A five day intensive course designed to enhance your skills and develop your confidence in acting. Explore a range of exercises and acting techniques that will illuminate and enliven scripts and scenes. Ideal for those who have completed a beginner’s level course.

What is the course about?
Working in a safe and supportive atmosphere, these lively practical sessions will cover a range of exercises designed to release your imagination and develop your creativity. You will explore the actors process as you develop and build character and work towards a performance of a scene from a contemporary play in the final session.

What will we cover?
• Physical and vocal warmups
• Group exercises
• Character work
• Text analysis work
• Scene rehearsal and performance.

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
• Perform a personal physical and vocal warm-up
• Explore and analyse text confidently
• Play character and perform in a scene from a play with confidence
• Use improvisation exercises to enhance script work.

The former Head of Voice at LAMDA takes you through the great Patsy Rodenburg's celebrated work in an intensive and extended online voice and speech workshop. Do not miss this!

What is the course about?
One of Patsy Rodenburg's former students and a celebrated voice tutor in her own right takes you through some invaluable vocal exercises in an intensive workshop.

This is a live online course. You will need:
- Internet connection. The classes work best with Chrome.
- A computer with microphone and camera is best (e.g. a PC/laptop/iMac/MacBook), or a tablet/iPad/smart phone/iPhone if you don't have a computer.
- Earphones/headphones/speakers.
We will contact you with joining instructions before your course starts.

What will we cover?
Alignment breath and articulation exercises sourced from two of Patsy Rodenburg's publications.

What will I achieve?
- By the end of this course you should be able to...
- Have a clear sense of the vocal channel being able to phonate with a sense of ease.
- Deepen your connection to the breath and release sound with freedom.
- Identify exercises you can use as part of a regular voice limber.

Broaden your skills and discover the freedom to act with classical text in a safe and supportive environment. Gain the confidence to build truthful characters through various practical exercises and scene work.

What is the course about?
The course provides a practical opportunity to explore the acting demands of various classical playwrights including work from the Greeks, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, through to the works of Oscar Wilde. Working creatively and collaboratively you will work in some depth on a scene and or solo monologue.

What will we cover?
Demystifying complex language, working with verse, exploring character, the ensemble, Monologue/scene work.

What will I achieve?
- By the end of this course you should be able to...
- Perform classical text with greater confidence
- Recognise and perform verse with greater confidence
- Work collaboratively to perform an ensemble piece
- Analyse and break down text for practical performance
- Prepare and perform a monologue.

A fun one day intensive encounter with the acting process. Increase your confidence and discover your potential in a safe and supportive environment.

What is the course about?
The course is designed for those wanting to practically experience the process of acting. It is ideal for total beginners or for those returning to acting after some time away. It is an opportunity to improve your overall confidence in yourself and in performing as you explore a range of acting exercises. Learning is through fun simple exercises that begin with theatre games and build towards scene work. An opportunity to develop your creative skills in exploring character in a range of scenarios.

What will we cover?
- Drama games and group exercises
- Improvisation
- Creating a character
- Basic scene analysis
- Status work.

By the end of this course you should be able to...
- Work more openly with others
- Communicate more successfully
- Work confidently in dealing with the process of creating a character
- Perform a short scene with confidence.

Deepen your understanding and emotional expressivity as you work towards deeper levels of practice in this workshop. Suitable for beginners and experienced students alike who wish to develop greater sincerity, authenticity and depth in their acting. Explore the principles of psychological realism pioneered by Stanislavski and developed by the Method practioners to enrich and enhance your performances and characterisations. Learn new skills and hone existing ones in this supportive and expressive environment.

An exploration of Stanislavski's acting technique - learn, extend and challenge existing approaches. Sometimes, suddenly in performance, all around you feels alive and real. Impulsive responses arise spontaneously and rich, detailed behaviour emerges without effort. Stanislavski called this ‘experiencing’ the role. This course trains the elements that support the emergence of this creative state in performance. Making use of the approaches to preparation and characterisation developed by Stanislavski, as well as the Method practitioners who elaborated his work further, your ability to generate rich, detailed performance choices and the range and depth of your characterisations will be extended and strengthened. The course is designed as a workshop studio that provides a focused and supportive arena in which to develop your talent, hone your craft, tackle the problems that you may experience that prevent its full and free expression, and learn new skills.

We will explore exercises and training techniques that develop your ability to experience real responses from imagined stimuli and to mobilise subconscious creativity in your work. You will learn how to create more vivid and affecting inner images to justify action, to develop the use of oneself as a creative resource, and to avoid more consistently mechanical acting, conventional choices, and the faking or forcing of emotional expression. We will explore characterisation techniques that target the specific qualities that separate you from characters very different to yourself, along with psychophysical processes that facilitate a more expressive embodiment. We will also examine the means by which blocks and inhibitions to a freer expression of impulses and a more connected and vulnerable mode of performance may be addressed. As actors progress through the training, we will explore the ‘active analysis’ of drama and a deeper engagement with the structure and dynamics of dramatic action.

Please note that acting classes by their very nature can involve exercises and the exploration of material that some students may find challenging.

It's time to top up your vocal skills! This thorough and fun improvers' course will benefit your further vocal development as an actor or professional speaker. You will consolidate work on breath support and explore pitch and resonance. The course will be held in the college.

It's time to top up your vocal skills! This thorough and fun improvers' course will benefit your further vocal development as an actor or professional speaker. You will consolidate work on breath support and explore pitch and resonance. The course will be held in the college.

What will we cover?
Breath support, control and pressure, resonance, pitch awareness, articulation and techniques of communication.

By the end of this course you should be able to...
- Identify your own vocal weaknesses and develop ways to address them.
- Display improvements in breath capacity and support using more advanced breathing exercises.
- Apply articulation pitch and variety to a whole range of texts and material.
- Further develop the resonance of your voice by examining secondary and tertiary areas of resonance.

Improve the quality of your voice and standard of speech; relaxation and alignment; breath capacity/control; articulation, forward placement and vocal expression, primarily aimed at performers. This course will be taught in the college.

What is the course about?
To improve the quality of your voice for increased confidence in communication and performance. To develop vocal skills and thus an understanding of how the voice works. The course is primarily aimed at the actor/performer.

What will we cover?
Physical alignment.
Breathing - diaphragmatic, lower abdominal and lower intercostal.
Relaxation techniques, opening the channel for sound.
Forward placement work.
Jaw and tongue; opening throat.
Vowel work and consonant drills.

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
Demonstrate an awareness of the body and its effect on the voice.
Demonstrate effective relaxation techniques.
Demonstrate deep breathing/support of sound.
Demonstrate a more powerful voice and richer tone.
Articulate clearly in speech.
Demonstrate vocal confidence and awareness.

Improve the quality of your voice and standard of speech through relaxation, stance, breath capacity/control, articulation, forward placing and expression. This course will be delivered in the college.

What is the course about?
To improve the quality of your voice for increased confidence in communication. To develop vocal skills and an understanding of how the voice works with practical focus on relaxation, stance, breath capacity/control, articulation, forward placement and expression.

What will we cover?
Relaxation, alignment and posture, breath support, control and pressure, resonance, pitch awareness, articulation and techniques of communication.

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
Demonstrate more confidence in your voice and how you use it.
Display an awareness of the technique of supporting your voice and controlling your breath.
Practise articulation exercises to improve clarity and diction.

Join in our new Dance & Drama Club at our North East Centre for Autism in Newton Aycliffe
The group has now finished for the summer holidays but will resume in September, we would like to hear from parents what days you would like the sessions to run.

The clubs are FREE and we welcome children and young people with autism and other special needs to attend. A formal diagnosis is not required.

If you're 15-25 and you're into art, film and theatre then HOME Young Creatives is for you.

Each year, we'll be putting an amazing series of free workshops, projects and commissioning opportunities which will be led by industry professionals. Your creative career starts here!