Module – Specialist Skills (MTH6C006R)
Introduction
With my three years of training at Leeds Conservatoire coming to an end, I reflect on all the different things I’ve learnt during our intense year of advanced skills classes and how I have developed as a musical theatre performer, and how I navigated the ups and downs of my training mentally and physically. During the time on my course, I have been taught a large range of skills by all my tutors that I am hugely grateful for as it has helped me become a much more rounded and versatile performer and actor. Skills including: Screen Acting behind/In Front of the camera, Uta hagen acting techniques – How to approach a classical monologue in our Monologue class – a class in Shakespeare that has completely changed my perspective on it which has helped me approach reading and understanding Shakespeare in a completely different light. As I prepare to embark on my professional career, I am confident that the skills and experiences I have gained at Leeds Conservatoire will leave me with a solid foundation which I will be able to build a successful and fulfilling career out of when I enter the industry.
Screen Acting
One of my favourite new skills I have developed during this term of specialist classes is acting for the camera with Keeley Forsyth and Matthew Lewney. Having both of these teachers has been incredibly useful! The amount of knowledge and creativity they bring into the room is so helpful. Having known these teachers have such a large working career in the industry it is really lucky we have them as our tutors. We gain an insight into what the industry is like and what is correct and what is needed in the film industry and how different it can be from working on stage. It’s also been beneficial as both tutors have worked both on a stage and on camera so they know the differences we need to make our performances clear to read to an audience! We have been introduced to many aspects of screen acting, including the work that goes on behind the camera. During my time in the classes, I have taken on many roles on the set including: Camera operator, being freehand and stationary trying different angles. Being a Co-director-directing a duologue, being a casting director in an improvised cold read audition and also working in front of the camera as an actor. We learned many things very quickly that we soon had to change from our habits on stage, as I know I’m a very exaggerated/expressive actor. With all the cameras being so close up, it showed every little detail and emotion that was happening on your face and we soon learnt that the smallest change could convey a completely different story and emotion. We learnt to bring it down to as small as we could, not to over project as the microphones would pick up every sound anyway, so all we needed to do was act truthfully and not to put anything on as we were doing naturalistic pieces for our screen. This is going back to all our Meisner classes we had in year 1 and 2 ‘Living truthfully under a certain set of Circumstances’- Adam Stadius/Meisner ‘2023’. This really was useful as it gave a more natural and realistic performance through the camera. Keeley also did this exercise with us 1 to 1 going through our imagination and connecting to the surroundings of our chosen scene. For example she would ask about the people in the scene and what they were wearing, where we were, how we feel about them and what previously happened before the scene. After she would make us speak through our lines really quietly to a wall or with our eyes shut. This would help us connect to our pieces more deeply and feel it more internally which helped give our performance more truth within it. This was truly rewarding watching my performance back as it showed the exercise had worked and it had paid off for the scene. The first scene I did in Screen Acting was a duologue from a film called ‘Sweet Maddie Stone’ in which we performed scene 24. I performed opposite Sofia Guedelha. I played the role of ‘Fal’, a charming drug dealer and Sofia played the role of Maddie who I was trying to manipulate and use to help my drug business who was very reluctant and strong willed. This was a really insightful experience as an actor working for the screen due to my height having a positive and negative impact on production. Being 6ft 8 it is much harder to shoot a scene with someone who is much shorter than you which we soon found out when shooting. However it did work extremely well once we got the angles right, due to my character being written as intimidating and charming which I believe came across strongly to the audience. There are many ways to work around height differences in TV films, such as me widening my stance next to my scene partner to make me appear a little shorter or even having the other actor stand on a small wooden crate for example to even out the height slightly.
Screen acting
Fal and Maddie Scene
After doing this scene it made me think about how much I enjoyed the process and how I would love to delve deeper into screen acting and how I would love to look into opportunities in film when I start auditioning once I leave Leeds conservatoire. Working with Matthew Lewney I learnt a lot about strong choices and eye lines towards a camera. We did a Mock Audition for the movie ‘Ready Player One’ where I read in for “Rick” who was a very contrasting character to the one I played before in my previous scene. Written as a stereotypical Southern American trailer park character, I tried to give his character some depth for my audition by not just going full comedy as his lines were written with lots of comedic elements, as his character is described as someone who deals with substance abuse and is one to use physical violence on people. I believed he needed to have some unhinged elements within him as you never know what he’s gonna do next. When shooting the scene under Mike’s direction we talked about eye lines and what worked for the scene. For example my character was shouting upstairs to another character in the scene (Wade, the main character), so instead of me turning fully round to talk to him I could slightly direct my eye up to the right and it would have the same effect without the audience missing my facial expressions and losing any part of my story i was trying to tell. We also learnt if the script has a stage direction in it, always perform the stage direction even if you don’t have any props etc, as during the scene a brochure and magnet is thrown at him by Alice which cuts his lip. As I was performing this with a single camera shot with me it was only me in frame I needed to react to this moment even if the reader did not throw the props at me, as the casting team would have liked to have seen how I would have reacted as an actor. Watching back on my recording, there were a few things i would have changed, just slightly toning down my accent as I still think it was fairly strong and comedic, and slightly adjusting my posture as my character is described as a bit lazy and unhygienic, which I believe I could have portrayed more by using some more stronger choices such as my posture being more slouched, slower speech linking back to his drug use, which I could of brought in from our research when we did Meisner exercises in year 2 of my training, under the circumstances that we were on drugs and to maybe show the characteristics of withdrawal. As I know from reading the character overview, he is also known to be very poor so maybe he cannot afford to keep his habit up and that’s what creates these angry bursts of rage. In conclusion I have developed a strong understanding of the differences between screen and stage acting. I have learnt how to adjust my performances to suit the medium and how to use the camera to my advantage by being subtle. I am confident that the skills I have learnt within this class will make me more employable going forward if i were to pursue work in the film industry.
Mock cold read audition tape – Take 1
Monologue Bootcamp with Tyrell Jones
Many other skills we developed whilst in our specialist training, was in our Monologue Bootcamp with Tyrell Jones. We learnt how to approach monologues with different understanding, connecting with the characters on a different level, believing the intention of each and every line and understanding the subtext of what each line meant. We started with working on the famous speech ‘To be, or not to be’, walking around the classroom and reading the speech out loud. The exercise that Tyrell led was that every time there was a different thought, we would have to pause and reflect about what we had just said, understand it and say the next line stood still and then start walking again to the next line and change direction to show the change in thought. This was a really useful technique personally for me, as I have a tendency for rushing through monologues, and this exercise helped me just sit into the moment and react and understand what the script is telling me and what the character is feeling in the moment. We then were asked to choose our own classical monologues and to bring them in and use the same techniques for our own practice. I wanted to challenge myself in this class, so I brought in Act 2 scene 1 from Macbeth ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?’. Using the same technique it really helped me understand the different thoughts Macbeth was feeling during that scene as he coins between many different emotions, for example the guilt and the sheer fear of this floating dagger but then also a wondering of excitement, when he says ‘Come, let me clutch thee’ as he is intrigued of what is appearing in front of him. We then performed these monologues in front of each other, then gained feedback from Tyrell. My feedback was about my pauses during my lines as I think I was still more focused on not rushing through the monologue. Also the imagery of the dagger in front of me and where I was placing it, after we workshopped this monologue it was read by the audience much more stronger and I felt happy and confident with what knowledge I needed to progress when looking into other classical monologues as they were still fairly new to me. We then moved onto looking into contemporary monologues, which I was really excited for as I love a comedic monologue and I knew this was something I was more familiar with, however I was intrigued to see how the exercise for the classical monologues was going to work for a comedic monologue as i believed they were 2 different things, but I was I wrong and soon learned that the same techniques work both ways. I chose a monologue called ‘Road to ruin; Paved with Kittens’ By Gabriel Davis. This monologue follows a man who is explaining the story of his ex partner and their pet cat and the secret is that he is on a first date telling this story which is a punchline at the end. Using the techniques I was taught, it really helped me find the genuine emotion in the monologue that made it naturally funny without it seeming like I was trying as an actor to be funny, which eventually made the ending funnier as the audience wasn’t expecting it. I believe the skills I have acquired during our time in Tyrell’s Monologue class’s have made me a much more versatile actor, with new skills I will take no just into not just my monologues but into other aspects of acting too which I believe is going to help me succeed as an actor and grow into the performer that I would like to be.
My chosen Cotemporary monologue – Road to ruin; Paved with Kittens
from – The Five Stages of Love and Marriage by Gabriel Davis
Shakespeare with Dermot Daly
Going into this class I was open minded, I’ve never been a fan of Shakespeare’s work growing up however I did appreciate it for what it was. This soon changed after a few classes working with Dermot Daly on the works of Shakespeare. He showed us how once you get your head around the language it can be just as entertaining as any other piece of theatre that I would enjoy. He started our first lesson with a simple question, who loved Shakespeare, who didn’t mind it and who hated it. There was a very broad range of answers from everyone in the room, and we had a discussion on everyone’s opinions and you could understand everyone’s reasoning behind it. He began by telling us all to pick a play and relate it to a different story that we understood, and we soon realised that Shakespeare’s work has been used many other times to tell different stories Including ; Lion King – Hamlet / West side story – Romeo and Juliet. We then looked into the text to see what imagery was being used. We would draw what we could read to create a picture that we could imagine before we would speak our lines, This really helped me as when I did Act 2 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, the entirety of the monologue is imagery so when I drew it out it really made it clear how Romeo was describing Juliet and it made my delivery much more connected. This technique I found personally helpful and will be taking this with me for when I have to look into Shakespeare text again. One really interesting thing I learnt whilst being in this class was that our preconception of naturally doing RP for a Shakespeare piece was wrong. Modern day Shakespeare is encouraged to be done in your native accent, which was really fun doing ‘Bottoms Dream’ in a West Yorkshire accent. We then learned about how when Shakespeare was first written it wasn’t performed in RP either it was performed in OP (Original Pronunciation), which is more similar to a West Country accent as seen in the video Dermot showed us (inserted below). This was really informing as I never knew this was originally performed like this and would love to try performing some Shakespeare in this accent in the future. We also learnt about what makes a good monologue and what makes a good audition monologue and also where’s the best place to find them if we are limited in time. This has been really helpful for me as I always struggled finding a Shakespeare piece I could connect too and on here I can find all of his works and search for one that I like within one compact website. To conclude, during my time within the specialist Shakespeare class, I have learnt methods and skills to decode and understand his work and perform it to the best of my abilities. I have developed a strong understanding of Shakespeare’s influence on modern day art and how his stories can be interpreted in many different modern ways.
https://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/home – Monologue Library for Shakespeare
Uta Hagen with Alex Palmer
Finally, the last class I have had the privilege of taking part in is Alex Palmers – Uta Hagen specialist classes. As a group, we were instructed on a specific exercise for each week to perform. We were taught about the 6 main questions/steps that we should follow:
- Who am I?
- What are the circumstances?
- What time is it?
- Where am I?
- What surrounds me?
- What are my immediate circumstances?
Uta Hagen Exercises
We did all these exercises to begin without playing a character but ourselves, so we could get more naturalistic performances and really get the most out of the process. I found it really useful doing it this way as I wasn’t having to focus on layering anymore techniques on top of this. One of the exercises I struggled with was the 2 minute Semi improvised phone call. As a person that always overthinks, when I’m doing improvisation I tend to lean into comedy more often than doing serious topics, so trying to keep the exercise honest and truthful was much harder than anticipated. I worked around this by picking a topic that I could relate to and have experienced, so I chose that my phone call would be to the local Chinese takeaway. I learnt that naturally when I’m at home I would never be stood up to make a phone call, so in my exercise I made sure to sit down to make it as natural as possible. I then mapped out 3 different spots around the room for my eye line behind the audience, and to show my change of thought and to bring the audience into the characters’ world. One of my favourite exercises we did was where we had lost an important object, but we had to rehearse how we would look for it. On top of this we had to put 3 endowments throughout our exercise (Hungover, painful knees, starting with a cold). So with all these combined, I was looking for my lanyard for university, and the lights were very bright which was another reaction from the hangover which added to the naturalism of the performance. Doing these exercises I found it extremely useful as it showed how uncomplicated acting truly is, and how you just need to live truthfully to what is happening within the scene and to not overthink it. Since starting this class I have become more confident in trusting my natural instincts as a performer, and being able to sit more comfortably in a scene and a give a more truthful and honest performance.
What’s next?
Reflecting on my time at Leeds conservatoire, I can confidently say that the comprehensive training I have received has been transformative in shaping me into a well-rounded and versatile performer. This course has taught me invaluable tools that I can apply both in my professional and personal life as an actor and performer. As I prepare to take these skills into the industry, I feel equipped with a strong foundation in both classical and contemporary techniques. These skills haven’t just given me more confidence with my technique but also the confidence to trust in my own instincts as an actor. I will continue to look into all these different skills and continue developing them all by attending workshops outside of Leeds Conservatoire and in summer auditioning for some indie/low budget films to get experience in front of a camera. I am excited to start my journey in the industry and I am ready to face it head on using all the new skills I have honed whilst training at Leeds Conservatoire.
Bibliography
Shakespeare’s Monologues. Available at: https://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/home (Accessed: 07 January 2026).
Open university (no date) Shakespeare OP, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/YiblRSqhL04?si=iKcOcF56Nyi_9gIQ (Accessed: 07 January 2026).
Adam Stadius (2023) – ‘Living truthfully under a certain set of Circumstances’ – Meisner
