SCREEN ACTING BY TOP ACTING COACH
MIRANDA HARCOURT

COURSE DETAILS

Course Outcomes

Miranda aims to help you become a free-er, richer actor, attuned to your inner world. The structured tools will give you a framework for greater success onstage on set and in the audition room. The ideas that Miranda brings from different cultures and creative practices will expand the way you think about performance. You will leave the workshop a hungrier and more inspired actor.

Course Outline

In her work with actors, Miranda shifts paradigms, empowering actors to realise their own talent. She introduces simple, fast, fresh, innovative ways of achieving connection and character through a series of tools and exercises. Miranda draws teaching inspiration from a variety of diverse sources including the worlds of photography, Deaf sign language, science and the visual arts. Her approach draws on years of writing and performing Verbatim theatre in prisons and theatres in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.  In this class you will work on your actors’ spirit and your actors’ craft, exploring:

• White Space
• Connection
• Internal Landscape
• Vista and Objects
• Journey

Course Overview

This special online acting Masterclass with the highly celebrated Miranda Harcourt ONZM is a unique opportunity to work with one of the most celebrated film coaches in the business, having coached on major feature films and with top actors around the world, including Peter Jackson and Jane Campion, and recently with Garth Davies on the Best Picture, Oscar® Nominated hit Lion. Working with brief scenes and monologues, Miranda will diagnose performance-issues and suggest solutions. She will also open up case-studies to illuminate your practice as an actor.

INSTRUCTOR DETAILS

Miranda is an acting coach, an actor and a director.

Her speciality is screen naturalism. Her approach is based on years of writing and performing Verbatim theatre in prisons in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, as well as her work as an on-set acting coach with renowned actors and directors on films all over the world.

Miranda has coached Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA-award nominated and winning performances in films as diverse as Lion, Big Little Lies, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Beguiled, Boy Erased, Destroyer. She was the dedicated coach for Sunny Pawar (young Saroo) in Lion and was Director: Background Action on Garth Davis’ Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara and Joachim Phoenix. Her first feature film The Changeover, co-directed with Stuart McKenzie, was released to acclaim in NZ, the UK and the US.

For seven years Miranda was the Head of the Acting Department at Toi Whakaari — New Zealand Drama School.

Directors she has worked with include Jane Campion, Peter Jackson, Morten Tyldum and Garth Davis. Actors include Nicole Kidman, Juliette Binoche, Dev Patel, Josh Hutcherson, Saoirse Ronan and many others. Her daughter is the winner of the US NBR award for Breakout Talent 2018, Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace — Jojo Rabbit — Lost Girls — Last Night in Soho)

Miranda has taught at TIFF in Toronto, at NFTS and NYU Tisch, The London Film School and Directors UK in Britain, at AFTRS and The Hub in Sydney, at Toi Whakaari, The Actors’ Program, Otago University and Victoria University in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

She been awarded the ONZM (for services to theatre and the community) and the Centennial Suffrage Medal. Civic awards include NEXT Arts Woman of the Year, the 2018 Woman of the Year (Arts) and the 2018 Women in Film and TV Achievement in Film. She has also won many awards and nominations for acting and directing.

Her training was as an actor at Toi Whakaari — New Zealand Drama School and as a Dramatherapist at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

In her work with actors and directors Miranda aims to shift paradigms, empowering creatives to realise their own talent. She introduces simple but innovative ways of thinking about and achieving connection and character. She has developed a unique series of tools and exercises for use in rehearsal and on-set that get actors to where they need to be, fast.