The Approach
Being an actor is a great privilege, and it is Tom Bentley-Fisher’s firm belief that actors must be the healthiest people in our society.
Tom challenges his actors to bring every aspect of themselves to the work, employing not only what they know, but to discover and develop what they don’t know, to live within the chaos that can drive our subconscious to our conscious, and to welcome the hidden tensions between our inner and our outer realities. When this happens the actor is like a child, the impulse and action being one, and no longer are we under the influence of self-censorship or hiding behind our masks.
Tom has been referred to as a “major bullshit detector” and works to create performances that are both truthful and daring. But as well as acting being about living truthfully in imaginary circumstances, Tom also believes that great acting is about transformation. And it is in bringing these two ideals together that Tom has dedicated his approach to the work. Like playing a piano, he wants his actors to use every note and chord available in their being, not just the notes they learned early on and know will continue to serve them admirably.
During the past thirty years, since his initial training with Yat Malmgren, founder of Drama Centre, London; Tom has developed a very specific and detailed approach to discovering and freeing the centres the actor needs to reach characters not usually associated with their repertoire. Key to his approach is the assumption that everything is movement – thought, gesture, emotion, memory, voice – and that through examining our inner resources of sensing, thinking, intuiting and feeling, and experiencing them in all their combinations, we can begin to comprehend and express the world in ways we never thought possible. We can truly transform in performance and not simply rely on outer technique.
The work is not for everyone. It is very intense – the order very tall – but the process of discovery can be thrilling and the outcome in performance well worth the investigation.
Tom challenges his actors to bring every aspect of themselves to the work, employing not only what they know, but to discover and develop what they don’t know, to live within the chaos that can drive our subconscious to our conscious, and to welcome the hidden tensions between our inner and our outer realities. When this happens the actor is like a child, the impulse and action being one, and no longer are we under the influence of self-censorship or hiding behind our masks.
Tom has been referred to as a “major bullshit detector” and works to create performances that are both truthful and daring. But as well as acting being about living truthfully in imaginary circumstances, Tom also believes that great acting is about transformation. And it is in bringing these two ideals together that Tom has dedicated his approach to the work. Like playing a piano, he wants his actors to use every note and chord available in their being, not just the notes they learned early on and know will continue to serve them admirably.
During the past thirty years, since his initial training with Yat Malmgren, founder of Drama Centre, London; Tom has developed a very specific and detailed approach to discovering and freeing the centres the actor needs to reach characters not usually associated with their repertoire. Key to his approach is the assumption that everything is movement – thought, gesture, emotion, memory, voice – and that through examining our inner resources of sensing, thinking, intuiting and feeling, and experiencing them in all their combinations, we can begin to comprehend and express the world in ways we never thought possible. We can truly transform in performance and not simply rely on outer technique.
The work is not for everyone. It is very intense – the order very tall – but the process of discovery can be thrilling and the outcome in performance well worth the investigation.