Transcript:
Imagine an acting class where your classmates are a company director, a stand-up comedian, an accountant and a lawyer. Given a script to study, the process of character development begins. One student, a woman, is asked by tutor Hope Brown, to shout. She can’t. “She literally has never been able to show anger, kept it all inside. So we begin a process … by the end of the course, she can shout.” Actor, director and founder of the Agni Acting Studio on Dublin’s Pearse Street, Hope Brown teaches acting to non-professionals, in three-hour weekly sessions, over eight weeks. “People come for all sorts of reasons and at all ages: because they’ve always wanted to act but were too shy; because they have to perform in their role at work; to overcome a fear.” San Diego-born Brown knows stagefright firsthand. “I had finished acting school in Chicago. I was signed to a big agency. I had been cast in some Hollywood movies. But increasingly I was freezing at auditions.”
Brown moved to Ireland 13 years ago and, with Deirdre O’Connell at The Focus Theatre, he went back to basics, stripping away all that he had learned, and started over. “ I learned to act again. I stopped trying so hard I suppose, got in touch with my own emotions. It was about honesty, really.” The experience made him a better actor, and he decided to use his experience to make a business of helping others to act. “Acting in front of others is a terrifying experience. I’m not a therapist but we dig deep for each role, and in that process we uncover all sorts of things, with a positive outcome.” Being in Ireland and more recently, starting a business, has required a very different attitude. “I canned my agressive American approach,” he smiles, “I became more gounded, and I listened more.” Brown believes in giving and asking for help. “My business has grown organically: I’ve traded services – acting classes for website design, for instance. I network, I’m open. As I say to clients who are in roles where they need to think on their feet, accept the curveball that’s thrown at you, don’t reject it – if you do, the energy hits the floor and dissipates.”
