Date: December 18th
Location: Actors' Guild Hub at Spotlight, 7 Leicester Place, London, WC2H 7RJ
Time: 14.00 - 17.00

A workshop with Salisbury Playhouse Artistic Director, Gareth Machin.

The placing of a pause, the well-chosen adjective, the timing of a moment of physical contact – all can illuminate a path through a difficult scene... 

It's not just dialogue that must be explored to find the playwright's intentions - stage directions offer a wealth of opportunity to the actor, although they can be tricky to mine. Uncertainty about who actually inserted them, whether they can be at all helpful or whether they are just an irrelevance and need to be reinvented for each new production...

Looking at three scenes from three different plays we will test their usefulness both in terms of practical business but also as useful keys to unlock sections of text for an actor...

Gareth is the Artistic Director of Salisbury Playhouse. Previously he was Studio Associate at the National Theatre, Artistic Director of Southwark Playhouse and Associate Director at Bristol Old Vic.

Directing credits include: Little Robin Redbreast, Hedda Gabler, The Magna Carta Plays, The Night Before Christmas, A Little of What You Fancy, Little Shop of Horrors, Separate Tables, Bedroom Farce, Worst Wedding Ever, London Calling, Can’t Buy Me Love,The Recruiting Officer, A Man of No Importance, Dangerous Corner, The Spire and Epsom Downs (Salisbury Playhouse); Fanta Orange (Finborough Theatre); Three More Sleepless Nights (National Theatre); The Canterville Ghost, Gaffer!, The Canterbury Tales, The Chimes and The Archbishop’s Ceiling (Southwark Playhouse); The Real Thing (Theatre Royal, Northampton), Macbeth (Creation Theatre), The Wizard of Oz (Hall for Cornwall); Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Look Back in Anger, Betrayal, Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), The Beggars Opera, Molly Sweeney, (Bristol Old Vic).

Writing credits include: Little Robin Redbreast and The Night Before Christmas for Salisbury Playhouse, Pinocchio (Adaptation), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Adaptation), Tom Thumb and other Giant Stories and The Canterbury Tales (Adaptation) all for Dukes Playhouse, Lancaster.