APPROACHES TO ACTOR TRAINING
“Working with Chris is a true pleasure. He brings a combination of precise language, high expectations, and compassionate nurturing into the room, and treats each student-actor as an individual with artistic gifts to offer. His rehearsal room is organised and he encourages actors to participate fully as creative partners. He emphasises ensemble-working and professionalism. I felt both challenged and cared for as a member of his cast, and saw many of my classmates grow in confidence and enthusiasm under his tutelage. He insists on a high-quality final product, but ensures that the process is as joyful and collaborative as possible. I learned so much about both acting and directing from my time with Chris.”
Elizabeth R Albert; Trained within East 15’s MA International Acting Course 2018 - 2019
The Parliament Square ensemble, East 15 Acting School 2018.
“The most notable thing I can say about Chris is that he possesses the rare ability to both teach and direct to a very high standard. His constant enquiry into what an actor needs is a journey I have been privileged to be part of many times. He is never satisfied with enough, there is always more to discover. This keeps the work fresh and exciting for all those lucky enough to be taught or directed by him. These skills compliment his overall abilities in producing shows far beyond the expected. Chris has no time for cynicism in his work. He is a positive and joyous creator of theatre.”
Gerry McAlpine - Head of First Year Studies and Course Co-coordinator Certificate of Higher Education in Theatre at East 15 Acting School
Throughout my career I’ve combined professional theatre directing with work as an acting tutor. I’ve enjoyed a long and nourishing relationship with East 15 Acting School, who offer conservertoire-level theatre training and who are based in Loughton, Essex. East 15 Acting School topped The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide for Drama 2019. Since 2015 I’ve been a permanent member of the school’s teaching and directing staff.
I thought that it would be helpful to offer you an immersive tour of my teaching practice. Within this tour you can experience the different ways that I encourage actors-in-training to dig deeper in their explorations into the world of a play, learn about the innovative student-directed learning models that I’ve devised, and explore how I’ve integrated ‘blended learning’ into my teaching practice: utilising emerging online digital technologies to enable actors-in-training to be more active artistic co-creators within theatre-making processes. I’ve organised the tour chronologically, based on the typical structure that I would offer a group of learners engaged in a theatre-making process with me.
Peppered throughout the tour are the perspectives of current actors-in-training, recent graduates and my colleagues at East 15 Acting School, who discuss the particular qualities, approaches and learning environments that I offer as a student-centred acting tutor. You can also read more testimonials here.
Here we go!
LEARNERS EXCHANGING THEIR Top TEN PRACTICE DISCOVERIES
Here is an example of a ‘Top Ten Practice Discoveries’ PDF that I recently created for a group of learners commencing a rehearsal process for Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. The PDF’s content was generated by a learner group who had recently experienced a Chekhov-based project with me. Wherever possible, I try to create inventive ways for learners to share good practice with their peers. I’ve often found that actors-in-training can describe quite complex theatre-making methodologies in ways that are wonderfully clear, direct, accessible and user-friendly. At the conclusion of each theatre project that I lead I gather the ensemble together and invite them to create a list of of the top ten practice discoveries that they made during our process together and that they feel would be helpful for me to pass on to the next group of learners whom I work with. I then create a Keynote presentation based on their helpful quotes and share this in my first session with a new group. It provides a warm and friendly starting point and can help to demystify what the members of the group might expect to encounter when working with me. I also create an accompanying PDF that can be emailed to each learner as a useful reference, and this image is an example of one such PDF.
SHARING VISUAL TOUCHSTONES
“Something I really appreciated in Chris’s approach was his ability to communicate from the outset what his overall vision was for our show’s aesthetics and style through various musical, historical and performative illustrations. In doing this, he demonstrated that he’d thought through everything and had a solution to anything: no matter what kind of hiccups or obstacles we may encounter, we were in good hands! His competence provided a highly structured, concise and coherent framework within which to explore and create.” Kathleen Glynn; Trained within East 15’s MFA International Acting Course 2017 - 2019
Actors in training can often be visually-led learners. At the beginning of each theatre process I share a selection of ‘visual touchstones’ with the group, bespoke to that particular project. These ‘visual touchstones’ - image collages, video clips - can offer learners an accessible doorway into a project’s artistic ethos. Recently, I’ve tended to share ‘visual touchstones’ with learner groups via PADLET, a fantastic web-based learning tool that enables tutors to create a living online ‘wall’ of resources - images, text, webpages, video clips, audio recordings - visible only to their learner group and accessed via a bespoke password. It’s similar to Pinterest, but the big advantage with PADLET is that learners don’t need to sign up to the platform to access content. If you wish, learners can also add their own content to a padlet that you create, or they can collaborate to create new ones. You can learn more about PADLET here.
The images on the right are taken from a set of ‘visual touchtones’ that I offered a group in 2019 at the outset of a rehearsal process for Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Actors-in-training who are new to playing Chekhov can sometimes find it difficult to shake off preconceptions about ‘period drama’ and this can lead to acting that is mannered, physically bound and unreflective of the way that people truly behave with one another. Top right you’ll see two collages that I created comprised of delightful photographs of people from the late Victorian era informally fooling in front of the camera.
The image at the bottom is a still from a video clip that I shared with the group, and that we watched together, from Sally Wainwright’s recent BBC drama about the Bronte family To Walk Invisible. I’ve included the clip below. As you watch it you’ll notice that, whilst the actors are wearing what we could call ‘period’ clothing, their acting is unrestrained, emotionally connected and we believe that their relationships possess a history through the behaviours that they demonstrate with one another.
CURATING A bag of Ensemble games
“At the outset, Chris enters the room with an inspiring energy and a carefully constructed scheme to lay the production’s foundations. He commences each rehearsal with a selection of games and exercises that both build a sense of creative community among the actors and sets the tone for his own, precisely choreographed while creatively open approach.”
Emma K Sanschi; Trained within East 15’s MFA International Acting Course 2017 - 2019
Very early within any student-centred rehearsal process I’ll organise the learners into small groups and I’ll offer them some time to share with one another the favourite theatre games that they’ve encountered. Their task is to play each game together, choose their favourite game, give it a name, and bring it back to the ensemble. We’ll then add all of the games that we’ve curated into a metaphorical ‘bag of games’ that is bespoke to this particular project group. Should we get tired at any time in the rehearsal day, or need a boost of energy, or feel that an injection of spirit would be helpful, we’ll simply take a lucky dip into our bag of games, and the students who offered the game that we choose will teach us how to play. Curating a ‘bag of games’ helps to cultivate ensemble spirit and I also think it’s important that actors-in-training can enjoy playful collaborative experiences that are unique to the particular group that they are working with.
Although in the very early stages of rehearsal I will lead the ensemble warm-up exercises that we’ll engage in each morning and after our lunch break, after a short time I will begin to invite each member of the ensemble to lead these 15 minute sessions, in the form of their choosing. This approach cultivates group cohesion, mutual respect and a greater sense of ownership of the process.
TOOLS FOR EXPLORING The Given Circumstances OF THE PLAY
“For the actor, Chris Meads' directing process is systematic, encourages creativity, and culminates in delightful specificity. He then delves into dissecting the text with the actors so he and they have a firm springboard of agreed focus - a foundation which is then free to percolate in each individual artist’s process. Chris then works intensely with the company to carve each specific moment - all member’s input encouraged - until a dynamic, eclectically engaging, dramatic story has been constructed and is ready for an audience’s enjoyment.”
Emma K Sanschi; Trained within East 15’s MFA International Acting Course 2017 - 2019
A primary objective for me when working on a dramatic text with a group of actors-in-training is to help them forge a practical relationship with the given circumstances of the play, the non-negotiable facts that the writer offers us that can provide a solid and specific framework for interpretive possibilities.
I’ve found that a playful way of helping students exercise their ability to spot ‘the givens’ in a play is through creating a given circumstance quiz, which we will play together in teams at the outset of rehearsals. The image below left is the first page of a GC quiz that I created for a group rehearsing Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Learners are invariably surprised at how much information is available within a play to support their interpretive choices and they also begin to see the world of the play in a more vivid and tangible way.
The image above right is an example of how GC quizzes such as this can help learners to organise their character’s ‘givens’ in a systematic way, thus inspiring interpretive choices that are supported by textual evidence. Concurrently with this work, we’ll engage in ‘floor work’ practical exercises that offer the learners the opportunity to live through and build upon the given circumstances that they have discovered, develop an internal and emotional understanding of the character, and nurture their appetite for authenticity of behaviour. Examples of such exercises are:
The acting ensemble are encouraged to physically respond to a series of playful prompts that I offer. These prompts can help each learner to unlock - through doing - the characters’ histories; the way that their characters might experience the world through their senses; how they move within, and are affected by, their environmental landscapes; their physical behaviours (and how these behaviours might change when interacting with other characters); and their character’s emotional ties within the play. The exercises are interspersed with pitstops that enable the learners process, reflect upon, and share any discoveries they have had.
Each learner, guided by the play’s given circumstances, shares with the group a particular expertise that their character possesses. This expertise is shared by each learner in character.
Long-form group improvisations, usually involving a celebratory event that might feasibly take place within the timeline of the play. In advance, the company work together to create a detailed, lived-in environment for the characters to inhabit that can activate the senses (hot food, flowers, live music etc.) and we work together to define a specific sense of purpose or preoccupation for each character in advance of the improvisation. These long-form improvisations can last for an hour or longer. For example, for East 15’s 2016 Christmas Show Fairytales of New York the company rehearsed in character for the entire five week rehearsal period - it was the most joyous, creative and productive rehearsal process that I have experienced. The sensory environments that the ensemble creates together for these long-form improvisations, with a little bit of spacial tweaking and adjustment from me, directly inspire the production’s floor-plan and set configuration. This approach helps hugely in ‘taking the curse off’ the transition from improvisation to on-the-floor production rehearsal and ensures that the student actors are fully at home within, grounded upon, and imaginatively connected to, their production playing space.
“I’ve never worked with a director like Chris. He’s a generous director who gives us tools for preparation and a lot of freedom as actors to explore the characters. The most inspirational part of rehearsals, for me, is the beginning of the process when we start developing our characters by exploring their space, time and relationships. I have never done exercises like these before.” Phoebe Santini; Trained within East 15’s MA International Acting Course 2018 - 2019
“I found Chris’s directing method very holistic as he used diverse exercises to awaken different sides of the actor (and the ensemble!). ‘Floor work' exercises, with the newly digested text and research material in mind, often required the actor to use and stretch their physical, sensory and mental imagination, but in such a soft, organic way that it felt very natural. The diversity of these exercises ensured that every actor could find something to suit their individual practice, something that surprised them or lured them to search deeper.” Heini Inkeri; Trained within East 15’s MA International Acting Course 2018 - 2019
Collectively CREATING Character Constellation WALL MAPS
When working in an acting school you tend to rehearse plays that possess large numbers of characters. During the early stages of rehearsal it can be quite challenging for the acting company to gain a specific and vivid sense of the overall character constellation. This becomes especially challenging when we consider the characters whom we directly encounter within the timeline of the play and also, and often just as importantly, the characters whom we don’t directly encounter, but who the other characters frequently mention and whom they possess strong relationships ties and a history with.
These images are of a ‘character constellation’ wall map that the acting ensemble created together during the early stages of a rehearsal for Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London. It featured all of the characters that are mentioned within the play, their relationship ties with one another, and the past-tense circumstantial information that Bartlett offers within the text, in a user-friendly and accessible format for the rehearsal room.
The vivid colours also brightened up our beige rehearsal space!
Equipping Actors-in-training with ‘trouble-shooting’ tools
“Chris always gives his actors the freedom to try and experiment by themselves and he creates a solid safe space around them. There is never any judgement in his directing but a lot of benevolent honesty, leading his actors to their best without “frightening” them or changing them into something they’re not. He also provided us with a lot of useful tools in order to work on a character, to approach a script, to unlock a scene that I will definitely use again in the future. He allows that very specific and magical moment when an actor and a character can meet halfway and create a truthful human being in a supportive ensemble.”
May Royer; Trained within East 15’s MA International Acting Course 2018 - 2019
Invariably, in any rehearsal process, actors-in-training will encounter ‘eggy’ moments - sections within a scene that they find difficult to navigate or that don’t, as yet, sit comfortably within them. I feel that it’s very important that actors-in-training can become resourceful and self-reliant, and a major part of my teaching practice is to offer learners various tools that they can draw upon to address any ‘eggy’ moments that might occur in the future.
For example, sometimes the root cause of an acting problem might be that the ‘action’ that an actor is playing within a particular scene is vague, unspecific, perhaps too cool, or that there may be a more interesting choice. Whilst The Actors’ Thesaurus book is an excellent resource that contains lists of thousands of actions that the actor might choose to employ, I’ve never found the book to be particularly user-friendly within an actual ‘on-the-floor’ rehearsal. The energy and momentum of a rehearsal can dissipate as an actor-in-training desperately flicks through the pages of their thesaurus in search of a transitive verb. In response to this problem, I have devised the ‘Actions Box’ that you can see below.
Within the ‘Actions Box’ are over a hundred cards, and each card contains an action that I’ve found to be particularly exciting to use. The action cards are organised into two groups: actions that are used with the intent of Using or Damaging the other character, and Nurturing actions. If a particular scene that we’re rehearsing is ‘eggy’ I can quickly open the box and choose a couple of action choices to offer the actors from the appropriate category. Or, alternatively, I may offer actors the box so that they can explore different actions options themselves. It becomes particularly interesting when actors are invited to take a ‘lucky dip’ from the box. Which ever way we choose to use it, the ‘Actions Box’ turns the act of selecting an action into a game, and the energy and momentum of the rehearsal is not just retained, but becomes more-so.
Over recent years, I’ve created time and space within the later stages of rehearsal for the learning group and myself to collectively trouble-shoot any ‘eggy moments’ within the play that we are working on. I write the title that we’ve given each of the scenes on a white board and every learner from the group is invited to add up to three post-it-notes to the board, each post-it-note describing the event within a particular scene that the learner currently finds ‘eggy’. We then practically focus on each ‘eggy moment’ that the learners have offered and I help to unlock the root cause of the problem with them.
To illustrate the impact that these workshops have had on learners’ practice, I include a table that a group of actors-in-training created, inspired by the notes that they took from a recent ‘eggy moments’ trouble-shooting workshop session, within a rehearsal of Chekhov’s Three Sisters.
I have frequently been invited to lead practical workshop classes at East 15 Acting School that aim to help learners develop their audition technique. I’ve led classes of this kind for those learners training within the advanced level MA Acting and MFA International Acting courses, but, equally, I’ve led practical workshops for Foundation Degree Level Cert HE learners to help their preparation for drama school auditions. Regardless of the particular training level of the group, I feel that it’s vitally important that these workshops are lively and nurturing experiences that equip actors-in-training with functional tools that can help them to become resourceful and self-reliant in their preparation and practice. This image illustrates a series of practical prompts that were the framework for a recent audition technique workshop that I led.
TOOLS THAT CAN ENCOURAGE Peer-to-peer learning and reflection
At the conclusion of each performance project, MA Acting International learners write a reflective journal in which they discuss each of the change-points in their practice that they encountered during their process. When I began to asses these journals, I was struck by how lucid and insightful learners' observations frequently were and, if shared peer-to-peer in some form, I wondered if these learner-led insights could be potentially helpful as a training tool...
This image is the front cover and Contents page from a PDF guidebook that I curated and edited and which resulted from an MA Acting International rehearsal process for Chekhov's Three Sisters. The PDF booklet, including its title, is wholly comprised of extracts from the learning group's reflective essays, which I organised into question-based chapter headings, each chapter focusing on a different aspect of the training process that they experienced with me. Electronic booklets such as this one offer actors-in-training a rich archive of their and their peers' learning during the timespan of a project. Moreover, they can also be helpful to the following year's cohort as a learner-authored guidebook, introducing them, in an accessible way, to the practical tools and techniques that they'll encounter within my rehearsal room.
FURTHER EXAMPLES OF THE INVESTMENT THAT I BRING TO STUDENT-centred THEATRE-MAKING PROCESSES
“I worked with Chris Meads on many shows at East 15 Acting School. From the very first moment I knew that I was working with someone really special. His dedication and will to fight to create the best possible show every time is admirable. Someone once said “Art doesn’t like compromises” – Chris is the best example of it. He is intelligent, creative, open and courageous. I thoroughly enjoyed our collaborations as Chris really understands and values the power of movement in theatre. He is also a great acting tutor – I have seen students flourish under his guidance.”
Marcin Rudy - Head of Movement, East 15 Acting School
To conclude, I’d like to briefly share some other examples that illustrate the high degree of investment that I bring to the student-centred theatre projects that I lead.
At East 15 Acting School I have directed rehearsal processes of existing texts written by dramatists and also, for a number of the Christmas shows that I have directed, I have written full play scripts, that were inspired by devising processes. Below left is an extract from the play script that I wrote for East 15’s 2014 Christmas show, The Tellers’ Tales. The play was inspired by the acting ensemble’s research into the epic, but little known, story of two extraordinary storytellers - Charlotte-Rose de la Force and Dortchen Wild - and the true-life love stories that inspired two well-loved fairy tales: Rapunzel and ThousandFurs. You can learn more about the production here. Below right is another example, an extract from the play script that I created for East 15’s 2016 Christmas show, Fairytales of New York.
For the Christmas shows that I’ve directed for E-15, it’s often been helpful and fun to create a meta-framing device for each show that enables the acting ensemble to play members of a fictional theatrical company, both on-stage and during ‘in character’ rehearsals. For example, for East 15’s 2018 Christmas show, a production of Laura Eason’s Around the World In 80 Days, the company became Batulcar’s Bombastic Bards. The script extract below right is taken from the opening of our show, composed especially for this production by the acting company and inspired by the vivid descriptions that we found within Victorian theatrical posters.
At the outset of every production process that I’ve directed at East 15 Acting School, I create a PDF of images that I use as a conduit for creative conversation between the show’s designer and myself. Below left is an extract from the Design Touchstones that I created for the 2016 production Everyman and, below right, for the 2018 production Woman In Mind.
Below left is the publicity image that I created for 2016’s Fairytales of New York. Below right are examples of programmes that I’ve created for two projects that led to showings within East 15’s studio theatre: Three Sisters from 2019 and Parliament Square from 2018.
Thank you for taking the time to take this tour of my teaching practice. If you’d like to get in touch, please contact me directly here.