging pose or in meditation. Yoga for actors is a powerful complement to the work being undertaken in the acting class and it strengthens and develops the tools already being used in it. 

Paul Mclaughlin is a yoga teacher and an actor. Paul holds Yoga Teacher (Hatha) and Advanced Yoga Teacher (Hatha) diplomas from the British School of Yoga. He is a 300 hour accredited teacher on the Yoga Register (YR) with the Independent Yoga Network (IYN). Paul is currently training to be an Anusara-Inspired yoga teacher. Anusara is based on universal principles of alignment and opening the heart to grace. Paul has studied acting for the last few years, having trained at the Actors Centre Australia, in Sydney in 2006. Paul continues to pursue his acting with the amazing benefits that yoga brings to the craft. Paul ardently feels that yoga and acting are very similar and the development of the actors yoga practice plays beautifully into the actor's acting practice, on stage, in front of the camera and in life.