Big Blog Theory

My Days At Anna Sher, Theatre Drama School

Hi guys, welcome back to Big Blog Theory, I hope you’re all doing well. Right, so I think it’s about time I came forward and shared my experiences being at Anna Shears, Theatre and Drama School. I’ve been wanting to talk about this for quite a while now, life has been a bit chaotic, to say the least and I didn’t have time to post stuff on my blog but I’m here now and that’s all what matters. So yeah, today I’m going to be talking about my experiences at Anna Shears drama school. A little while ago, I was talking about how I was going to start taking acting and drama classes, none of which are to do with my future and my career, I don’t want to be an actress or anything but I wanted to try it and see if it improves my confidence . I really enjoyed going there, it was really fun. I would go there every Wednesday and they were only a few of us taking part so it was easier to get to know everyone. Sometimes, it would be really difficult because they put you on the spot but as time goes on, you start to improve and get better doing certain things. The first session was a bit weird because we had a talent scout host the session and he came in just to see if anyone had anything interesting to offer, not like I had anything special to offer, talent wise but you know? maybe for the others.

Everyone was really nice and friendly, I was new to this and so the teacher would get someone to look out for me and make sure I was doing okay which was really sweet and kind, especially since I was really overwhelmed at times, all the others, they’ve been doing it for years and I just felt a bit weird joining in, but everyone was really nice and supportive and I’m glad about that, cause it could have easily gone the other way. The sessions were really fun, we would do warm ups every week. At the start of every session, we would stand in a circle and dance to music. My teacher had this massive radio / boom box and he would play a lot of old, vintage music and I was like ” Eh, you’re a man after my own heart, you like what I like ” I love old, 60s and 70s music  so he would turn on the radio and he would start dancing and we would have to copy his dance moves. I always had so much fun doing this every week, I was always lively, energetic, enthusiastic and upbeat doing the dance warm ups and everyone else would look so exhausted and just look like they’ve given up on life and they would always look at me and think ” God, how do you do it?” One session, we danced to the Pointer Sisters and I was so happy, I was like ”Yes, it’s my lucky day” I love the Pointer Sisters. And then, on the first day, we were all dancing to Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison which is like my favourite songs and everyone else was standing there like ” What is this song? Van who? who the bloody hell is Van Morrison ?” and I was just literally dancing and singing the song just living my best life and they were so confused. I’m a creature of habit, what can I say? I’m an old soul, if you understand, you understand.

One week, Dickon, my teacher, played a song called Green Onions by Booker T and The MG’s. A few weeks later, I found out it was in a film called Quadrophenia which is an absolutely fantastic film and he played two songs that were featured in the film and I reckon he loved the film as well. If I watched it at the same time, I would have told him about it but it was an opportunity missed, but yeah anyway, that was a lot of fun, I would have guessed it was from Quadrophenia, I think the dance moves gave it away. I love Quadrophenia, it’s my favourite film, an absolute masterpiece of cinema history.

We do also do this warm up which is called Tongue Twister. He would tell us to say a certain phrase two or three times very quickly without tripping up and that was quite tricky but a great warm up, nonetheless . The phrases were

. She sells sea shells by the sea shore and the sea shells that she sells are sea shells for sure

. Double bubble gum, bubbles double

. Red lolly, yellow lorry

. If you notice this, notice this, notice this, notice this, you’ll notice this is not worth noticing

. Betty bought a bit of butter { I’m not even going to bother writing the rest of that one, but you get the jist}

. Witch, witch wished the wicked wish

. I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son and I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes { Which would trip you up sometimes because you would muddle up your words and say fucker instead which happened to every single one of us and we would stand there, laughing our heads off for hours and our teacher would start getting impatient and he would be like ” You what?” .

During this exercise, he would suddenly turn to you and say ” Say this in a different accent ” and you’ve got to be ready. He would tell you to do a Northern accent, he would tell you to say the phrases in a posh accent. One technique that really helps me is I link different shows I watch and that really helps. Liverpool/ Boys From The Black Stuff, Cockney / The Sweeney or Minder { Even though I’m already Cockney anyway} Scottish/ Taking Over The Asylum, Geordie/ Auf Wiederesehen pet, so that would help a lot, my dad taught me this technique and it’s really useful especially if you want to know which accent is which.

He would also randomly switch accents during the session. When we played Mafia, he started talking in a New York accent and it was so funny. At other times, he sounded like Neil From The Young Ones and then he would start talking in a Jamaican accent so it was really cool how he could switch between different accents. Just simple moments like these I will treasure forever.  Anna Shears used to teach at this school, in fact it was her drama school back in the 60s and 70s but I think something happened and other people tried to dominate and take over which really treated her unfairly and then she got Covid, then she got depression then other people took over but she used to teach my dad when he was there and he just remembers her being really lovely and a great teacher and she always looked for the best in everyone . My dad used to go to Anna Shears when he was younger, he went at the same time when most of the cast of Grange Hill were there so he remembers seeing some of the Grange hill lot. In fact, he used to be close friends with Terry Sue Pat and they got on really well and my dad would turn up for lessons and Terry would run up to him and go ” Hey, man, how’s it going?” he went mad for him and Terry used to show my dad how to do Kung Fu and he was just such a lovely geezer, he really helped  my dad settle in , they were friends for a while. It’s such a shame what happened to Terry, he died quite young, he was a great talent and a massive part of Grange Hill. My dad tells us stories about them being together back in the day. I think my dad weren’t really that interested in all this acting stuff, he just couldn’t really understand it, he was more interested in going down Soho and mucking about with his mates from school to really know about all this stuff, he just had no interest . He could have been in Bugsy Malone but he just wasn’t thinking, he turned down an audition but if he did do it, he would have been in the film, it’s crazy to think that. Bugsy Malone is one of my favourite films and I had no idea about all this, he missed out on an opportunity of a lifetime.I’m going to talk a little more about Grange Hill later on because I think it’s an important thing since it’s good to recognise where you came from in your process and to remember who taught you and shaped you into the person you are now.

He would sometimes tell me that the sort of stuff they would do there was serious stuff. Anna would call you up and she would get someone to go and sit in front of everyone and just go ” Right, you, go and cry ” and you have to cry or they would say ” Make it look like you’re in distraught because of a cat or something ” and you would have to break down in tears and some would actually do it. or she got my dad to go and do it once as well. She told him to sit in front of the class and pretend to play the drums so he had to pretend to play a drums and if she thought it was good then you would a have a chance, they would also tell you to pretend that you’re stuck in a telephone box and you’re screaming and you’re absolutely terrified for your life and you have to make it look believable . They really knew how to get you in touch with your emotions. I’m not at that stage yet but hopefully very soon, I’ll get to do that too.

My teacher also taught us about Opposition and method acting which was really interesting it showed us how method acting really works. Opposition means that you act the complete opposite as your character, so if your character is hurt and upset, you would start laughing and crack jokes just to cover up how you’re character’s really feeling . He told us about a character he played in this play once, where he played a Northerner and the play was really depressing and sad but his character would laugh and joke a lot to hide the pain and the tragedy of his story. My teacher used the film Joker as an example, saying how he is a very flawed, tragic character who has problems and he’s very complicated but he laughs a lot to hide how he’s feeling, it’s sort of like a coping mechanism, I thought that was really interesting.

We also did some improvisations. I remember the improvisations being quite difficult, I had a bit of a rocky beginning but as time went on, you get the idea of it and you find that it’s not so hard. The thing with improvisation is that you have to make it up as you go along. It really depended on the partners I went with because with some instances, we weren’t really in sync, we weren’t getting anywhere with it, one of us would say something and then the other one would just freeze and not say anything and we would stand there like ” Please, someone say something otherwise I’m going to lose my mind” so we would just stay silent but with one improvisation, we both hit it off and we did amazingly well, I think it worked partly because we had time to discuss our lines properly . The theme for this week was being lazy and hobbies, so me and my partner did an improvisation about a mother who finds out her daughter has been drinking and she’s really overprotective and she’s trying to get her to give up drinking and go and get a job and do something with her life.

A few minutes before we did it, she was holding this half filled Fanta bottle and she was like ” I’m the drunk daughter so I’m going to use this” and it was really funny, we laughed for ages. So I played the mother. The whole point of this improvisation was to understand that the mum was overprotective and a bit cruel, strict and in some cases, she was being a bit too much but if you try and look in between the lines, you’ll know that she really cared for her daughter and she wanted the best for her, she was just doing her bit. I think it’s something you’ll relate to when you become a parent yourself, you want the best for your daughters and your sons and you don’t want to lead them astray. There was a little bit at the end of the scene where her daughter was like ” I need a glass of water” and the mum helps to lift her daughter up and puts an arm around her and walks her to the kitchen to go and get a glass of water since she’s stumbling around because she can’t walk properly. My teacher really loved that bit, that was the one scene where the mother cracked and it really shines through and all that time she was being hard on her but at that last scene, she was being so gentle with her. At the beginning of the scene, the mum knocks on the door and walks in to find her daughter lying in a daze with a bottle in her hand and at that moment, she could tell that something was wrong, mums can always tell when something’s wrong, it’s the same with dads too. My partner was like ” Right, you stand there and you pretend to knock on the door” so I had to stomp my feet and make it look like I was knocking on a door and so I asked her ” Do you have a name? what do I call you?” and she said ” Oh, you know, just call me anything, but whatever you do, don’t call me daughter” so that’s that, I didn’t have a bloody name, I don’t even think I called her anything.

I thought about a scene in an episode of The Professionals, in the episode ” Private Madness, Public Danger ” which is my absolute favourite episode ever of The Professionals. Everyone who knows me will know that my favourite episode is Private Madness, Public Danger ” since it’s an amazing episode and I love how it introduces Bodie and Doyle at the very beginning, especially in that first scene where they’re first introduced and the comedy just bounces off one another. If you’ve seen that episode, you’ll know what I mean. Our improvisation was based on a few of those scenes in the episode even though my partner didn’t even know what The Professionals even is. It’s the scene where Bodie has come to visit Susan Fenton in hospital after she’s had some sort of an overdose and he’s being really hard on her, being rough and he’s trying to get answers out of her and she talked about her cat George who was put down because got ran over or something and she was in distraught because she kept calling out for him but he wasn’t there and Bodie kept asking her who George was and then she starts crying and lifts her up from her hospital bed and comforts her. It’s one of my favourite scenes from that episode, I don’t know why, Every time I watch it, I just go ” Aw” , I found some simularities from that scene in our improvisation. The whole time, he was being quite impatient and hard on her but then at that one scene, he’s really gentle with her. My teacher really liked that, me and my partner really discussed it well enough and turned out to be a success in the end.

It’s my favourite scene to study, I always go back and watch that episode because it’s my absolute favourite one from the series. It really touches you deeply and you really feel sorry for Susan because she’s just been drugged by her psychotic father who’s just gone on a rampage, he wants world peace and he hates wars but it’s just the wrong way to go about things . She’s lying there, all drugged up and her emotions are running high and they’re all over the place, she doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going and Bodie’s just sitting there, accompanying her beside her hospital bed and it’s such a lovely scene between Bodie and her. You laugh when Bodie gets mistaken for George and he doesn’t even know who that is, he’s just like ” Who’s George? who the bloody hell is George? tell me about George, I want to know about George!” and then your heart melts when she reveals her feelings between her and what happened to her cat and then he just goes in and says that he ran him over with his car and that really did it, it’s just a beautiful scene. I understand how she feels about her cat, especially because I’m a cat lover and I used to own a cat myself and we used to watch The Persuaders together and she used to just fall asleep on my lap, she passed away a little while ago, sadly but she was so friendly, I loved her, I’d love to see what Bodie does with a cat, God knows what he would do with a bloody cat but Bodie and a cat together is all I need in my life, haha, that would be a cuteness overload

Whilst there’s chaos going on, her dad’s on a drug rampage, drugging everyone and leaking some weird substance in the lakes or something, there’s just a beautiful connection scene between Bodie and Susan that I love so much and Bodie’s charm just really shines through and I love it. I find it so cute that he went in to visit her in hospital every morning, I love Bodie so much, this is where my obsession with Lewis Collins began . I love some of his other work too, I love him in The Cuckoo Waltz, He was amazing in Who Dares Wins and obviously The Professionals. I also know he used to be in a band in the 60s called The Mojos and I love their music. I just love Lewis Collins, what an absolute gentleman, his smile is enough to make you smile and then I feel sad when you realise that he’s no longer with us. If I had a time machine, I would go back to the 70s and meet him, he’s just an absolute sweetheart and he had a great sense of humour and he should have had a longer career, he deserved it but cancer has to come along and ruin everything. I know that he did charity work and he learned sign language to teach drama and movement to deaf kids and young people with disabilities which is so nice of him, he was just a flicker of light in a dark and grey world, we lost a real gem there, I also think he would have made an excellent James Bond but it’s just an absolute shame the way it went in the end, but I will always love Lewis Collins, an absolute legend and I will always love Bodie too, in fact, I would love to create some weird Lewis Collins fan page just to show everyone how much I love The Professionals . All i want is a friend that I can re act scenes from The Professionals with, haha. But anyway, I always go back and study those scenes when I watch that episode because it teaches me a lot about how fast things could change within five minutes, how someone can go from perfectly fine to an emotional wreck, it reminds me a lot of what I had to do for improvisations at Anna Shears.

At the end of the showcase of our improvisation, my teacher was saying what he loved about it plus his criticisms. My teacher said he loved it, he thought it was amazing and he liked the mother daughter relationship and how protective the mum was but his criticism was that I should have faced the audience a bit more so that I’m not turning my back against the audience, so I took that on board and hopefully next time, I’ll be better at that.

Sharing my love for TV shows from the 70s}

At Anna Shears, I wasn’t ashamed to show how much I loved TV shows from the 70s and 80s. On the first day, we all sat in a circle and we had to introduce ourselves, say our name and just talk about ourselves and so I said that I loved TV shows from 70s. I mentioned my love for Grange Hill since a lot of the Grange Hill lot came to this school to study drama and acting in the late 70s. Except for me, the talent scout and a few other students knew what Grange Hill was but loads of them didn’t . I also talked about how much I love shows like Minder, The Sweeney, The Professionals, Upstairs Downstairs, The Protectors and 80s shows like Dempsey and Make peace, The Gentle Touch, Prospects, Love Joy, The Young Ones, Only Fools And Horses and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. No one had any idea what I was on about but it was fun. I would also play characters and re act iconic moments from The Professionals, Minder and The Sweeney for my improvisations because I’m obsessed with these shows and they became a huge part of my childhood. It was really fun playing highly strung East end gangsters and criminals and I had a laugh but no one really knew what I was on about except for my teacher maybe so I was on my own with that one but I had fun.

I was really enthusiastic, talking about all my favourite shows and films and I would study acting techniques by watching these shows so I could improve my acting and see how other actors and actresses do it on screen. My TV favourites played a huge part in my experiences at Anna Shears. I know all the classics from the 60s, 70s and 80s, thanks to my dad who’s responsible for creating this monster and he’s responsible for showing me the utter genius of Brian Clemens which I’m so happy about. I just love old shows, I’m obsessed, I can talk about my favourite TV shows, films, bands and singers all day long.

In my improvisations, I channelled inner characters and personalities from TV shows that are relevant to what character I was told to play, one of them was Gene Hunt from Life On Mars. I remember on the first day, I was told to play an ignorant driver who runs over someone’s dog and he has no empathy what’s so ever and he’s heartless and he’s just having a stand off with the owner for hours and thinking about that character helped me get through the improvisation when I felt it wasn’t going smoothly . I love Life On Mars and Gene Hunt is a legend.

I also channelled characters from programmes like The Sweeney and The Professionals, so if I had to play a rough neck, hard man who’s quite cut throat and complicated in his past, I would choose Bodie from The Professionals or I would choose George Cowley, Doyle, Regan or Carter too, I would also channel mad female characters too but mostly male characters, it would really help me a lot. My dad would remind me to use this technique when we were on the bus, on our way to the drama school. Watching those programmes helped me picture characters in certain situations. When I watch them, I would see characters when they pop on screen and they say their lines and I would do the accents, it’s just a little thing I do sometimes. In a few years time, I will look back on this experience and I will remember how much I loved these TV programmes and how my dad introduced me to all the good stuff of the past and I will look back at my experiences and see how much it’s helped me.

Anna Shears has a really interesting TV and film history, so many stars were born here in this drama school.  Finding out about who went to Anna Shears way before my time is really interesting to me. I watch loads of old shows and it’s really cool to see that they went to the same drama school that I went to. One of the shows that I love watching is Four Idle Hands. I absolutely love Four Idle Hands, me and my family were watching it a little while ago, so much fun. Four Idle Hands was a kid’s programme that came out in the 70s which followed the lives of these two school boys who leave school and they have to go and find jobs during the days of unemployment and the never ending dole queue and they just get up to so much chaos, I love this show. Ray Burdis and Phil Daniels were fantastic in this programme, they both went to Anna Shears and it’s really cool because I’m such a big fan of Four Idle Hands and if I ever bump into Ray’s brother, I’m going to ask him about Ray Burdis being in Four Idle Hands and then I’m going to ask him if there are any more episodes of Four Idle Hands because I need more.

I love watching Four Idle Hands, it only went on for about six episodes but it was filled with so much laughter and fun. My dad used to rush home from school to watch it when it first came out. I also have a mini crush on a very young Phil Daniels too and the first time I watched it, I was just glued to the screen whenever his character came up. I also know him from Quadrophenia and even that was a surprise to me, he has seriously amazing acting skills in that film, just incredible. I’m also obsessed with Grange Hill at the moment, I’m watching all the episodes with my dad every single night and I just remember being glued to the screen and it would be time for bed and my mum would be like ” Christina, it’s way past your bed time, you need to go to bed” and I’m just sitting there, like ” Just one more episode” so I’m obsessed with Grange Hill, the older ones are the best ones. Half the Grange Hill lot went to Anna Shears, as I was saying earlier. Grange Hill is an amazing show, it’s just so real and gritty and it highlighted what kids went through in those days, just an accurate portrayal of going to school and we won’t be getting another show like this sadly, Grange Hill will always be one of my favourite shows of all time. Tucker’s Luck was another show that I’m obsessed with. Tucker’s Luck was a sequel to Grange Hill and it followed Tucker / Peter Jenkins when he’s older and him and his mates, Alan and Tommy leave school and go find jobs and it’s amazing, I love Tucker’s Luck. When we finish Grange Hill, we’re going to go back to the very beginning and watch it all over again, it’s a great programme and it’s so much fun to watch. I’m not sure if Todd Carty also went to Anna Shears but if he did, then that’s cool, I guess.

We also played a lot of games at Anna Shears, we played Yes No Black and White which is where you pick a partner and you stand in front of everyone and you’re given a situation, a location, who your characters are, if they’re friends or family or if they’re in a relationship together or not and you play out a scene together but you can’t say yes or no. In one instance, I played a snobbish person who’s at a resteraunt who’s waiting to order and he’s just treating the waiters and the staff poorly and I couldn’t say yes or no otherwise, you would have to sit down and I won that round, I took a bow and went to sit down. I’m not rude in real life or at least, I hope I’m not, so it was difficult to see myself treating people badly, but that’s acting . Another game we played was a game called Freeze, Switch which is where once again, you and your partner are playing out a scene and when someone from the audience shouts out ” freeze” you freeze and they will come up and tap you on the shoulder and you walk off and they replace you and they do a completely different act, I found that one quite hard but I improved as time went on.

There was another game which was Sordid Sword{Or whatever the bloody hell it’s called}  where you had to stand in a row and my teacher would pretend to wave a sword about and when he did, you had to duck and then if he did it upwards, you had to jump and if he clapped once, you had to clap twice and if he clapped twice, we had to clap once and if he said ”Walk backwards” we had to walk forwards and he said Walk forwards, we walked backwards and so it’s the complete opposite of what he tells you to do.

I remember one of the sessions, we had to stand up in front of everyone else and say our name, our age and choose one person who’s kind and everyone was choosing their parents and other kids and I wanted to spice it up a bit so I said Anakay, which is the lady who greeted us when we came in and we’d have to give her the money and mark ourselves in on the register and she was also half Greek just like me and I thought she was really kind because on the last day of term, I was feeling a bit upset because it was the last day and she was just showing me photos of her cat and I was like ” This is amazing ” she hears me talking about cats all the time and it really cheered me up so I chose her. Everyone else chose their friends and nobody chose me or even thought about me so I was like ” I’m just going to choose who I want” haha. One session, I walked in wearing A The Breakfast Club t shirt and we just started talking about The Breakfast Club and Molly Ringwald. My teacher is also really kind, he’s nice, he’s very supportive and encouraging and when you feel disappointed in yourself, he’s always there to lift you up and tell you how well you’ve done. He’s an actor himself, he’s known for being in films like Eddie The Eagle and Rocket man which are two of my favourite films and I had no idea he was even in those films.

My Anna Sher’s teacher keeps telling us this story about when he went to this audition a long time ago and they liked him so they called him back in for a second audition and he remembers his friend going with him and he got the role and he was over the moon but his friend was sitting there, so gutted about it and he was like ” How on earth did you manage the role and not me?” and he was just so jealous even though he was happy for his friend. Every few years, his friend reminds him of this story and he just keeps winding him up about it and he was like ” that was years ago, how do you still remember it?” so, he tells us this story every time we watched a play called The Interview which was something he got four or five of us to get up and perform for everyone else. It’s very similar because in the play, one of the characters get the job and his mate is jealous about the fact that he didn’t get the job, so he gets the job and his mate says it was just a trick to get him to go and do something with his life but he didn’t think he was actually going to go and do it, so the teacher’s story wasn’t relevant to the play we do once every few weeks. This pretty much happened once every other week, I always liked watching the play because it showed me what they were capable of and the plays were really funny and entertaining and so we would watch it and we would have to give it something out of ten based on how much we enjoyed it and we would give our criticisms too. Some things were really random too, like someone would open the door, pop out of nowhere wearing a red clown’s wig and then someone else would be holding a bloody statue of Jesus and we would just sit there, laughing for hours, so random.

Anna Shears was going to have a summer school but in the end, they decided not to do it, so I’m probably going to go back in September and I’ll see how that goes. There were so many other things I wanted to share with you guys but I don’t want to ramble on or anything, so I’ll just end it here, but yeah, going to Anna Shears was an amazing experience, I learnt new things, I gained a new respect for actors because it’s hard graph, especially with acting . Again, I’m not thinking of becoming an actress or anything, I’m a writer, forever more but I just wanted to try something new and I actually really enjoyed it. I’m just making the most of it because before you know it, it’s going to be over and I’m going to look back on this in a few years time and wish that I enjoyed it a bit more.

Thank you so much for reading my post, I hope you liked it. I didn’t have enough time to share everything I did at Anna Shears because I don’t like rambling on for too long, but that’s all I have for you guys today. I hope you all have a wonderful day, love you guys

More work to come on Big Blog Theory