Introduction

Unfortunately, I was absent from over a month of training at the very start of my third year due to illness, and given these were the first ever classes I would have in screen acting, monologue workshopping, and the Uta Hagen method – with only a few previous Shakespeare classes – I had very few ways to try and follow along independently while waiting to be well enough to return to class. Missing almost an entire half term of classes, especially the introductory and foundational classes of the module was definitely the biggest struggle that I faced in this area of my training, as even when I could rejoin my peers in class I was at a disadvantage of trying to catch up while also keeping up with present classwork. On an individual basis, teachers granted me a lot of grace for the time I had off, so the frustration was more internal as I reckoned with how to continue to get the most out of my training. While I tried to adjust my approach to the remaining classes I had and make the most of the remaining opportunities to perform and receive feedback, there were varying degrees of success due to a multitude of factors, such is the nature of these performance-based classes. I’ll never know if being there from the beginning of term would have made drastic differences in my skill set as a performer but I have to generally assume that the actual experience of being there in the room to both observe and participate would have strengthened my abilities as an actor. Regardless, upon rejoining the classes I still managed to pick up many transferable skills that I believe will strengthen my employability in a variety of different performance situations.

Screen Acting

Prior to this module, I have had no experience with acting for camera whatsoever, so there were quite a few obstacles to overcome when starting out. This skill is imperative to so many aspects of the industry though, as working as an extra, in advertisements, and of course in films and tv shows can provide wider options when I’m looking to start out my career. Many actors in the musical theatre industry who I look up to and follow closely to try and understand their career decisions for help with navigating my own, have worked in to and film, as well as to advertisements for massive companies that builds a professional rapport.

I had tried to keep up with what was going on in any classes I’d missed – such as different students taking the roles of a film crew like director, someone in charge of continuity etc. and while I had some experience in these respects from film studies A Level, by the time I was able to rejoin my classmates, we had moved on to filming monologues one by one to use for showreels. While I was glad that I hadn’t missed out on the part of the class that can be used on my Spotlight page, I found difficulty picking a scene that was effective, and luckily had time with our teacher Keeley to review various options. I knew I needed to find a scene that had enough contrasting emotional beats in it to

Eventually I picked a short scene from the BBC film Pride (2014) where the character Jonathan discloses to a friend that he was one of the very first people in the UK to be diagnosed with AIDS, and – as his partner’s health has worsened – he doesn’t know what’s keeping him alive. After much deliberation I chose this scene; because I’m very familiar with the film and so would need less in-depth preparation that I no longer had time for considering I would already be at a disadvantage in terms of on-camera experience, and the character fits my cast-type and given the other videos I have planned for potential showreels the queer-coded character is a gap that this was able to fill.

I utilised the physical preparation exercises that I’d explored in previous Meisner classes before the class started, as I have realised that this is my most effective way of preparing that makes me feel very present in the room. This is why I did cardio exercises to increase blood flow, and held a plank to failure to try and exhaust myself momentarily. When in the room, I recorded a take and then Keeley suggested an improvisation exercise to try and give backstory to my character. Given the character is secondary to the film, I had devised much of the backstory myself based on context clues; how he would come home and disclose to his partner that he’s been diagnosed with AIDS and how this means they’re both ill. Keeley then introduced me to a kind of preparation exercise that used the proximity of each of our hands and gesturing to communicate this backstory. We sat opposite each other at a table, and with no words try to use our hand to improvise and respond to each other, under the circumstance of this backstory. The take I filmed after this exercise was the most successful one, and Keeley and I both agreed it felt the most connected. While I approached the exercise slightly confused I was very intrigued how quickly I took to it – moved by Keeley’s choices and surprised by some of my reactions – it illuminated parts of the character that I hadn’t previously thought of and since then I find these improvisational exercises extremely helpful and will definitely be using them to help develop backstory for underwritten characters in the future.

Another aspect of screen acting class I found very helpful was a cover lesson where when left with nobody else to film their showreel scenes, the class was opened up to other questions about the industry, auditioning, and general tips for actors. One I found extremely useful was how to analyse a script as quickly as possible. This is a technique called ‘the five C’s’ and was taught to us to use in situations where we don’t have enough time to go in depth analysing a script, to get the basics and understand the structure and what I need to bring to the script. Our cover teacher explained it as if you had a half an hour break after being given sides for recall material, or didn’t have time to do intense script work before needing to film your self tape, this is an easy way to get to grips with the gist of a narrative quickly – an incredibly useful skill to display pickup skills to a casting team, and have less anxiety when throwing myself into blind reads

Uta Hagen

In Uta Hagen’s book Respect for Acting, both of the following exercises are two parts of the ‘Outdoors’ chapter of her object exercises and meant to help identify an actor’s relationship to space and nature, and finding forward-moving occupation without the help of scenery or props (Hagen, 1973). We had two separate exercises – ‘bringing the outside in’ and ‘occupation while doing nothing’.

Given that the primary focus of my previous acting training was the Meisner method, focusing on finding ways to bring traits and aspects of a character to myself, and maintaining a level of personal accuracy – for example we were often reminded that we are simply “living truthfully under given circumstances” (Moseley, 2017) the Uta Hagen acting method was a stark contrast to my previous experiences with acting training at drama school. One specific example was when I was able to rejoin the class, after observing the ‘searching for an object’ exercise to get to grips with how the class worked, I prepared an activity for the ‘doing nothing’ exercise, where quite simply the objective is to do nothing for 2 minutes, and find some kind of occupation, utilising all 4 sides of the offstage space with clear objects to each direction.

After rehearsing the exercise in my own time until it reached the point where I could easily replicate it, I delivered it in class and was given the feedback to make it bigger and more presentational for the sake of the audience. This took a moment for me to understand given the more naturalistic nature of my previous acting experience, and that I was delivering the exercise as myself, not another character. After discussing with our teacher it made a lot more sense that since the exercise itself was very lowkey and nothing particularly exciting is happening, everything needs to be heightened slightly to make it read properly to an audience, even in a classroom of people sat extremely close. What seems like a fairly simple and elementary note definitely influenced the way I treat performing in smaller, more intimate spaces which could very well be the entry-point of my career. In addition to this, I believe this exercise – especially running it a second time after being given those working notes – helped me to achieve the objectives that were first explained when we were given the exercise; what to do when there is nothing to do, which is particularly helpful for scenes where your character has no lines of their own. This intrigued me because it always seemed a problem being a character whose only job was to listen, even for short periods of time, so simply standing there and observing things from various areas was a scary exercise but one that made me feel more confident that I can effectively ‘do nothing’.

Other helpful aspects of this class were often from observing others, especially when I was first re-entering training and trying to find my footing again. Examples include the 6th exercise entitled ‘Bringing the Outside In’ where the objective is to present a two minute sequence where we completed activities as if we were in an outdoor location. While observing a classmate present her exercise – at the beach performing tasks like getting undressed, laying out a towel, and then packing away before leaving – our teacher Alex Palmer (2025, personal communication) raised an extremely helpful point: “the script might say ‘Sofia leaves’ but the shaking the towel, putting her clothes back on……is all her own work”. This drew my attention to the level of detail that Sofia had implemented into her exercise, it wasn’t just repeatable it was also extremely specific. Up until this point I had falsely understood that keeping the exercise simple but still checking the correct boxes was the most effective way to present the work, but when watching how clearly Sofia illustrated each moment and communicated her location to the audience it occurred to me that as an audience member this is much more captivating, and bolstered by Alex’s additional point I learnt a vital lesson about the simple details that can wordlessly build character from extremely short excerpts of script; it’s not always about what the character does it’s how they do it and what path they take to get there.

Shakespeare

In our Shakespeare class, the most valuable lessons were an overview of the entire Shakespeare canon and the common traits of various eras of his work, and how people are retelling/adapting Shakespeare and how to approach these works.

Learning about the Shakespeare canon was extremely useful as identifying the common themes and distinct features of each section relating to periods of his life and growth as a writer. The first period of his work spans from 1589–1593 and includes plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, and Love’s Labour’s Lost. It is characterised by their immaturity and youthful crudity, and use of puns and extravagant language. This wrought upon me a striking realisation as I have performed Romeo and Juliet twice, both times as the character Mercutio who frequently speaks in flowery language and comedic puns – the one I remembered first being “dreamers often lie” to refer to both telling lies and lying down to sleep. Making this connection peaked my interest and I continued to identify plays in each section that I had experience with either watching or performing in. Another example of a connection I ‘didn’t know I knew’ for lack of better phrasing was from studying Othello for A Level English which fits into the third period spanning 1601 to 1607 along with other shows such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet which all focus on the sins and weaknesses of men – once again aligning with my previous study of Shakespeare as our main topic of discussion on Othello was always the ‘Aristotelian tragic hero’, and the phrase ‘hamartia’ referring to a character’s fatal flaw that will eventually become their downfall. Although upon further research I’ve found that general academic opinion is that Hamlet follows a different, and more Western, tragic structure it is still recognisable as having these similar characteristics as at this point in his life Shakespeare was more pessimistic and grew cynical and gloomy, leading to this period being dubbed by some as “the period of great tragedies” (Brooke, 2013). Since studying this area of Shakespeare I’ve found a new ‘in’ to reading more of his plays and helping pick monologues for myself.

While these eras are generalisations and not concrete fact, it is helpful to know what you can expect from one of his works just from the time period it was written. For example, in an exercise where we swapped monologues with a classmate, I swapped my Sebastian monologue from Twelfth Night with a classmate’s Helena monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While I have never read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is from the same writing period as Twelfth Night– the second period from 1594 to 1600 – and the plays were believed to have only been written a year apart. This knowledge of the second period of Shakespeare’s writing, characterised by a frank joy for life and the blending of humour and romance helped illuminate the demands of the text without a heavy amount of research, as going into the text blind was also a part of the monologue-swapping exercise. This has helped me immensely as I feel I can pick classical monologues with greater ease as I have wider knowledge of the specific aspects of each era and, as described by Dermot, there may very well be situations where I have to find new Shakespeare monologues with short notice or have to learn audition material without the time to read the full play, so having the general knowledge of where different plays place in the Shakespeare canon and what that means for the thematic and plot elements will be a vital skill to become a versatile and intelligent performer.

As previously mentioned I’ve performed Shakespeare before but never fully felt as if I understood it, but this lesson with Dermot was so helpful in breaking down any preconceived objections or obstacles I have had with classical period plays in the past, something that troubled me during the short amount of time spent on Shakespeare during second year. Given the ever-famous notion that at any time of year, somewhere on Earth Shakespeare is being performed (Yeung et al., 2016), I would say it’s a rather significant part of my future career and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to consolidate this area before entering the industry.

Another aspect of our Shakespeare classes that emphasise the level of employability that this knowledge provides me was our lesson on adaptations and retellings of Shakespearean works; the differences between an adaptation and a direct retelling, popular instances of both, and what the demands of both are. I already had some surface-level knowledge of the content of this lesson; such as Disney’s The Lion King being a retelling of Hamlet or various modern adaptations of Shakespeare in recent years such as Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jamie Lloyd’s Romeo and Juliet, but this class really went into depth about the different ways of retelling Shakespeare stories and how faithful they stay to the source material against how far they may depart from the original, and why they remain so popular in modern popular culture. As well as the aforementioned Lion King, films such as Ten Things I Hate About You, and musicals like West Side Story are all based on Shakespeare plays to varying degrees although they all remove the old English language in favour of modern dialogue. This isn’t the only way to create a popular adaptation of a Shakespeare play however, as the Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet keeps the text from the original script, but utilises visual language of modern gang culture to maintain its place in the cultural zeitgeist.

These different kinds of adaptation require a different kind of acting performance of course, and this became all the more apparent as in one of our audition classes this semester we had a mock audition for a new adaptation of Love’s Labour’s Lost entitled Love’s Labour’s Lost (More or Less) that was set during a stag and hen party in Ibiza. The show utilised both original Shakespearean text, as well as original and modernised verse to blend with the old English, and plain modern dialogue too. In combination with a jukebox score of 90’s pop music, the play clearly fits in with many other Shakespeare retellings since the book was clearly constructed in a way that used the original comedy of the text to make innuendos and puns from old English more apparent to a modern audience, and by auditioning with both song cuts and sides from the script in front of the director I was able to workshop how modern my movement and gestures should be, as well as the transition from old English into modern dialogue and song, a common part of many Shakespeare adaptations today – see the popular 2011 production of Much Ado About Nothing pictured below, that sets the play in 1980s Gibraltar but keeps the original Shakespearean text (Billington, 2011). The fact the audition class meant to prepare us for the industry has included not only the Love’s Labour’s Lost mock audition but our actual assessment for the module being Head Over Heels, not Shakespearean but another jukebox musical where all dialogue is spoken in Old English verse, proves how valuable of a skill this will be for future employability as this is still a very popular way of adapting classical stories into modern musicals.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think the advanced acting pathway of the specialist skills module has been incredibly useful to me, and given me many skills that I have already been able to transfer into other areas of my training – particularly the ones meant to simulate real industry situations. Due to this I can confidently say that my employability has undeniably increased because of these classes and I will continue to implement the techniques and knowledge I have learnt when and wherever possible.

Bibliography

Beresford, S. (no date) Pride Script, BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/writers/scripts/films/pride (Accessed: 07 December 2025). 

Billington, M. (2011) Much ado about nothing – review, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/jun/01/much-ado-about-nothing-review (Accessed: 07 January 2026). 

Brooke, N. (2013) Shakespeare’s early tragedies. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. 

Golden, L. (1984) ‘Othello, Hamlet, and Aristotelian tragedy’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 35(2), p. 142. doi:10.2307/2869923. 

Hagen, U. (1973) Respect for acting. New York, London: Macmillan : Collier Macmillan. 

Moseley, N. (2017) Meisner in practice: A guide for actors, directors and teachers. London: Nick Hern Books. 

Open University, T. (2011) Shakespeare: Original pronunciation, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s?si=diSUBSPBYTgOsHhI (Accessed: 07 December 2025). 

Timeline of Shakespeare’s plays (no date) Royal Shakespeare Company. Available at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/histories-timeline/timeline (Accessed: 07 January 2026). 

Yeung, P. et al. (2016) What’s in a number? William Shakespeare’s legacy analysed, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/ng-interactive/2016/apr/22/william-shakespeares-legacy-analysed (Accessed: 08 January 2026).