The Camden Acting Workshop

MY ACTING career began and ended with one appearance as an extra orphan in a primary school performance of Annie, so it was with some trepidation that I attended an improv class in Euston this week.

Camden Acting Workshop meets in a rehearsal room at the Old Diorama Theatre in Drummond Street, where some members are or have been professional actors, while others are there to improve their confidence.

Directing it all is Andy St John, chair of Kentish Town’s Raglan Estate Tenants and Residents Association, who has been a dramatic improvisation actor for 25 years and set up Camden Acting Workshop in 2023.

“It’s a very simple way of turning life into theatre,” he said.

“If you wrote a play about your life it could take months or years. With improv, stuff can happen out there in the world and we can play with it here tonight.”

Andy’s aim for starting Camden Acting Workshop was to build a community around improv, something he felt was more important than ever in the context of “all these things that had been chipping away at us” — the pandemic, the war in Ukraine.

One regular member, Fi, had never done anything like improv when she came along to her first workshop two years ago after reading a notice about it in the New Journal.

“It can teach you to be open, and it can be surprisingly moving, seeing someone open up or show a different side of themselves, because you have to flexible to go wherever it takes you. You never know what will happen next.”

In the workshop, Andy led a series of warm-up exercises that began with breathing, moving around each other and making shapes, and built slowly towards mini scenes — a king sacking a disloyal servant or a mistress seducing an on-off lover in a late-night house call.

As each exercise layered onto the other, Andy created a sense of safety and trust within the rehearsal room that lessened my own awkwardness and instead let me focus on the other actors.

It was indeed surprisingly moving to watch their vignettes and move outside their comfort zones, knowing that every move, word and expression was unplanned.

Camden Acting Workshop will perform at Bar Libra in Chalk Farm Road on July 24, 7.30pm.