Precision in Performance: Directing Actors
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Course Info
Participant, Udayan's Directing Summer School 2025
What’s included?
This intensive workshop will help you develop the clarity, discipline, and practical tools required to:
- Lead rehearsals with actors
- Shape truthful, nuanced performances
- Communicate clear, playable direction
- Sustain performance quality under time pressure
Each director will rehearse with professional actors in a film‑school environment, gaining hands‑on experience and individual guidance. You will refine your directorial craft through learning how to use space, movement, and rehearsal time more intentionally.
The focus of this course is directing actors. We strip away the non‑essentials and concentrate on the core skills every director needs. Over five days, you will build the practical skills of:
- Communicating with actors clearly and confidently
- Structuring rehearsals with discipline and purpose
- Integrating blocking with actor intention
- Maintaining performance quality under time constraints
By the end of the course, you will have a grounded understanding of how to draw dynamic, truthful performances from your actors. You’ll learn to recognise what an actor needs to deliver their strongest work, how to guide them effectively, and how to shape behaviour to support the emotional core of each scene.
You will also gain confidence in integrating purposeful blocking, using placement, rhythm, and physical choices to heighten narrative tension and strengthen the dramatic arc of your story.
Enrolment is limited to nine participants to ensure generous rehearsal time, close mentorship, and precise, practical feedback tailored to each director’s growth.
Who is this for?
This course is designed for directors who:
- Have directed short films or completed basic filmmaking training
- Have a basic understanding of production workflow
- Want to strengthen their work with actors
- Are ready for rigorous and concentrated development
It is not suitable for beginners. Participants may be asked to submit previous work as part of the application process.
Schedule
Day One: What is acting?
Practical exercises to understand acting from the inside, followed by the essentials of working with actors.
- Trust, collaboration and the risk of a performance already fixed in your head
- Stanislavski and beyond: wants, needs, objectives and super objectives
- Directing what to do, not how to do it, and finding the subtext
- Giving clear, playable notes built on verbs
- Actions, beats, status and the different ways actors work
Day Two: Directing each other
- Work in groups of three, casting one another in short scenes
- Same words, new situations: an hour to rehearse, then present to the group
- Experience both sides of the note and learn what an actor can actually play
Days Three and Four: In the room with professional actors
- Direct scenes from feature film screenplays with two experienced actors, a different pair each day
- Prepare from the script alone: facts, objectives, obstacles, circumstances, beats and actions
- Table reads, not performances, with one group directing while the others observe
- Feedback after every session from the group, the actors and Udayan
Day Five: Monologues and casting
- Take sole charge of a monologue with a professional actor, from films such as The Conversation, Body Heat and All of Us Strangers
- Rehearse, then present the finished performance to the group, followed by feedback
- Open Q&A with the actors on preparation, working with directors and auditions
- Discussion on casting and a final debrief
Terms and Conditions
By completing this booking, you confirm that you have read and agree to the London Film School Workshops and Short Courses Terms and Conditions (linked below). You have the right to cancel within 14 days of purchase for a full refund unless the course has already begun, in which case your right to cancel may be reduced or lost. After this period, bookings are non-refundable except where the course is cancelled by London Film School. In such cases, liability is limited to a refund of the course fee only. London Film School shall not be liable for any additional costs, including travel or accommodation. All courses are subject to availability and may be amended or cancelled where necessary.
London Film School shall not be liable for any additional costs, including travel or accommodation. All courses are subject to availability and may be amended or cancelled where necessary.
Tutor
Udayan Prasad
DirectorUdayan Prasad
DirectorUdayan Prasad is a multi-award-winning director whose earlier films include the MY SON THE FANATIC by Hanif Kureishi and BROTHERS IN TROUBLE, winner of the Golden Alexander Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. He also directed THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF starring William Hurt, Maria Bello, Kristin Stewart, and Eddie Redmayne, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released in the US by Goldwyn Films.
Television projects includes several with the British writer Simon Gray including RUNNING LATE, winner of the Gold Gate Award for Best Television Feature. And two BAFTA-nominated collaborations with Alan Bennett: TALKING HEADS 2: PLAYING SANDWICHES and 102 BOULEVARD HAUSSMANN, winner of a second Gold Gate Award.
Recent work comprises of BECOMING ELIZABETH and SELECTION DAY, an adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Booker prize-winning novel for Seven Stories and Netflix, on which Udayan was lead director and executive producer. He also helmed the closing episodes of BBC TV’s THE MUSKETEERS.
When not in production, he runs workshops on directing and screenwriting at several film schools including The London Film School, The Wajda School in Warsaw and the National Film Television and Theatre School in Łódź, Poland. He is also an advisor and mentor on various international directing and screenwriting workshops.
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