'CLASS' - Professional Screen Acting for Film & Television

Sign up to participate as a "Working" Actor - partner for scenes with cameras (limited places) - Total $220 (inc 10% GST) OR "Observing" - Actors and Directors - $110 (inc 10% GST).

Please reach out if you require financial assistance.

In Hollywood, every professional actor - young and old - has their Class - that safe place they go every week when they were not filming, just to “work” on camera with a partner and also observe other actors honing their craft - for cold reads, auditions or performing for film or television. Going to Class is akin to doing scales. It strips away the paraphernalia of any production, goes back to basics, and frees you up to go in any direction.  

As a young Australian film director living in LA and working in the studio system in the 90s, I regularly gate-crashed Class helmed by acting guru, Jeremiah Comey (think Michael Douglas in ‘The Kominsky Method’). Originally Jeremiah’s “Meisner-inspired’ Class was held in a studio on the corner of Hollywood and Vine - couldn’t get more PRETTY WOMAN if you tried. This Class became the foundation of my own approach to directing actors across my career. And when I moved back to LA for a decade in the 2000s with producing partner, Steve Turnbull, he was equally hooked.

While regulars would never miss Class in LA ‘rain, hail or earthquake’, there were always the newbies. What we would watch Jeremiah do was work to get actors out of their heads. To stop them “acting”. To take them to that place where they could ride a scene emotionally without knowing what was coming next. Only then would their characters come alive on the screen. When it was real. 

What we also loved about Jeremiah’s Class was that you didn’t have to be “working’ in the Class to go on the ride together. As a director, I learned most of my craft from observing. 

“CLASS” is an opportunity to re-create that on-going experience and hub for actors Down Under. The Juanita Neilson Community Centre has opened its doors to us. Steve and I hope you join us in this beautiful space. 

Actors can sign up to ‘Work’ or ‘Observe’ each session (every four to six weeks). We’ll start the First Session this year (Tuesday Nov 21 for 4 weeks) then pick them up again weekly in 2024.

"Observing" gives actors a chance to sit back without any pressure and just soak it up. Or you can jump in the deep end - “Working” actors will partner up, focus on how to cold read (to deliver even on a first read), learn their scene, and then redo the scene to get to that most honest place.  They will be on camera throughout the process, projected in close-up on the big screen behind them.

As we move on through the year, we will add some “invite only” classes to grow this journey for all of us.  

The industry can be a lonely place. We hope to change that.

 - Lynda Heys, Director