Name: Acting Training: The Expressive Gesture
Start: 2024-12-19T10:00:00+01:00
End: 2024-12-20T18:00:00+01:00
Location: Schott Acting Studio

To enter, cross the stage and speak. What could be easier? After all, you have legs, you can walk; you have a voice, and you can talk. But theatrical or cinematic reality - is not real life - it is an artistic endeavour. Creative choices must be made by you, a creative artist.
It does not matter how much work you may have done on a role (for an audition or a scene class or a production) or what you ‘feel’ inside. If it cannot be expressed - then, for your audience, nothing is happening.
Thoughts, emotions, desires, guilty secrets etc - reveal themselves through movement. This movement - in body and voice - consists of individual gestures. Some big and bold, others so subtle as to be almost imperceptible - almost.
Gestures start from an impulse, they have a beginning, middle and an end. They have unique qualities of tempo, strength, and flow. They can flip the dramatic charge of a moment from negative to positive or vice versa. An archetypal gesture can be the key to a characterisation, a scene, or an entire play.
In this one-day workshop we will explore three of the most creatively enriching, transformational tools I know, from master teachers Michael Chekhov, Rudolf Laban and Yat Malmgren.
Empowering tools that will free up your imagination, inspire you to deeper levels of creativity and give you the confidence to own the moment - whether you are auditioning for drama school, or a role for a film, or simply want to develop yourself as an artist.
Suitable for advanced beginners as well as more experienced performers.

Darren Smith studied acting, 1994-1997, at the Drama Centre London, tutored by its founders Christopher Fettes and Yat Malmgren, and had the privilege of the generous financial support of Sir Anthony Hopkins. He was an apprentice actor at the Globe theatre under the guidance of Sir Mark Rylance with whom he made his professional acting debut. After working as a professional actor in London and UK touring productions he took the lead role in an award winning, Time Out Critic’s Choice English language production of Gerhart Hauptmann’s Lonely Lives, directed by Eddie Marsan. Darren moved to Berlin (for love!) in 2004. He has produced many English theatre productions in Berlin; driven a horse and theatre-wagon, that he designed himself, to Edinburgh in 2015 performing at the Fringe festival and then lived in it for 8 months with his dog on a farm. Darren embarked on a further training for two years at the Michael Chekhov International Academy under the tutelage of Joerg Andrees. Darren began teaching acting, after graduating, and fell in love with it. In 2018 he was invited to teach at an alternative, non-government, summer camp in Russia (under happier circumstances) and has most recently taught at the Cours Florent School in Berlin. Darren is currently recording a podcast series for budding acting students called The Pocket Theatre School Podcast.