Workshop
An introduction to the basics of acting:
Three-day workshop for Peter Sklar's US-based Beginnings youth drama company.

A group was flown from all over the US seeking a 'British perspective' to some of the basics of acting. We delivered a three-session programme addressing the question from three contrasting yet inter-relating points of view.

On day one Selva Rasalingam focussed on spatial awareness in respect of environment and acting colleagues through games and exercises concerned with spontanaeity, co-operation and visual attention. Through the course of this session the participants explored elements of in-the-moment impulses and the beginnings of how to prepare for creative collaboration.

On the second day Rod Smith developed the subject of interaction between actors and their actor colleagues and between actors and audience. The session was centred on listening and the fundamentals of commanding attention through speech. It also explored the relationship between an actor's inner life and how an audience reads the action it is offered.

On the final day Alison Rasalingam introduced the group to a classically contrasting side of London at Brick Lane in the East End of the city. The venue itself was unusual in being an old clothes factory, yet steeped in artistic footprints. Known as 'The Rag Factory' the multi-faceted space had recently been acquired from its former function as the studio of contentious British installation artist Tracey Emin and Turner Prize nominee Gary Hume. Either side of our session it was serving as a Bush Theatre rehearsal space for founder Hull Truck director Mike Bradwell's production Crooked by Catherine Trieschmann. Our third session took the idea of context and perception a further stage by exploring how environment impacts on both actors' and audience's experience of a dramatic narrative. Through work in this new setting, building on ideas of impulse and imagination as well as an actor's inner and outer world, the group further explored principles of interaction and simplicity in performance.

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The Kid Who Played the Palace
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Peter Sklar: So You Want To Be a Performer?

Peter Sklar hates a scam more than anyone else in the world. Lecturing to young people around the country, Peter Sklar teaches how to spot a scam and what's really needed in order to become a professional performer.