Acting Weekend with Mountview University

As has been tradition for many years, the Cours Florent’s Acting in English department was thrilled to once again welcome teachers from the prestigious London based acting school, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, to our Paris campus. 

Our two schools continued our dynamic partnership this year by offering Cours Florent’s students a weekend long intensive centered around the theme of creating a character.  

“The life of a character should be an unbroken line of events and emotions, but the play only gives us a few moments on that line – we must create the rest to portray a convincing life.” ~ Konstantin Stanislavski 

Originating from Stanislavski’s methods, the notion of character creation has since been greatly developed by more recent practitioners. By exploring classical archetypes with Steve Brownlie and weaving them with fresher takes rooted in hip hop theatre culture with Tania Nwachukwu, our students delved deeply into and outside of themselves to further develop their skills and understanding. Under Merry Owen’s guidance, our students then breathed life into these newly created characters, exploring the dichotomy between spontaneity and preparedness, and the idea that outward expressions of character must flow from that character’s inner life. 

As is the custom, our third year students had the opportunity to audition for one of Mountview's postgraduate programs in Performance (Acting) or Performance (Musical Theatre). And this year as well, we had very positive results ! 

This partnership is just one example of the many advantageous international collaborations Cours Florent affords its students to expand their horizons and foster the next generation of great theatre artists.