Glasgow, United Kingdom

Acting: Stanislavski and Realism

when 18 June 2012 - 29 June 2012
duration 2 weeks
fee GBP 850

This ten-day intensive summer school aims to give you an introduction to Stanislavski’s principles as a set of practical skills and as a method of exploring a realist text. Throughout the short course you will work in an immersive way to develop understanding, explore skills and apply new knowledge in a practical and professional setting.

Throughout your summer school you will be supported by two knowledgeable and experienced practitioners and teachers. You will work within the rehearsal facilities and experience at first hand the style of learning and teaching available at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Both course leaders, Katya Kamotskaia and Mark Stevenson are trained actors and so have a good understanding of the challenges of the industry. Katya trained in the Stanislavski system and has spent 30 years developing her understanding and practical application of the technique. Katya and Mark have worked closely together over the last few years to create a unique method of Active Analysis that is intensive, memorable and liberating. Our work with you will be based on the Stanislavksi acting system in a very practical application of his work on training actors and rehearsing text.

Throughout the summer school you will explore the particular skills required by actors such as trust, communication, focus, attention, collaboration and imagination. You will also explore senses, memory, group dynamics and emotions. We will encourage you to use principles of Textual Analysis to uncover information about characters, relationships and circumstances. Along with research into the world of the play, we will then encourage you to use this information to build the life of actors as characters from within the play. We use the method of Active Analysis to turn the information about the characters into something actors can use. We use exercises and improvisations to slowly explore first the given circumstances of the play and how you would behave within them and then, as you understand more, how the characters behave in those circumstances. This involves usually silent, large group work as well as scenario-based improvisations which are performed in front of the group and discussed.

As we move closer to rehearsal of scenes, we are always exploring the dynamics and potentials of the method as well as your development as an actor. At the conclusion of the summer school we aim to share themore developed scenes on a classroom-production basis with an invited audience. To this end, you will rehearse the scenes in a professional manner, but bearing in mind that the process of deep learning is more important to us than the final product in such an intense summer school schedule. We are interested in you acting in a way that is open, honest and is alive, reacting to what is happening in the here and now.

This approach can be hard work but ultimately an incredibly rewarding experience.

Course leader

Katya Kamotskaia, is a Lecturer in Acting within the Royal Conservatoire. From Moscow, Katya originally trained as an actor at the Vakhtangov Theatre School and worked across all media before re-training as a Lecturer in Acting.

Target group

This summer school is particularly suited to students age 17 plus who are seeking a professional training experience or are thinking about acting as a career. The short course will also be useful to experienced actors who are keen to refresh their skills or explore new ways of working.

Course aim

On completion of this short course, students should have:

• an understanding of basic Stanislavski principles and their practical application

• an understanding of the use of Textual Analysisrnto glean information about character and relationships

• applied the method of Active Analysis to the textrnof the play and in building character and relationships

• become acquainted with the stages of a traditionalrnrehearsal process based on Stanislavski in a professional context, up to and including a presentation of scenes

Fee info

GBP 850: 50% payment is required to book a place.