ONLINE STUDIO LAB

After ten years training actors and then directors in this research, I realised that the best way for everyone to progress quickly was to encourage the creation of regular projects, with a shared studio for everyone.

The Studio Lab starts from an additional observation: ‘professionals’ are afraid of actors, of their emotions, and suffer from a normal impostor syndrome. Actors are afraid of professionals and seek their validation. This creates dysfunctional and abusive dynamics where everyone tries to survive in the face of what they don’t understand. In this shared studio, everyone is on the same level and we explore tools together to see their effects on the artistic collaborations we are preparing for.

Most acting training is disconnected from the real conditions of filmmaking or directing. The exercises proposed don’t make actors autonomous and their professional competence is never verified.

On the side of directors and casting directors, acting or directing courses are almost nonexistent, or suffer even more from the lack of clarity of most acting techniques.

Meanwhile, networking workshops between actors and “professionals” are developing, disguised as educational offerings (particularly in France to get around a recent reform preventing these workshops from receiving public funding). These professionals are almost never in pre-production, and are neither trained in teaching nor in the subject they claim to teach in itself. Many structures (schools, actors collectives…) get involved in these partnerships that financially benefit the organisers but genuinely serve neither the actors who receive no professional skills in exchange for their time and money, nor the professionals don’t train themselves in any of those fields, nor any future projects that almost never emerge from such ventures. We refuse to bring in “authorities” (who may be very skilled at pre-selecting candidates for roles, or in directing films broadly but aren’t necessarily qualified to teach) and validate them as educators in order to attract actors as clients.

Serious directors and casting directors are increasingly seeking to train and participate in building an effective and safe working environment. The Online Studio Lab responds to this demand as well as that of actors wanting to delve into this approach, wherever they are in the world.

Each month, we explore a new scene together. Script analysis, acting, improvisations, tailored protocols for each challenge we encounter together. We test everyone’s professional competence in this framework, with elements of career coaching and content production to go further between sessions.