From December 9 to 17, 2021, PhD student Filip Jekkel participated in an intensive acting training focused on the Practical Aesthetics acting technique, which he is working on as part of his doctoral research. The acting technique is based on Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky's latest findings on physical actions and active analysis, but updates this knowledge for the needs of contemporary theatre and film practice. The training took place in Glasgow, Scotland, at the private acting school Acting Coach Scotland, which is the only institution in all of Europe that is dedicated to this technique and has many years of experience with it. The head of this educational institution is Mark Westbrook, who studied Practical Aesthetics directly with its founder David Mamet in New York at the Atlantic Acting School. Mark Westbrook also graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and holds the international qualification Performance coaching from Performance consultants International. He also teaches at the Glasgow Academy of Musical Theatre Arts and has among his students holders of the prestigious international BAFTA awards and Oscar winners in various categories. The specifics of the acting training was the fact that the entire acting institution was reserved for this purpose for a given week and Filip Jekkel was the only participant in this training, so he had the exclusive attention of all lecturers. The training took place in the form of practical acting exercises on which this technique is based, theoretical lectures on the analysis of a dramatic text and practical work on a specific fragment of a dramatic text, which was presented to the teachers of Acting Coach Scotland on the last day of the training with subsequent feedback and discussion. Filip Jekkel was assigned an acting partner for this entire process, who was a teacher of the institution and a long-time theatre and film actor Michael Allen. He plans to subsequently apply the acquired knowledge in his acting practice, but also in the pedagogical process with students of the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts.
Foreign mobility was supported from public funds by the Art Support Fund.
Photo gallery from mobility:
