Teaching

Teaching

“Simon approaches teaching in a way that is both delicate and intense. It’s a rare luxury to work with such a passionate, knowledgeable teacher”

“Just brilliant. I hope I’ll be able to get so much out of any text one day”.

“Working with Simon was an incredible experience and the highlight of my time at drama school”

“We weren’t afraid to fail, to experiment and to play. No idea was too wild to try”

“You trusted our talent, you made the process fun, I felt that I was given the approval to play”

“Every time I started to worry about acting, he would bring it back to what really matters”
“Simon immediately created a collaborative space… I felt respected and cared for”
“Simon makes everything seem so simple, and yet everything keeps its grandeur”

(MA Classical Acting Students)

 

 

This Summer I will be running some one-day workshops. They’re  called More Interesting Than a Rhinoceros.

I take the title from a watchword of Philippe Gaulier’s. It seems to me to be a beautifully high place to set the bar.

The aim is to give people a chance to work on monologues for auditions, but it should function as a general work-out, with a focus on how to talk to an audience: taking the situation seriously without killing the playfulness and pleasure, what honesty is when the whole thing is a big fun lie, engaging the audience from the first word, what to do about fear, going big without losing truth (what’s truth?)…

All the Really Important Stuff in a new place with some new and talented people. 

The idea is you bring along some text, at least partly learned (don’t worry if you don’t have the whole thing down, the first dozen lines will give us enough to work on), and if at the end you don’t feel playful, confident and excited about performing it you can have your money back. Nearer the time I’ll ask you what you’d like to work on. It doesn’t have to be Classical text, any monologue will do. 

They’re going to run from Tuesday 11th August – Friday 14th, 10-6 at Scene and Heard 128 a Chalton St, NW1 1RX. It’s a 10-minute walk from Euston or Mornington Crescent.

I want to keep group size limited to 8. Like that you’re guaranteed some 1-1 focus on your work, as well as some group stuff. 

The cost for the day is £75. If you would really like to do it but that’s prohibitive, then email me and we can talk. 

Register your interest here.

 

I teach the MA Classical Actors at Central, delivering an intensive 10-week course on what makes Shakespeare difficult, easy, different, fun and important. And at LAMDA I direct a Spanish Golden Age project for their MA actors. I’m also on the faculty at Shakespeare’s Globe, teaching text to American undergraduates and, on the Globe Studio programme, experienced actors looking to brush up their act.

The big themes: Forget emotion, make things happen instead. Play – hard. Do it different every time. Insist on having fun. Your problems in the scene are the character’s problems: run away from them and you’re running away from the scene.

One particularly interesting finding after years of teaching Shakespeare: I have yet to see a scene that was improved by smiling.

“Simon Scardifield has a way of teaching Shakespeare that engages, inspires and pushes students of all levels. Whether experienced in Shakespeare’s works or not, through a process of guidance, support and experimental play, each actor who works with Simon leaves his classes richer”.

 

I have taught at most of the major drama schools

  • Central
  • Lamda
  • Mountview
  • E15
  • Rose Bruford
  • Drama Studio London
  • RADA
  • Shakespeare’s Globe

 

2023 ended with a workshop for Eksi on Altī Theatre company in Istanbul. I love doing scene work in a language I don’t understand. It makes you listen and watch in a completely different way.

 

 

Speaking through an interpreter is fun too. Do it right and it makes you sound at least as wise as you are.

 

I have also tutored at British American Drama Academy and taught Theatre History at The London Drama Academy (Fordham University), and led masterclasses in Barcelona, Germany and Rome.

I am on the Higher Education Faculty at Shakspeare’s Globe. I specialise in text work, but I also do regular work as Course Director, which involves editing a text to around an hour, leading to a showing on the Globe stage.

I collaborate with designer Michael Pavelka on a course for students at Rutgers University, focusing on creating a design for a show in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Whenever I teach I try to bring into the room the discipline I learned at drama school, the experience I had playing long runs of big parts with Propeller, and the playfulness on which Philippe Gaulier so rightly insists. I think anyone whose watchword for actors is “You should always be more interesting than a rhinoceros” is worth listening to.

 

More of what students have said about working with me