BA Acting
Guest Directors and Workshop Leaders
The BA Acting maintains strong links with all levels of the profession in Scotland and further
afield. It has also developed fruitful partnerships with a number of equivalent institutions
overseas.
Each final year actor is assigned a professional mentor (usually a graduate of the Royal
Conservatoire) who offers informal careers advice and, whenever possible, takes the student to
visit their place of work.
Guest professional actors, directors and other specialists regularly teach on the course, and
second and third year students also have the opportunity to perform in a range of professional
contexts. These have included main stage productions at the
Citizens Theatre,
the Arches,
the Traverse
Theatre,
Dundee Rep and regular co-productions with the
Tron Theatre (Glasgow’s
main contemporary and new writing venue). Participants in previous new writing work at the Tron
have included writers and directors from France, Italy, Canada and Germany (including Thomas
Ostermeier, Director of the
Berlin
Schaubuhne).
Diaspora , an annual collaboration with the Tron and the National Theatre of Scotland, has
brought international theatre artists to Glasgow to work with our acting students and
Scottish-based professionals. Plays and practitioners have included contributions from Canada,
Russia, Romania, Singapore, Iran, Israel, Greece, Nigeria, Poland, Italy, Belgium, Australia, and
India.
Our ongoing collaboration with Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland has brought emerging writers and
directors together with our actors to develop brand new plays for public platform performances as
well as a two day workshop with Ghanaian director Dzifa Glikpoe.
The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, one of the UK’s premier new writing companies, is another
regular partner in new writing projects including their biennial festival
Cubed3. Each year our students perform in public staged readings at the Traverse.
Individual students have also performed at professional venues throughout the UK and in a
variety of TV and film roles while still on the course. In the last two years, students have
fulfilled professional engagements before or immediately after graduation for a great range of
companies and organizations including BBC, BBC Radio, STV, The Old Vic, The Young Vic, The Almeida,
The Bush, The Gate, The Royal National Theatre, Gardzienice Company (Poland), Liverpool Everyman,
The Globe, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Dundee Rep, Tron Theatre, Arches Theatre, Citizens
Theatre, TAG Theatre, Birds of Paradise, Playwrights’ Studio (Scotland), National Theatre of
Scotland, Lyceum Theatre (Edinburgh).
International exchange activity has, in the recent past, included performances at the Gdansk
Shakespeare Festival, the Warsaw International Festival of Theatre Academies and the Folkwang
Hochschule, Essen, and extended workshop/study tours to VGIK in Moscow, the Ernst Busch School in
Berlin, and I-Act Forum, Alexandria, Egypt. There are regular individual student exchanges with the
California Institute of the Arts and with a number of schools across Europe under the
Erasmus scheme.
Recent professional contributors to the course have included:
|
Actors
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Kevin Spacey
Timothy West Tom Mannion Liam Brennan Robert Carlyle Adrian Howells Dougray Scott Scott Handy David Tennant Alan Cumming Richard Wilson Hilton Macrae Brian McCardie Neve McKintosh Sandy Grierson Mhairi Steenbock Finlay Welsh Robbie Coltrane |
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Directors
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Wlodzimierc Staniewski (Director and Founder,Gardzienice Company, Poland)
Anna-Helena Mclean (Gardzienice) Pamela Prather (Yale) Mauricio Paroni de Castro (Italian/Brazilian director) Graham Eatough (Artistic Director, Suspect Culture) Matthew Lenton (Artistic Director, Vanishing Point) Graham McLaren (Artistic Director, Theatre Babel) Jeremy Raison (Artistic Director, Citizens Theatre) Guy Hollands (Artistic Director, Citizens Theatre) James Brining (Artistic Director, Dundee Rep) Dominic Hill (Artistic Director, Dundee Rep Ensemble, newly appointed Artistic Director Traverse Theatre) Muriel Romanes (Artistic Director, Stellar Quines) Lorne Campbell (Associate Director Traverse Theatre) Gaynor MacFarlane (Theatre director and BBC Radio Drama Producer) Lu Kemp (Theatre director and BBC Radio Drama Producer) Kirsty Williams (BBC Radio Drama Producer) Martin Danziger (Theatre Director) Alasdair Hawthorn (Theatre Director) Marc de Launay (Film and TV Director) Iain Heggie (Writer/Director) Ian Knox (Film and TV Director) Henrique Goldman (Film Director) Gregory Thompson (Tron Theatre, RSC) Nicola McCartney (Writer/Director) Jemima Levick (NToS, Lyceum) Adrian Osmond (Theatre and Opera Director)
James Robert Carson (Theatre and Opera Director)
Pamela Carter (Writer and Director)
Raul
Pol Heyvaert (Designer and Director, Victoria, Belgium)
Morag Fullarton (Film and TV Director) Alison Peebles (Theatre and Film Director) Jo Timmins (Cat in a Cup, Imaginate) Tony Reekie (Imaginate) Gill Robertson (Catherine Wheels) Dougie Irvine (Visible Fictions) Andy Arnold (Arches and Tron) |
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Professional Mentors
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Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings, Master and Commander)
Neve McIntosh (Gormenghast) Daniella Nardini (This Life) Tom Ellis (Nicholas Nickleby, Nice Guy Eddie) Alan Cumming (GoldenEye, X-Men 2) David Tennant (RNT, RSC, Dr Who) Christine Bottomley (Early Doors) Colin McCredie (Taggart, Tron) Maureen Beattie (RSC, Babel, Casualty, The Bill) James MacPherson (Taggart, The Bill, Lyceum) Louise Bush (Shared Experience, Globe) Tom Mannion (RSC) Gray O’Brien (River City) Lewis Howden (Citizens) James McAvoy (Wanted, Atonement, Last King of Scotland, Shameless, Bright Young Things) Anne Marie Timoney (Citizens) Liam Brennan (Globe) Tommy Mullins (Traverse, Tron, Citizens) Helen Coker (Little Britain, All or Nothing, Mike Leigh) |
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Casting Directors
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Anne Henderson
Kahleen Crawford Julie Harkin Des Hamilton Victoria Beattie |
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Agents
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Amanda Howard
Maryam Hunwick Ruth Young |
