Auditions open. Six places. Book by Sunday 11 October.
A weekly acting class for 14 to 18 year olds in Haslemere, based on the Meisner technique. Run by Kamal Sharma, a local dad who trained at the Meisner Institute London.
Tuesdays 6 to 8pm · 2 Kings Road · Six places, by audition
£60 a month, about £9 an hour. Pay as you go.
I’ll reply within a day or two to fix a time. The audition is about 20 minutes at 2 Kings Road, with a parent or carer. No script, nothing to prepare, and it’s free.
Four stages
The course has four stages, roughly a stage every year.
We improvise, and we build characters. Games, scenes made up on the spot, great performances argued over, and the characters worked out properly: what they want, and why they do what they do.
We turn those characters into a story. When it’s done, it’s yours: a licence to make it into a film, a book, a game, whatever you want, whenever you want.
We learn how to turn our story into a film. Directing, camera, sound, editing, producing, acting: pick any job you like, and someone who does it for a living comes in and teaches it to you.
This is what we’re working towards: making a film together. A real film, out in the world.
Stage one
Nobody hands out scripts and nobody learns lines for a play. You get a suggestion, a partner and an audience, and you find out what happens next at the same moment they do.
The improv is based heavily on the Meisner technique, the training behind actors like Sandra Bullock and James Gandolfini.
Every session starts with games. Fast, loud and low stakes, and by the end of them you’ve forgotten to be self-conscious.
Two people put their hands up, step up, the room shouts a suggestion, and off it goes. Who you are, where you are, what’s happening: the two of you work it out live, in front of everyone.
We invent somebody and work them out together. Why they do what they do, how they go about it, what’s going on underneath. Then they go into a scene. How they’d react, we figure out in real time. Your version of that character, what would they do?
Every half term takes one emotion apart. Watch how proper actors play it, argue about what they did, then have a go yourself.
Every session ends with everyone sat down. We talk about the characters we’ve just built, and about people in general. Bring a question if you’ve got one. If not, I’ll have one.
Nobody reads anything cold and nobody is pushed out front alone. Everyone starts inside the group games, and by the time it’s your scene, being up in front of people is old news.
The characters we build this year are what stage two is made from.
Stage two
There are lots of ways to build a story. Ours starts with the people in it. After a year of working out why our characters do what they do, we know them properly, so we drop them into a situation and find out how they deal with it. That’s where the story comes from.
By the end of it there’s a finished story, written down. Every student gets a licence to use it, so you can make it into a film, a book, a dance, a play, a game, whenever you like.
Stage three
We take the story and work out how it becomes a short film. People who make films for a living come in and teach us their part of it: camera, sound, editing, producing, directing.
Everyone picks a job and learns it. By the end of it we have a plan, a crew, the kit, and the scenes rehearsed for camera.
Stage four
This is what we’re working towards: making a film together. A real film, out in the world.
Where we’d send it: the Into Film Awards and Cinemagic in Belfast, which are made for young filmmakers, and the big short film festivals like Encounters in Bristol, where a short can qualify for a BAFTA.
What you get
You stand up every single week until an audience feels ordinary. That follows you into presentations, interviews and auditions.
You can’t script your next line when you don’t know what’s coming, so you end up actually listening.
The same small group every week, being brave and slightly ridiculous together.
By the end of term you’ll be watching performances, and people, with new eyes.
For the parents
If it’s not for them after the first session, say so and the first month is refunded in full.
The Inspire guarantee
The details
The person at the front
I’m Kamal. I’m an accountant with an office on Kings Road, which is where the class meets, and I’ve been doing improv classes myself for years, first as the terrified new person and eventually as the one volunteering to go first. I trained at the Meisner Institute London. Inspire is the class I would have wanted at fifteen. My view is that instinct is difficult to teach, but instinct can be emboldened by a method… Inspire is that method. I’m a parent myself, and I hold an enhanced DBS check.
Auditions close Sunday 11 October. I’ll reply within a day or two to fix a time. The audition is about 20 minutes at 2 Kings Road, with a parent or carer, and it’s free. Nothing is paid or booked until I’ve offered a place and you’ve said yes.
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