At the same time – if they’re serious about an acting career – it’s our professional responsibility to prepare them for an increasingly cutthroat industry.

He was born into the Renaissance of medicine and philosophy, as humanity transitioned out of the Dark Ages.I’ve always worked in both live and recorded media so I don’t think twice about using Stanislavsky’s toolkit for stage, screen, commercials and radio. A believer in the power of collective knowledge, her epithet is, ‘I listen to what you’re saying; I hear what you’re feeling; and from that I create wisdom. He was born into a country navigating huge social and ideological upheavals: he began life as a rich merchant’s son and ended it under house arrest in a communal apartment block. The image I always use is the script is like a trellis, the actors are like ivy and the director’s job is to weave the ivy around that trellis.

Three years ago, the Theatre department at the University of California, Riverside, evolved into a department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production. Yet the means by which the iGeneration receive their knowledge and consume information are unfathomably different. Just as Active Analysis involved ‘Discuss the scene’ (Step 2) and ‘Discuss the improvisation’ (Step 4), in-depth discussions are a vital part of Packer’s rehearsal process. Film acting in many respects is a perfect medium for experiencing intense ‘moments of absorption’ in complex human action within the tightest possible acting structure: the close-up.She’d teach Michael Chekhov stuff but it had to be kept under the radar because it was strictly forbidden. Indeed, Stanislavsky himself crossed literary genres, though – as I mentioned – he didn’t cross media: he didn’t work in film.