Kenneth Rea Teacher to Outstanding Actors

The mentor to some of Britain’s top performers believes the best acting comes from a childhood sense of playfulness – and is fraught with danger, David Jays reports for The Guardian. Defining the core of outstanding performance and learning how to pass it on – it’s a slippery quest to which New Zealand-born acting teacher Kenneth Rea has devoted more than 40 years.

Rea’s book The Outstanding Actor: Seven Keys to Success, now available in a new edition, includes interviews with actors who have passed through his classes at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama including Lesley Sharp, Damian Lewis and Paapa Essiedu, electric as the RSC’s Hamlet and in Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You.

Essiedu tells Jays that as a student he didn’t have a huge amount of confidence or experience. “Ken drills down to the person. It’s about the way you frame your life – one of his big things is to hold on tightly and let go lightly. I was always excited for his lessons.”

Original article by David Jays, The Guardian, March 29, 2021.

Photo by Tom Edkins.