The Best of All Worlds ...

Breathe. Be. Connect.

Many people ask me if The Actor’s Way is synonymous with Julie Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. It is not. For decades, however, I have been struck by her acknowledgment that yes, there is a creative path and process for artists; and that the path is not straight-forward. It’s often downright wonky, impossible to navigate without a good deal of persistence, and often daunting. This journey, she assures us, is part of the process. It is, simply put, the artist’s way. Through her book, she supports the artist to recover and rescue their art and themselves from the morass of their interior confusion.

After thirty-five years of working with actors in theatre, film, television and academe, I can attest to the fact that actors have a very specific way of coming to themselves their work and the world around them. They are the most unique, the most extraordinary beings on the planet; at least to my completely biased mind. I don’t mean so-called “famous actors”. I mean the ones that I call actor-animals. Those beings who spend most of their time unemployed, or waiting … then hopeful, despondent, then despairing, back to hopeful, then elated, all whilst remaining completely dedicated - often obsessively so - to the craft of acting. Thus the actor-animal.

The name of the studio came to me about ten years ago whilst teaching and coaching screen actors; but the research and practice into actor training began over thirty years ago whilst teaching at The Workshop Theatre at the University of Leeds, UK. At the time I was also completing my PhD in theatre, history and critical theory.

For the last eighteen years my work with actors has been in the film and tv space. I cast Hollywood film and tv shows, produced in Washington State. I founded a small acting studio for screen actors soon in 2007 and I was voted into the Casting Society of America (CSA) in 2009. Earlier this year I became a union accredited intimacy co-ordinator for the film and tv industry.

And so I really do have the very best of all worlds when it comes to knowing the actor in process and at work; from working with African actors in Africa to casting American actors in Zombie TV shows. I am proud to say I have spent my entire working life peering with curiosity, from one vantage point or another, at the beloved actor.

The Actor’s Way (or TAW as it is known to its participants) is an acting studio for stage and screen actors. It is a trauma-informed space, somatically-focussed and embodiment driven. The body is everything in the The Actor’s Way and in my work with actors I coach the whole living being - the soma. From that perspective the process of coaching and training seeks to enliven the whole human that is being an actor, as they prepare for roles on stage or screen. In the studio we bring the actor back into their body and seek to develop a more integrated and grounded performer.

My curiosity about acting began “accidentally”, as such things do. My first contact with theatre was as an immigrant kid from Nigeria trying to read Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. I was seven years old. I always imagine some kindly old English person telling my fresh-off-the-boat Nigerian parents that if I read Shakespeare, I’d pass all my exams and grow up to be a proper little English lady with a law degree. I exaggerate only slightly but you’ve got to wonder at being given Shakespeare to read at seven years old!

Blessedly Ms Diamond - Linda Diamond - (insert heart-felt emoji here), helped us all to crack the code at aged 14 when we studied Shakespeare for the first time. Macbeth! Suddenly I had found my vocation - “be a classical actor when I grow up!” It didn’t seem at all complicated, this ‘knowing’. The vision and inner knowledge crystallised in a second. To say that reading and understanding Macbeth, memorising soliloquies and swaggering with a pretend sword changed my life is an understatement. I have been honoured with multiple awards for my classical performances since those formative years.

Which is partly why I decided to create a substack for The Actor’s Way. Being an actor is more often that not a deeply transformative experience at some point in the actors life-cycle. Actors are forever undergoing personal and self-development arcs as part of their growth. It is simply what actors do as they leave their own ‘centre’ and step into the character’s centre.

So … The Actor’s Way is at once a studio, a book, a collection of stories, but most importantly it is the decades of teachings that I have created for actors who work on the front lines of film, theatre and television. Along the way I will offer paid workshops, coaching sessions, and invite you to hear me speak (or perform!). But for now - welcome to The Actor’s Way. I look forward to taking this journey with you and hope that you will support my writing by joining me in mine.

PSoA (more on ‘her’ in future articles)

(Photog: Emily Jones Photograpy, 2024)