The METHOD STUDIO INTENSIVE classes become the pinnacle of the Unit. With the three sets of classes, HOMEWORK, STUDIO and then finally STUDIO INTENSIVE. The unit builds to train and acclimatise both your instrument and craft to take on the creative challenges in the artistic and commercial worlds of the acting industry.
The METHOD STUDIO INTENSIVE presents the opportunity to apply technique and improvisation each morning. Then each day there are 6 scene slots. This becomes the opportunity to see how much you can genuinely build and present your work as you would on stage or in front of the camera onset. To test the accumulation of the primary work of Strasberg’s techniques and work on the text in character, in both the HOMEWORK & STUDIO classes. How all this primary preparation and expansion into the setting leads to the growth of your acting.
METHOD HOMEWORK Week 1,2, 3
Monday 10 – 12 noon 0r 7.30 – 9.30 pm (Technique)
Tuesday 10 – 12.30 noon 0r 7.30 – 10 pm (Scene Study)
METHOD STUDIO Week 2
Wednesday 7 – 10 pm (Technique)
Thursday 10 – 1 pm (Technique)
Thursday 7 – 10 pm (Scene Study)
Friday 10 – 1 pm (Scene Study)
METHOD STUDIO INTENSIVE Week 3
Friday 10-6 pm
Saturday 10-6 pm
Sunday 10-6 pm
I want to discuss how you consider the three steps of classes offered in each Monthly Method Acting Unit leading to the Method Studio Intensive.
Acting is about preparation. Firstly, the longer-term objective of developing your instrument and craft and how you construct an approach to any potential acting opportunity in the shorter term. If these can’t effectively be engaged, your work will be random.
Homework
Homework is the primary. It also represents the initial dead space in that the actor begins the journey. The dead space represents the initial sense of no natural external stimulation except the text itself. Alternatively, you could consider dead space and inert space. Requiring interaction from you to bring it into life. You have yet to create any relationship in such a primary space to feed off, just like when you receive a self-tape for an audition or prepare to work on a role you have booked. It is how you turn nothing into something. Although you only see obstacles at first, you find the means to unlock the opportunity.
With regards to your instrument, the work is always primary. Each time you engage in relaxation and sense memory. Each time you work experientially from yourself, you build and develop your instrument.
As important as the instrument is a relationship with text and character. Like the musician, you should pick up different music pieces to practice your craft and expand your vocabulary and understanding. Not to stick to the tunes that you know and like most. In the demands of the industry, this level of sketching sustains you when you have to make quick, creative choices.
Therefore homework is your studio. Without this foundation, you cannot truly grow in this industry—the technical demands in the 21st-century present considerable challenges. Consequently, the challenge and discipline of homework are to build the muscles to create with such obstacles rather than just overcome them.
Studio Process
The face-to-face work now has true meaning in the context of the homework. The primary homework preparation means that the studio space becomes a studio to explore and expand the primary work you have established in homework. It becomes a more organic opportunity to examine the potential of your instrument and your creative process where you can pull apart and engage both the character and the text—building a richer ability and a greater understanding of both yourself and the opportunities of acting.
Studio Intensive
The intensity in the final three days replicates the challenges and opportunities of the camera or the stage. Now you can bring both your primary and process work into the opportunity of two scenes slots. Or to immerse and observe fellow class members reaching out to fulfil such a creative challenge. Everybody will work with sense memory and text in the morning, evolving the ability to work from your thoughts, impulses and emotions. To create from a heightened state of self while obtaining the lucidity of creative thinking.
The Choice
As Stanislavski said the talent is in the choice. Nothing is automatic, particularly in acting. The specific steps of the three-week unit are designed for you to properly engage and unlock your true creative potential. To develop the sensibility and creative muscles to take on the challenges and opportunities of the professional acting industry. The unit is now truly a post-pandemic class. To have not adapted and evolved from what we learned during the last two years would indicate that we are not prepared to grow as any good acting process does because it takes on the challenges it exists in.
In straightforward terms, the three steps in each unit are to see how you can genuinely raise your game.
Sam