In Your Shoes - Elaine Newton

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Elaine Newton is an acting and public speaking coach who runs her own business, The Acting Lab, based in Dundee (courses and coaching are currently all on Zoom and so accessible from anywhere in the world).

The Acting Lab offers part-time courses for adults (16+) in acting and improvisation, confidence workshops for business people and one-to-one coaching on a whole range of topics: acting, Zoom presence, speaking with confidence, speaking in business and online presentations, to name but a few. A graduate of Glasgow’s prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, she grew up in Dundee, spent much of her early working life abroad (mainly in France), then returned to Dundee and in 2015 set up The Acting Lab.


Website: https://www.actinglab.co.uk 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheActingLab 
Instagram: @theactinglabdundee
Twitter: @ActingLabDundee

Secret Weapon

My Mondays are often filled with one-to-one coaching sessions and today wasn’t any different. With my background in acting the first coaching I offered was centred on audition preparation, getting to grips with Shakespeare and so on (and I still do plenty of that) but these days many of my one-to-one clients are business people. People from all walks of life get acting-based coaching and it can be something of a secret weapon. Often you will experience a great presentation and think “Wow, what a great communicator!” but that great communicator may well have had some really technical coaching to help them achieve an authentic style that looks so “natural and “engaging”. Getting results with clients, seeing them grow and flourish, is such an exciting part of my work and you can see from the photo that it can be great fun too!

Wish You Were Here

If Monday is coaching day and Wednesday and Saturday are my class days then Tuesday is more about everything else (admin/promotion/organisation).

Right now I’m deep into promoting my April Zoom courses (Level I starts 14 April, Level II starts 17 April) and this is always a challenging part of the job! When I started The Acting Lab much of the promotion was on Facebook (and I still use that) but over the years I have used every option available. You can see from the photo that I have had a few different flyers over the years. The postcards – four different designs – were a particular success and came out of taking part in the great Fun A Day Dundee art project in 2019. Currently, all my promotional energy goes into online methods. Do they change Facebook every week just to challenge us, or does it just feel like that …

Live and Direct

Wednesday is one of my regular class teaching days and today is unusual as this term’s Level II class finished last Wednesday (Level II is part-time, one evening a week for 8 weeks). It covers a lot of ground – voice, movement, sense-work, improvisation, script analysis, character research and development, monologues, duologues, rehearsal – and today’s job is to reflect on and unpack how well the course went.

It’s pretty calm here at Acting Lab HQ today but last week was quite the opposite as it was the big end-of-term performances/scene shares. Usually this would be done in Abertay University but for now it’s all on Zoom. It means some stage directions might be different (for me anyway, cueing up music, getting guests into the meeting from the waiting room …) but the excitement and adrenalin you associate with live performance still apply. This photo shows student Andrew in action!

Get your Zoom On!

Thursday is time for some digital focus. Today I updated a few things on my website. It took me ages to bite the bullet and get a website but the lovely, patient Alistair at Creative Mongrel did a fantastic job.

And then there’s Zoom! One year ago when lockdown hit, I participated in all sorts of things just to stay connected. In the beginning I had huge Zoom anxiety! After a tough period of experimentation and adaptation, I started offering my workshops via Zoom. My students love the connectedness and the work can be just as intimate and exhilarating as in the classroom. I’ve overcome many challenges and have found fantastic ways to mitigate the stress, irritation and fatigue and deepen and enhance the Zoom experience. Now I want to help others benefit from these insights and techniques. Today, I’m putting finishing touches to a new workshop/product called Get Your Zoom On! which will help people look good, give a better impression, and have more energy, gravitas and charisma when they use Zoom/Teams/Skype.

Preparation, Performance, Poetry!

Friday means lesson planning and preparation as I’m teaching the Beginners/Level I class tomorrow morning. This class has two more weeks of term so this stage is all about consolidation – finding the impulse and playing objectives for the scenes that we will share next week. As ever it’s a great, fun group. Some people have already signed up for level II for next term and I hope more follow suite. Group work is such a deeply bonding experience, even online.

Fridays are also my creative writing day and today I attended the StAnza Poetry Festival (all online this year of course instead of in the beautiful venues of St Andrews). One of my favourite poets, Caroline Bird, did a brilliant piece on the faces she makes when writing! I know Caroline from being my mentor at the Moniack Mhor writing retreat and she is an amazing person, poet and performer.