Teachers

Scott Williams, Meisner Teacher.

Scott founded the Impulse Company shortly after he arrived in London in 1996. In the years since, he has led the expansion of the company into a full-time training and performance organisation, and continues to increase the impact of The Company's ideals into the arts world of the UK and beyond.

Michael Hauge, Screenwriting Coach.

Hauge is a script consultant, screenwriter, author and lecturer who works with filmmakers and executives on their screenplays, film projects and development skills. He has coached writers or consulted on projects for Warner Bros., Paramount , Disney, Columbia , New Line, Joel Silver Prods., CBS, Lifetime, Morgan Freeman, Robert Downey Jr., Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, and Val Kilmer. Michael also consults with attorneys, psychologists, corporations and individuals on employing story principles in their projects, their presentations, and their work with clients and patients.

Nadia Kevan, Alexander Teacher

Born in 1955 in England and undertook training to be a classical and contemporary dancer in London. She then moved to Germany in 1974 to work with several ballet, opera and theatre companies. In 1979, Kevan worked freelance with a small dance company in Hamburg and a school for contemporary dance. She worked with musicians and travelled through Europe with contemporary performance fusions of chamber music and solo dance. Back pain and unresolved questions about movement forced her to look for new ways of moving and teaching. The Alexander Technique convinced her immediately and she trained to be a teacher in Denmark and London, this revolutionised her entire approach to and experience of performance work. She then moved to working extensively with a visual artist and in Asian disciplines.

Robert Benedetti, Director.

Robert Benedetti holds a PhD from Northwestern University. He has taught acting, directing, and film/TV production and acting for thirty years at the School of Theatre at The California Institute of the Arts, the University of California at Riverside, York University in Toronto and at the Yale Drama School. He was guest director at the Melbourne Theatre Company and his pro- duction of Glengarry Glen Ross won the Victoria Green Room Award. His book, The Actor at Work, has been in print for thirty years and just appeared in its Eighth Edition.

Cicely Berry, Voice.

Cicely Berry trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She then taught there, working with Peter Finch, Sean Connery, Ann Bancroft and Richard Chamberlain. In 1969, she was invited by Trevor Nunn to the Royal Shakespeare Company where her work has been based ever since. She has worked at the Stella Adler Studio in New York and for different theatre companies in over 25 countries. She appeared at the Chicago Festival of Theatre with Charles Marowitz and with Howard Davies in Zimbabwe. In China, she coached actors for Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor.

Ivan Chubbuck, Acting Coach.

Being an actor, director and founder of the Australian Acting Academy, I have found useful workshops and instructors harder and harder to find. Over the past 20 years I have either dabbled or studied Method, Meisner, Practical Aesthetics, Impulse work and Eric Morris. Because of this I was delighted and somewhat skeptical when I was accepted as an actor for Theatrelab 05 Master class with world famous LA acting coach Ivana Chubbuck.

Tony McNamara, Playwright.

Originally from Melbourne Tony graduated from the Australian Film Television and Radio School earning a BAin Film and TV in 1996. His first play The Cafe Latté Kid was produced by Sydney Theatre Company’s New Stages and was subsequently nominated for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 1995. He was the winner of the Phillips Parsons’Award for Young Playwrights in 1995. The John Wayne Principle was first produced by STC’s New Stages in 1996, then included in the Sydney Theatre Company 1997 subscription season where it concluded a critically acclaimed, sold out season before transferring to Playbox Theatre, Melbourne. It has been performed by La Boite in Brisbane, and by The Nuffield Theatre Company in Southampton and London in 2001.

Kristin Linklater, Voice.

Kristin Linklater trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She was the Master Teacher of Voice at New York University from 1965 to 1977, while also working with the Open Theater; the Negro Ensemble Company, Stratford, Ontario; the Guthrie Theatre; and on numerous Broadway shows. She was cofounder of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1977. She has received major grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Edward Albee, Playwright.

Edward Franklin Albee III (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright known for works including WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, THE ZOO STORY, and THE SANDBOX. His works are considered well-crafted and often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Absurdism that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger American playwrights, such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, credit Albee’s daring mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent post-war American theatre in the early 1960s.

Stephen Jeffreys, British Playwright.

Stephen Jeffreys was born in London and first attracted critical attention with his study of a stunt man on the skids LIKE DOLLS OR ANGELS (1977) which won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award at the National Student Drama Festival. He helped to set up the touring company Pocket Theatre Cumbria and wrote several plays for them including his adaptation of HARD TIMES (1982) which has been given many productions all over the world. His CARMEN 1936 performed by Communicado won him a second Fringe First in 1984 and ran at the Tricycle Theatre in London.