angels independent community driven theatre school covering godalming and frensham

Angels Theatre School is an acting school.
Everything we teach is aimed at inspiring, supporting and developing
the acting skills of our students.
At angels singing and dancing are an important part of the ciriculum,
but it is worth noting that if you are looking for a High School Musical
sort of vibe we are probably not what you are looking for.

1. Know your history - where acting came from and how it is evolving.

2. Know your voice - understand where your unique voice came from.

3. Train your voice - through practical exercises learn to fill the performance space,
suit vocal performance to theatre or screen and maximise your voice’s potential to
create emotion and character.

4. Know your body - everything starts here. Before an actor utters a syllable, his audience is evaluating both
character and performer simply by the way he crosses the stage.

5. Be a skilled observer - look at life in detail.

6. Study - Shakespeare, Stanislavski, Brecht, Artaud, Strasberg, and Berkoff have all added to the canon of
theory that an actor can refer to.

7. Project - vocally, phyiscally, mentally, emotionally. Engage with your text, your character, your audience.

Understanding the Business:

Students are actively encouraged to involve themselves in all aspects of production:
not only do our students often create original pieces of script and choreography for
our performances; they are involved in budget, direction, technical management
and production design.

In addition, our students are taught audition and interview technique. They also
benefit from guest speakers, such as the school’s affiliated agent Sheila Ashworth
and former and fellow students, now working in the industry.

Posture, movement and dance:

On arrival the aim is to get the students focussed and ready to work as
quickly as possible.
We begin with a brief warm up, leading into physical work; generally
dance and choreography which includes genres such as
Street/Hip-Hop, Commercial Jazz, Contemporary, Lyrical and
Improvised work.

Acting:

This is the main part of the class.
We would usually start with a vocal warm up followed by the subject
for the day.
This could be improvisation on topical events, script work, the
development of skills such as dialects, accents, mimetic and
improvisational work, or, when a show or special project is being
created, a specific rehearsal.

Singing:

Once again, a warm up and then tackling the material for the day.
Anything from The Black Eyed Peas/Kings Of Leon to Musical Theatre
such as Les Miserables,Chicago and Showboat.
Our starting point is to teach the students to sing acapella with
confidence, to find their own voices and to sing in a company in a
mutually supportive way.
As tuning and pitching develop, we encourage students to take the
plunge and sing on their own.
Once they have found a voice that they can summon and they can
clap and stamp in time and their confidence with rhythm has grown
we introduce the discipline of accompany taped or live.