Amateur Theatre Course

This ten week course is focused upon a chosen script, this time David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago. With the teacher as director and students as actors, we will explore the world of the play, the characters, and relationships within it, as well as looking at the language of the script and understanding the play in its theatrical framework.

Along with rehearsal of scenes from the play, there will be an intensive focus on the other skills that inform the work on the script such as ensemble acting, the actor-audience relationship, staging, physicality, characterization and text analysis; culminating in a performance for friends and family in week 10.

• Explore in detail the theatrical context of the play
• Study and improvise on its dramatic relationships
• Understand the arc of your character over the play and how to express it
• Learn more about staging and how to take notes from a director
• Continue to develop confidence in your physicality and voice as a performer

Each Amateur Theatre course is based on a different play. The previous courses have explored modern and classical pieces such as: Harold Pinter's Betrayal, Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Edward Albee’s Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, Arthur Miller’s Crucible, Moira Buffini’s Gabriel, Shakespeare’s Tempest, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Patrick Marber's Closer, Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya…

The drama course is spread over 10 weekly sessions of 2 hours each. We keep group sizes small in order for the facilitator to give you a lot of individual feedback to encourage an intimate, friendly, and fun atmosphere in which you can learn and grow.