— Helping actors to make inspiring offers to their scene partners: an inspiring offer is one made with the intention of changing their scene partner in some way.

— Helping actors to become active listeners: true active listening is the willingness to be changed in some way by the person you are listening to.

When it all gets too much, ask a simple question: “What’s the clearest way to tell this moment of story to the audience?”. Start with being clear. The rest will follow.

Every artist is different. A technique that is inspiring for one may fall flat with another.

Modern training needs to expose the student to a rich variety of techniques and approaches and should reference a broad range of practitioners and philosophies. In doing so, each student can build up their own flexible and dynamic toolbox.

This process also helps the student to develop a keen sense of discernment, better equipping them to select the most appropriate approach for the context they’re working in and the people they’re collaborating with.

Today’s artists need to adapt their craft to more contexts than ever before, including emerging and evolving technologies. Actors, for example, are expected to demonstrate skills which add value to the projects they’re involved in, including being able to devise and improvise.

In order to prepare students to enter this climate, they should have opportunities to apply what they’re learning in a variety of ways. This might include different scales and genres of theatre productions, whether as workshop or full productions; making work for specific audiences or communities; working in front of a camera; or making audio or digital work.

Every graduating student should feel equipped with the knowledge, skills and networks they need to make their own work, either individually or through collaboration with others.

Strong ensemble practice runs through all my work — emphasising the importance of generosity, responsiveness and trust in cultivating healthy working relationships.

This approach promotes a philosophy of collaboration over competition that will guide the student throughout their training and into their professional career.

Actors require rigorous, regular and consistent training in voice and movement, instilling the stamina and robust technique they’ll need to meet the demands of what will be asked of them throughout their career.

I always find ways to re-incorporate a student’s voice and movement training into the task at hand so they understand how it is fundamental to supporting their wider work.

Training around professional conduct is often overlooked, but is vitally important. I often tell artists-in-training that their route to a sustainable career isn’t about being employed by a producer — it’s about being re-employed by that producer.

How artists behave within the industry, including towards one another, other members of the production team, the public and the media, can all have a huge impact on their reputations and employability.

We’re also living in a complicated technological age and political climate. Building an online presence can be hugely beneficial, but comes with great responsibility. How people conduct themselves online can have a disproportionate impact on their careers. Great care should be given in helping young artists to navigate this.

Telling artists-in-training that they are being prepared to enter an industry which can be cruel should never be an excuse for treating those artists with disrespect.

Some parts of our industry still lack adequate or even basic wellbeing and safeguarding practices. All the more reason for our training institutions to use and insist upon best practice. We can change the entire culture of a sector by changing the culture of its training institutions.

A positive personal experience when training can have an impact that lasts a lifetime, greatly informing an artist’s perception of themselves, their outlook on life and attitude to their career. Equally, a negative personal experience can result in trauma that some people never manage to shake off.

I’m constantly mindful to support artists in all of the right ways, and to challenge them in healthy ways.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve observed a shift in students’ expectations of formal education. Increasingly many students, even those who desperately want to go through the training, are often looking for the quickest route to good grades and get easily frustrated when they hit a bump in the road.

I can empathise with that. By the time a student reaches higher education, they’ve spent years in a system that prioritises results and data over process and deep understanding.

Higher education is also expensive, and with that can come a transactional mindset, even on a subconscious level. The student has paid their money, and in return they (and perhaps their parents) expect easy routes to the best grades.

I often find that some early work needs to be done with students embarking on vocational training to open them up to the possibility of a different, less direct approach to their learning goals: one that centres around curiosity, nurtures individual thinking and celebrates mistakes as opportunities to learn. This is about looking beyond their grades and transforming them into discerning, unique and curious artists who are willing to experiment and push boundaries.

Going through training is difficult. It demands an enormous amount of energy, focus and application from the student.

There will always be a power imbalance between student and teacher, and in order to redress that imbalance in a productive and healthy way, facilitation should be done with clarity and kindness.

I always tell the students I’m working with that I consider them to be professional artists who happen to be in a training context. Dignifying their position in this way invites them to take a much more collaborative and experimental approach to the work we explore together.

Evaluation of workshops, modules, courses and productions should be an on-going process and should involve all stakeholders — especially the students themselves.

This means listening to students’ experiences in a constructive and non-defensive way and being willing to adapt and change your approach when necessary.

Demonstrating that we are capable of holding ourselves accountable shows a level of self-awareness and authenticity that students respond to with generosity and unparalleled openness.

Obviously, students don’t always know what they don’t know, but they’re still experts in their own experience and will often have a keen sense about what they need more or less of.

I always provide a mechanism for students to have a degree of autonomy over what they’re learning and how it is being explored. The curriculum invariably becomes richer and more relevant because of their input.

Understandably, for actors-in-training, there are always a lot of big emotions around casting. Students are quick to use their casting to compare themselves to their peers, or to jump to conclusions about what the teaching staff think of them and their development.

Their expectations need to be carefully managed, in as transparent and consistent a way as possible.

A nuanced equation always needs to be balanced. On one side is the importance of challenging the student and giving them something to stretch for in their work. On the other side is a desire to never set any student up to fail. Balancing this equation can never be standardised: it must always be person-centred and context-specific.

It may be more appropriate, for example, to use internal showings and workshops to stretch the actor. In public performances and industry showcases, it’s better for students to be seen doing their best work.

Explaining this casting policy to students, and being open and transparent about why they’ve been cast in a particular role in order to stretch or celebrate them in a specific way, can greatly ease a student’s anxiety.

Another part of managing expectations lies in challenging an actor’s own value judgement on the role they’ve been cast in. The number of lines rarely equates to how interesting a part can be — assuming that the actor is being directed by someone who understands that they need a process which ensures the work is gratifying for everybody involved.

I much prefer to set up practical experiments, then ask good questions so that students can test and refine their own hypothesis, either individually or collectively.

Only once the student or group have reached their own conclusions will I provide a wider context for the work, referencing historic or contemporary practitioners.

This approach allows me to meet the students where they are, almost guiding their learning by stealth. Ultimately, it is the student who becomes responsible for discovering their own connections and making their own breakthroughs.

Gauging when it’s most appropriate to teach, to mentor, to facilitate or to coach is really important when trying to give a student or a group the specific support they need.

Each mode calls for the student to exercise a different level of autonomy; each is better suited to different people at different stages of a training process. Your job is to know which hat to wear at any given moment.

Careful observation of an individual student will soon tell you which specific approach, tool or technique might be most useful to them in a particular context or situation.

Often, however, the very thing that will help an artist most is the very thing they’re least inclined to try.

The trainer’s skill lies in encouraging the student to experiment with that specific approach and give it a fair go, rather than discounting it out of hand.

Feedback should always be specific and actionable.

It should always be work-focused rather than person-focused.

Knowing when to give a piece of feedback is crucial. The right feedback given at the right time can be truly transformative — for everyone, not just the person receiving it.

Representation in casting is a charged topic at the moment. Students will be very conscious of it all the time, not least if their own identities and lived experiences are under-represented on our stages and screens. It’s something we all need to be thinking about.

I’m convinced that representation through casting is one of the most powerful social activism tools our sector possesses. An impactful approach to representation in casting, one where everyone is treated with dignity and respect, involves returning to my four essential questions when considering the work we could make: Why This? Why Now? Why Here? Why Us?

These four questions help to steer actors, writers and directors out of a headspace of thinking the work is all about them, and remind them that the audience’s experience comes first. The questions encourage us to think about what we’re saying about the world by telling this story, in this place, with these particular people.

Of course, Why Us? is the most pertinent of those questions in relation to casting and representation. Is this play a good fit for the actors in our cohort? There are contexts where it is really important for someone to be recognised as the person they identify as. Equally, there are contexts where how a person identifies shouldn’t matter. It’s possible for those two positions to be held simultaneously.

All training exists to provide fundamental skills and nurture versatility, but its true power lies in unearthing and celebrating the individuality of the artist.