Acting and Presentation Tuition

John leads one-to-one or group sessions in acting and presentation technique.

To act involves transforming and communicating with ease and conviction. If you want to learn how to act or to improve your presentational skills, book a single session or an entire course providing focused and detailed one-to-one sessions to suit the needs of drama school applicants and students, amateur and professional actors, teachers, lawyers, lecturers, business people and other professional speakers.

Acting

Work on audition speeches, rôles, problem solving and text analysis, based on the Stanislavski/Michael Chekhov acting technique.

John was trained in this process at the Actors Workshop in London by Robert O'Neill, an American who was taught at the New York Dramatic Workshop (under Erwin Piscator) by Raikin Ben-Ari, a student of Stanislavski himself. The essential aim is to achieve a sense of truth in acting to create the reality of human experience in a recognisable, believable and enlightening as well as entertaining way. The actor is encouraged to "be", to experience and live truthfully in imaginary circumstances, using oneself as a basis for transformation.

Work focuses on the creation of "given circumstances", responsiveness, playing clear objectives and actions (since drama means action) and finding emotion through the action. It explores concentration, imagination, relaxation and atmosphere so that, through the preparation work, we allow inspiration to happen more frequently in performance and create living, breathing characters.

Michael Chekhov's exercises enhance the role of imagination and transformation. John focuses on psycho-physical work such as exploration of psychological gesture and imaginary centre and body, working from impulse to discover and physicalise what lies behind the words and actions, the flesh and bones of a text, to get to the full ideas and feelings within it.

Presentation

Help with public speaking and presentation skills, confidence, clarity, communication and fluency.

If your job involves public speaking as a teacher, lecturer, lawyer, barrister, researcher, sports coach or similar, the techniques of the actor can be applied to assist easier and clearer communication. Work focuses on example texts and actual working texts from the appropriate field, breaking them down into manageable units and learning how to convey the meaning and achieve the effect you want.

Combined Voice and Acting/Presentation Sessions

Sessions focus on the integrated relationship between acting and presenting and voice.

John has worked closely with Christina Gutekunst, an established voice teacher, coach and consultant in workshops, theatre productions and drama courses. They work as a team in specialised sessions.

Christina Gutekunst has a Post Graduate Diploma in Voice Studies and an MA (distinction) from the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama and a Diploma in Speechformation from the Freie Universitaet in Stuttgart, Germany. She has taught at the Drama Studio, London, Courtyard Theatre School, Mountview and Central School and is now Head of Voice at East 15 Acting School. She is an active member of the Voice Care Network and has directed voice-overs, coached theatre companies and has given private tuition to priests, business people, lecturers, teachers, researchers and actors.

Your voice is your most important tool for communicating. Finding your voice, keeping it fit and healthy, making it more expressive as well as coping with nerves, using good posture and body language will improve your performance and confidence.

You can realise your vocal power by learning to: