05 / Teaching & practice

The room is the work.

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

Create the conditions.

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

A usable practice.

01

Attention before effect

Listen for what is actually happening, rather than demonstrating what was decided in advance.

02

Playable action

Translate interpretation into behaviour that can change the other person—and be changed in return.

03

Ensemble as method

Treat the room as a field of shared responsibility, not a collection of solo performances.

04

Reflection in motion

Use research and critical language to return artists to the floor with sharper questions.

05

Sustainable agency

Connect the art to producing, leadership and the practical structures that keep a practice alive.

06

Remain unfinished

Build the courage to stay responsive beyond the first workable answer.

Experience

Training & teaching

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

MFA Acting · Classical and Contemporary Text · 2025

Following MA Acting training at RCS in 2016.

Meisner Technique Studio

Graduate · 2007

Training with Jim Jarrett, a protégé of Sanford Meisner.

Santa Rosa Junior College

Former adjunct professor

Practice-based teaching informed by sustained professional work.

Narrow Way Stage Company

Artist development · 2005–2016

Mentored emerging artists through casting, training, rehearsal and production.

Teaching & workshops

Acting and scene study · new-work development · directing and ensemble process · artist-led producing.

Discuss a room