Ideally, yes. Everyone who has never worked with us needs to start at Level 1. Here is why.

Whilst strongly influenced by Sanford Meisner's technique, this approach goes beyond the traditional way to do the exercises, and contains quite a few exercises (from day 1) that you wouldn't have studied in a Meisner class, yet are fundamental for the rest of the work (Interactive Imagination Exploration before fantasies, Awareness work, Contact Avoidance patterns in the repetition exercise, Suggestibility Elaboration Frameworks to go from repetition to improvisations...).

Those programs are also both fast, and slow, at the same time :

👉 Fast because we won't wait for ages before getting to text work, and even stage directions.

The faster we can get to actual scenes, the faster everyone can understand where everything fits, and then be motivated to practice more on their own and develop an actual professional skill. We always go back and forth between scene work and foundational exercises.

👉 Slow because we don't go faster than your emotional and experiential rhythm, in a very Gestalt philosophy.

We don't force the technique on the actor when something seems to "block" them and we take the time needed to accompany everyone unfold their experiences and go beyond those blind spots or dissociation patterns.

Only then can they keep what they learnt in class in an organic and durable manner so they can be autonomous in the work, which is the ultimate goal. Some changes can happen in an acting class that are impressive, both for the actor and the audience, but don't necessarily last outside of class, or can even be counterproductive. This is a big part of our research.

That is also why we limit the number of students to 14 people, for 4 hours sessions. Because it takes time to individualise the feedback and accompany everyone depending on where they're at.

Going faster than that, and trying to get to Level 2 directly, isn't wise because you won't learn as much and as deeply.

That being said, in exceptional classes, if some actors can't make it for Level 1 because of dates, and seats remain open in Level 2, we might try to catch you up with some of what you missed so you can still get some practice in a Level 2 workshop instead of nothing (especially since we might not come back for months, or a year, depending on the organization needs for each place, the demand, and the number of qualified teachers we can propose each time).

You can discuss all of that with us directly in a free orientation call to check what is best for you and respond to all your questions.

You do not need any previous experience of any kind in order to join a workshop.

In this approach, we won't "act", especially at first, and even as we move through more advanced exercises, we will set up our "performances" in directly, so we can really do what we do and follow the foundational protocols as they have shown to work for each student, gradually with the teachers (and also the audience) feedbacks in very specific ways.

So everyone will start at Level 1 in this technique anyway.

In the same way that if you learn a new martial art you will be a white belt at first, even if you are a black belt in another martial art, coherent and precise acting techniques have their own set of rules and training protocols. There is no reason why anyone wouldn't profit from learning a new technique as it is supposed to be learnt, instead of thinking they already are "good actors", whatever that means for them, and they should skip ahead in exercises they never practiced.

Some actors sometimes think that being in a "beginner" class will reflect poorly on their self-esteem, as they have already shot many movies, or acted in many plays, or did many courses. It's perfectly normal not to want to waste time and to preserve your own confidence in yourself, but acting is about exploring new things that change all the time (new roles, new experiences, or the same ones but as if you were discovering them for the same time), and this approach in particular is quite refined and precise.

Wanting to skip ahead or to learn only with "professional actors", or in a language that you would like to learn, or with people that you would like to meet... isn't the right way to develop a skill seriously.

If you want to practice Gestalt group work, you will practice, with a qualified Gestalt practitioner, with other people that have different personalities and experiences and you will work on the only thing you can really work on : yourself.

If you workout in the gym with a great coach, you will have your own exercises to work on, regardless of the level of other people in the same gym.

Our programs are in between a few of those philosophies, because we will help you work on yourself as a person in order to become a better actors, especially in overcoming what limits your emotional and interactional scales, so you can be legible (easy to read) and directable (able to follow directions) whilst being observed. It is a professional skill that requires you to be able to work with people from all levels, because even in the best produced movies, some actors might have gotten the role through a street casting or open call, or have completely different techniques from you.

If you are going to do this work, you need to come with a fresh and open mind to explore something new, with different people that you don't choose. Sometimes the people who advanced the fastest in this work don't have much prior acting experiences, sometimes it's the reverse. There is no general rule for this.

Mostly, yes - but only if you want.

We won't always film all of the exercises, but a good proportion at least, for people who want.

This helps you get used to working with those tools whilst being filmed, which is an additional pressure on top of having an audience and being on stage, and helps you develop a professional skill.

It also allows you to get feedback after the fact by seeing some of your exercises in video, as well as use some extracts from your demo-reel.

We might ask you if you are ok with publishing some extracts on our own channels and social media, in order to document the work and promote the actors who take part in it.

There is something quite compelling about seeing humain beings explore themselves and the contact with their partners, or their imagination, or scene work, in a way that is sincere and imperfect and courageous. We often get great feedback from professionals on extracts from this work, and some actors get contacted because they have been seen.

That being said, and most importantly, we won't publish any extract of your work without your agreement, so you will be able to choose what you are comfortable with retrospectively.

If you feel like it, it is most useful to get filmed as much as you can, and it's an opportunity we propose that is quite rare and complex to organize properly, but if you feel like it is too early for you or want to explore some exercises first without being filmed, we can also absolutely not record some (or any) of your exercises.

If you are pre-enrolling to be on a waiting list for a discovery class or workshop, you can precise that at the end of this form, so we can organize who practices with whom, in order for people who prefer being filmed to work more often who people who do too.

For the reasons listed in the questions above, we do not have people audition to get in.

Those workshops are quite short and intensive, and the best way to see how people develop in this work is to actually do the work.

For our longer courses we have pre-enrolment phone calls, were we verify two things :

1️⃣ That people understand what type of work it is, and want to do it.

It isn't a practice where you should expect to "hide better", or "control more", especially at first. So you should be interested in self-exploration on stage, to an extent, in order to profit from it the most.

We can accompany best people who are motivated to work, but we can absolutely help everyone develop at their own pace, everyone being different and more or less naturally advanced in one exercise or another, and we can't really anticipate that beforehand.

Since we offer an actual pedagogy in which we believe in and of which we see the results, we do not find it ethical to pre-select people based on how easy we believe it will be to work with them (which can't really be predicted accurately in this work anyway).

From our experience in working with different schools and teachers for years, we know that it is a common marketing practice to pretend to be very selective to appear like a competitive institution, whilst at the same time often accepting everyone as long as classes are not full. So we don't do that. We accept enrolments until each workshop is full, and if the demand is high enough we try to propose more groups the next times if we can.

2️⃣ The second criteria we have for our regular course is that people commit to rehearsing outside of class.

It links to the previous points, because our mission is to help actors become autonomous in this approach.

We also help other school develop their programs, and we train teachers in this approach. We do not try to control a small group of people by keeping endless secrets about the work, we know that the technique is subtle, complex, and takes a while to learn anyways, and we want to document it in open source as much as we can and transmit it to as many people as there are who really want to learn.

For a workshop, we can't expect from people to rehearse much on top of an intensive and short practice, but we do hope that you develop a desire to practice long term, and keep regrouping with your classmates after the workshop, or in between workshops.

The technique has been adapted so there is as little friction as possible in the learning process, and that it is both efficient and secure.

So it should, if you want to become better, be quite fun to learn. But a good thing to keep in mind is that it will be a lifetime exploration, if you are interested in this work, to keep improving and exploring, like doing music, like doings sports, or exploring a new language or culture.

This is an important question that can only be addressed by clarifying what is meant by "therapy".

There are all kinds of therapeutic approaches, some of which we disapprove of, either in general or for this work, because we find them unhealthy or counterproductive in an acting class.

And there are all kinds of things that can be "therapeutic" whilst not being therapy per se, just because they help you feel better, grow as a person, unblock yourself emotionally or go beyond your usual limitations and fears.

On the contrary, there are all kinds of things that will traumatise you and have detrimental side effects, even if they are not labeled "therapy".

For instance, a big part of the work from Lee Strasberg on affective recall has shown to be dangerous for people as it makes them rehash traumas in order to stimulate emotions (which often takes quite a while to prepare and isn't even practical in a professional context).

Stanislavski discovered this practice from French psychologist Theodule Ribot, then his student Boleslavski taught it in the American Laboratory Theatre (to Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler).

Stella Adler (and Meisner too - as precised here in our interview with Jim Jarrett, and many others) had a problem with it, which is why Stella Adler and Harold Clurman went to Paris to meet with Stanislavski and change their approach.

Contemporary therapeutic approaches also disapprove of those sort of practice.

The adjustments we gradually made to the technique are similar to this : it isn't that we add therapy in acting classes, it is that we realise that truthful work and the function of these type of exercises get you to be in contact with sensitive parts of yourself.

In order to refine the protocoles and know what works, we use many different tools and measures, including therapeutic research. So the work is healthier and more effective.

Some approaches of therapy (like psychoanalysis) believe in the patient trying to analyse their traumas and childhood and share factual biographical information about themselves.

It is not what we believe in and it won't be expected of you in class (despite a lot of acting techniques using similar exercises - Susan Batson, Lee Strasberg... and quite a few others).

What we focus on is helping you be present in the contact with your experiences and when something blocks or gets difficult, to become aware of it and gradually overcome it without any urgency to do so if you are not ready.

As you can see in the testimonials above, many actors find this work "therapeutic" and helpful in their lives, and it's a good side-benefit, instead of having side-effects, in order to keep practicing and being motivated to work and removing the counter-productive pressure to perform all the time, because the work is also interesting in itself.