ABOUT
A unique and professionally led three-hour acting school for young people who love acting. Students get to explore improvisation, acting for camera and advanced acting techniques for performance.
3 tutors from the acting industry run weekly sessions, with three age-appropriate groups, purely based around acting and performance. Each hour focuses on a specific acting discipline, with the aim to build technique, knowledge, and confidence.
Each term there are specialist weeks run by guest tutors. These have included: Stage combat, Make up for stage and screen (including special effects), Physical Theatre, Puppetry (War Horse), Masks, Comedy, Clowning, Shakespeare, Devising, and Circus Skills.
This course is excellent for young people looking to improve their acting skills, enter into the acting profession and those studying GCSE or A'level Drama. We also support students applying for drama school or attending auditions.
Each student will take part in a termly monologue slam, yearly performance for family and friends and a yearly tutorial where they can discuss their development and aspirations with their coaches.
TIMES
Saturdays
2pm - 5pm
LOCATION
Sandringham School, The Ridgeway
St Albans, AL4 9NX
Best School of Acting
Ages 8 - 18
Acting for theatre film and tv
AGE RANGE
Age 8 - 18
Too young? Check out our Best Beginners Course or Best School of Musical Theatre.
Want something more advanced? Check out our Best Youth Theatre.
FEES
Termly fee of £360 split into four monthly instalments of £90. Childcare vouchers accepted, sibling and multi class booking discounts available.
BOOK
Book your place or two week trial here:
Best School of Acting
Personal Development
The skills developed in this class are for life and not just performing! Through advanced level improvisation and games this session develops confidence, communication, concentration, quick thinking, motivation, positivity, creativity and sociability. Short and long form improvisation and improvisation for devising and performance are all included in our weekly classes.
Best School of Acting
Performance Development
A wide and varied class culminating in a yearly performance. Different acting and production styles are explored from classical theatre to the modern and absurd, from scripted pieces to devised work. Voice projection, accents, and physical skills are key areas that actors need to develop and acting games and exercises are programmed to enhance these areas.
Best School of Acting
Professional Development
Tutors from the industry encourage students to develop their professional acting skills and support young actors' understanding of the acting profession. Weekly classes focus on naturalistic acting techniques including acting for film and television. Audition and interview techniques, monologues, support for drama school, and information about the career are also included.
We hire skilled, committed and family orientated theatre professionals with a real passion for teaching. We value consistency and a progressive, structured approach. We know that it is Best’s responsibility to provide the framework in which the teachers can thrive – loving what they do and being able to pass that enjoyment in bucket loads on to the students.
Meet The Team
Best School of Acting
LISA SCHULBERG
Lisa’s spent her lifetime in the arts and is passionate about the positive effects it can have on us all. A full time musical theatre stage school kid, she then followed her dream of becoming an actress by gaining a 1st Class Hons degree in Theatre Arts, Performance and English followed by a Masters in Acting at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, receiving the first post graduate full bursary funding.
On graduating, Lisa toured extensively for 7 years across the UK and Europe in acting roles, from Shakespeare to Soap opera, in Stratford Upon Avon and Manchester to London. Lisa’s career highlight was 100 shows playing Marianne Dashwood in the stage premier of Sense and Sensibility. Whilst building up her TV and film work presenting for BBC London and playing a lead in a British Television Award winning film, Lisa began teaching and directing.
Lisa taught Acting, Voice Theory and LAMDA for Italia Conti for 8 years and has directed and run numerous youth theatres including Snap, Trestle, and our now twice National Theatre Connections selected Best Youth Theatre. After working on numerous mental health and wellbeing projects for theatre companies, councils and charities as a performer, writer and director.
Lisa has worked as a role actor and corporate workshop facilitator for over 20 years specialising in 'Conflict Management'. Clients include the NHS, Barclays Bank, Tetra Pak and the Police.
Lisa set up Tip of the Iceberg Theatre Company in 2007, with the aim to involve, inform and inspire people to lead happier lives and her work on mental health and relationships has reached over ½ million young people.
HANNAH CONWAY
Hannah is an actor, theatre director, drama tutor and theatre maker.
She's often described as a big ball of energy and has performed across the UK as an actor for many years, alongside working with young people in the performing arts across the country. She says "I have a real knack for improvising and working with children. I find a real joy in making children laugh and letting them escape into a world of fantasy where anything is possible!"
We are thrilled to welcome her as the new Principal for our Hertford & Ware Musical Theatre branch in 2023!
ANDREW MALLEN
Andrew has worked as an actor, director, musician, and composer on commercial and educational briefs that span a huge variety of contexts over many years. In the commercial sphere, he has devised shows for the Minnack Theatre in Cornwall, directed Shakespeare, classic children’s theatre, touring comedy shows and celebrity pantomimes.
As a composer, he has published twenty-two songs which have charted globally and have toured as a musician with Nick Heyward and Yusuf Blayachi among others.
Andrew is also a teacher and was the artistic director in residence at the Elstree Screen Arts academy. Here, he taught acting, acting for screen, singing, piano and musical theatre as well as producing numerous high end school shows, showcases and reviews. Part of his remit at the school has been as a conduit to the performing arts industry and as such he has brought in agents, film studio executives and fellow professional performers to enrich, and make relevant, the skills and realities of the industry.
At the core of his work is a belief in nurturing participation and personal investment in the arts through meaningful experience and tangible skills development, in which drama is an incredibly useful and powerfully immediate tool.