Illustrations by Dan Evans
There are now so many UK actors in Hollywood that Americans are trying to mobilise to stop them getting all the roles. Tom Hiddleston, Ben Whishaw, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Sheen and David Oyelowo basically have a standing invitation to award ceremonies while David Harewood, Damian Lewis and Dominic West have proven that, if you can get the accent right, you don’t need to be American to be huge on American TV.
Many of the stars leading this takeover graduated from one of a number of small prestigious drama schools in London, including the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada) and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (Lamda). In the acting world, these institutions are as prestigious as Oxford or Harvard, and have been producing movie stars for generations. Their training is all-encompassing, focusing heavily on method acting and movement.
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To outsiders, their methods can seem bizarre, such as spending hours every week just learning how to stand still or going to the zoo to study the movement of the animals. Much of the training gets to the very essence of an actor’s presence; it’s a way for them to bare their soul.
To find out what really goes on at drama school we spoke to three people who graduated in the past five years. They asked us to change their names so they wouldn’t be ostracised from all the nice theatre bars in Soho.
KAREN, RADA
VICE: When you look back on Rada now, what are your happiest memories?
Karen: There was this one wonderful teacher who was really old and tiny and she just wore tie-dye. She was the sweetest kindest woman and she’d get us to be a baby crawling on the floor, or a tadpole, or an octopus. Those lessons were so delightful – she’d put on Debussy and we’d be octopuses for hours.
What’s it like being with your friends when they’re all being tadpoles too? It must be so embarrassing.
I’m really self-conscious so I found it really difficult to take it seriously, but you kind of have to, otherwise you’re just wasting all this money. Rada are great at helping you financially, but then you feel indebted, so you know that you have to take it seriously. A lot of the time I found it unbearable but you kind of just have to do it. Especially with things like master and slave.
What’s master and slave?
It’s normally done about six months into your first year, when you still have loads of boundaries up, still mortified about the prospect of doing most things in front of most people, but have started to trust your peers more.
You go in thinking it’s just a normal improvisation lesson, and then the teacher brings up this game: master and slave. You go into pairs and one person becomes the master, and the other is the slave and the slave has to do anything the master says.
It starts off incredibly easy-going, like go and sit on that chair or go and play the piano and then slowly but surely the asks get a bit more intense, like “suck my big toe”. After a while, the masters start playing with each others’ slaves. So they get slaves to make out or whatever, or start fighting each other.
Then at the end of it, they switch over, so the slave becomes the master. So they seek revenge and it gets really out of hand. I got asked to kiss the teacher on the mouth, which felt like crossing so many boundaries, but I just did it.
A couple of people really go for it; there’s no leeway, they take the exercises very seriously. This guy got asked by his master to get his dick out and whack it in my face, which he did very obligingly. So I got a dick slapped in my face. I was absolutely appalled.
At some point the masters noticed their behaviour was getting a bit overboard and stopped going so far – I think they began to realise it was a bit morally wrong, that these are their peers.
It’s an interesting psychological experiment.
Absolutely. Same with the animal studies.
What are animal studies?
So animal studies is a huge part of drama school. When you first join they get you free entry to London Zoo for an entire year. You spend hours and hours researching the animal that’s been chosen for you. Then in class you have to be that animal for a long time. Then you do a showing, where you all do your animal in front of all the teachers.
He was walking round the room on all fours. Then the teacher asked him to mount me.
During rehearsal of plays, later on in your training, they’ll ask you what animal a character is. I remember one lesson I had to be a little deer and my partner was a stallion. He was walking round the room and the teacher asked him to mount me. Then there he is getting on top of me, mounting me from behind. It’s difficult because you don’t want to let your team partner down but you’re completely aware of the obvious, and you are in front of all your classmates.
That all sounds quite intense. Was there any support if it all got a bit much?
Yeah so much. They had CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] and NLP [neurolinguistic programming] on tap. So if it was causing you any damage, you’re not going to go mad. But of course people drop out of drama school all the time. It is a really intense process and it’s not for everyone. Have you seen the film 20 Days Of Sodom? Actors had to make that film. They’re preparing us, not necessarily for roles as intense as that, but in the real world of theatre and film, you’re going to be asked to do some really crazy shit. So it’s important to have the chance to do it with people you trust and respect.
So at the end of it all, do you feel like there’s method to the madness?
It definitely changed me a lot. I used to have a lot of difficulties with people getting too close, and it’s helped me in such a profound way. I think it has made me a better actor, and made me a better person.
STEVEN, LAMDA
VICE: Was drama school something you’d wanted to do for a long time?
Steven: No, not really. I went to university first before I went to Lamda. So I was a bit older than the other 18-year-olds that went, and potentially equipped with a tiny bit more maturity and the ability to say “fuck off” to things.
Were there things that you wanted to say “fuck off” to?
They really ease you into it. The first six months is basically just standing still. There is one class we had where would literally just stand with our arms by our side and swing them back and forward and we’d do that twice a week for 45 minutes. The idea behind that is it sorted of grounded you. When I describe it to people who aren’t actors they’re like: ‘What the fuck is that?’
Is that to make you feel confident on stage?
Yes but also, the whole course, while equipping you with technical abilities, is designed to make you fail every day, and embarrass you into losing your inhibitions. So you’ll be an animal for two hours, or be either earth, wind or fire for 90 minutes, with all your peers in the room.
Every day you have to get up in front of your peers and do something new: either an improvisation or a clowning thing or a Shakespeare speech. But they’d constantly push you and not give you enough prep time so that you fail or embarrass yourself or do shit work in front of everyone. Eventually you’re able to say fuck it, I can move on from that, as opposed to the crippling pain of feeling like a failure in front of your peers and teachers. They probably wouldn’t explicitly say that’s what they’re teaching you, but that’s certainly what a lot of people took it to be.
One girl smashed her nose, another girl broke her rib. They don’t do that lesson any more.
Did being constantly embarrassed ever get too much?
We had certain teachers who would push you in ways some people would consider too far. Like we had this weird exercise that we did every single week, where half the class would be watching and the other half would be standing. They’d play some loud club music and we had to stare at someone sitting down as if we’re seeing them across the room at a club and start flirting with them and try to pick them up, just through with our eyes and your dancing.
After a bit the teacher would be, like, “OK, that’s only one out of ten, I need you to bring up to two… OK, now three.” By the time it got to a “seven”, people were like, fucking the floor and ripping off their clothes, just because it’s not enough for the teacher. So the girls would just take off their tops and the boys would just start humping things. It was totally bizarre.
Some people were like, fuck this, I don’t need to get naked to prove that I’m a good actor. Other people got into it and would just take it further and further each time. The positive of that is, people really did lose their inhibitions. You’ve got this group of 30 people that you see every day, and they’ve seen every bit of you, so you don’t have any nerves in front of them. But at the same time, you have these existential moments where you’re like, what the fuck am I doing this for and why am I paying for this?
Has that training come into use since you’ve become a professional actor?
Definitely. I’ve had jobs where I’ve got to show up at 6am to start filming and I only get the script that morning and in the first scene I’ve got to kiss a 50-year-old man. The loss of any embarrassment or inhibitions really has helped me to do that. You could be be sort of embarrassed but the drama school attitude is just: who gives a fuck? Just do it.
Was there support if you ever found it too much?
Yeah, it was very very supportive. We had pastoral care, we had financial care, we had everything in place. A couple of teachers and classes were complained about, and the school reacted immediately.
What sort of things would get to a complaint level?
Well once there was an exercise where everyone had to be blindfolded, and you have to trust the room and learn the energy of the room, and it builds to like a running frenzy where no one can see anything. So inevitably one girl ran into a wall and smashed her nose, and another girl fell over and broke a rib. So that was a mental idea and people felt their trust had been abused. They don’t do that any more.
Another one they did was to try to rile you up by getting someone to hold you down and you’ve got to sort of struggle against them. And often the big boys will get quite angry and aggressive because the teacher is trying to bring that out of them and then suddenly they’ll get uncontrollable and start punching things and other people in the room get really quite scared. So it’s a bit like, OK, you’ve literally just unlocked that guy’s madness and I don’t know if that’s a good thing, because really you do need some degree of control in acting.
Do you think you have to push it too far to know what too far is?
Yeah, but my bottom line is, I had a great time and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I couldn’t have got where I am now without it.
PRATIK, ANONYMOUS LONDON DRAMA SCHOOL
VICE: Had you always wanted to go to drama school in the UK?
Pratik: No, actually I’m from India and I’d already studied abroad. Then I went back to India and joined a theatre group and was touring with them, but I wanted to train more in theatre.
At that point did you know what drama school was going to be like?
Honestly, I was told that there would be amazingly attractive people from all over the world and we would all have these massive orgies all the time and create art and then everyone would go on to win BAFTAs and Oscars. That’s really what I thought initially. That was not the case.
What do you remember about your first couple of months?
I realised I was one of the oldest people in the year. I was 24 when I started and most of them were 18 from small towns in England. These kids were very talented but they were very conservative as well, in their outlook about life and their thought process. They would make fun of alternative theatre: wank this, wank that, wank was their favourite word. It was like high school again and I was too old for it.
They must have really felt like children to you.
Yeah they did, and a lot of them had relationships from back where they were from. I was like come on, you are all going to break up with each other and have sex with each other and take lots of drugs. And they were all really flabbergasted: “How can you even say this, I love my boyfriend?” At the end of three years I was the one left behind. I didn’t sleep with anyone in my year. I was a martyr, but I was fine with standing alone on the burning ship.
I’m sorry to hear that. What did you enjoy most about the lessons?
I loved being an animal. I was a dragon for an hour. I loved anything physical actually, because for me, theatre is very physical and even now when I do TV and film stuff I always approach a character through the body rather than through the mind.
There were some very weird things like 17th century dance, which I rebelled against at first, but I realise that they were all very good for me. They somehow connect up into proper acting. I loved singing. I can’t sing at all, but I loved the singing part of it and I loved voice class. There was also sword-fighting, that was great fun, and stage combat.
Did you find you were more willing or enthusiastic than some of the British students?
So, I come from this Indian school of thought where in theatre, you basically get there and become naked. It’s theory very influenced from the Polish and Germans, where your body is your thing and you have to strip yourself down and all that. In India I started a theatre group and we were quite experimental. We did devised plays, it was quite controversial. So I came from that and thought we were going to step it up a notch. But we didn’t. I mean we did in some ways, in terms of acting, but not in terms of being controversial at all.
So when we were in an acting class, obviously we are going to act and cry and break down. I found it annoying when people were like, “Oh I cant do it!” I was like come on, then why are you here? I’m being mean, but it was annoying. Stop crying and act. Although the school actually pushed people through that process which was great they are all really amazing actors now.
I guess if people think about drama school, they imagine a lot of posh English actors. Is that the case?
I think people always assume that drama schools are places where only privileged kids go, but everyone was diverse. There were lots of kids from really small towns, who had barely enough money to scrape through and weren’t exposed to the world that much.
I was also only used to the posh English accent, so when I came here, I could not believe what I was hearing. These accents are very hard for me. I’m good at English, I got in, but these people, I just could not understand. I’d never even heard the word banter before I came. I had no clue what was going on. Eventually I became closer with people that are still my friends today.
Was there a lot of outrage about exercises like master and slave?
The craziest thing that happened with the master and slave thing was when one guy had to strip and stand on the piano and masturbate. But he was masturbating with his pants still on, through the material. I said, “Come on! Don’t do half measures here.” There was a lot of making out and stuff like that, but it was mostly tongue in cheek. If I’m honest, I really did think it wasn’t that big a deal, but then I saw people crying in the corridor saying “Oh god I can’t believe I’ve gone that far!” I thought, what do you mean? That doesn’t make sense, you haven’t done anything. Maybe this is a harsh judgment, but in Europe its harder to be an actor, because we have a reserved way of social interaction, whereas in India, people are already letting their emotions out.
Are you glad you went?
I think the most important thing it gave me was discipline actually. In India, when you become an actor, you do loads of drugs and get drunk and explode on stage.
More like a rock star?
Yeah, but what I liked about England was that acting was a job. You go to work, that was really good for me. Now I am actually doing more TV and film than before. I have an English agent here now. So even though they never trained you for the TV specifically, without the training, I think you would feel a bit lost in front of the camera. I really do think it changed my life.
When presented with passages of this piece, Rada told us they “use a variety of exercises within its classes, all of which are widely used within the industry and have a long heritage in acting training.” They said they take “a zero tolerance policy towards, and would never sanction training or exercises that compromise the safety or wellbeing of our students, both physically and psychologically,” adding that “the organisation takes every measure to ensure the safeguarding of its students and has strict guidelines over the behaviour of its teaching staff.”
Lamda chose not to comment.
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