Attention before effect
Listen for what is actually happening, rather than demonstrating what was decided in advance.
05 / Teaching & practice
Practice-led teaching for actors and theatre-makers: attentive, demanding, playful and connected to the realities of building a life in the arts.
Facilitation philosophy
The facilitator’s first task is not to furnish answers. It is to make sustained, ambitious attention possible.
Chris’s teaching joins actor training to authorship and artistic leadership. Technique matters because it enlarges choice; ensemble matters because nobody makes theatre alone; professional literacy matters because artists deserve agency over the structures surrounding their work.
The room should be rigorous without becoming brittle, generous without becoming vague, and safe enough for real risk.
Working principles
Listen for what is actually happening, rather than demonstrating what was decided in advance.
Translate interpretation into behaviour that can change the other person—and be changed in return.
Treat the room as a field of shared responsibility, not a collection of solo performances.
Use research and critical language to return artists to the floor with sharper questions.
Connect the art to producing, leadership and the practical structures that keep a practice alive.
Build the courage to stay responsive beyond the first workable answer.
Experience
MFA Acting · Classical and Contemporary Text · 2025
Following MA Acting training at RCS in 2016.
Graduate · 2007
Training with Jim Jarrett, a protégé of Sanford Meisner.
Former adjunct professor
Practice-based teaching informed by sustained professional work.
Artist development · 2005–2016
Mentored emerging artists through casting, training, rehearsal and production.
Acting and scene study · new-work development · directing and ensemble process · artist-led producing.
Discuss a room