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The Working Action Group

@theworkingactiongroup

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Theatre meets psychology.
ACT for Acting. Character Dynamics.
Projects, workshops & coaching with @drbenjaminaskew
Project 1: @ladymplay

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The Working Action Group is a theatre company, acting studio, and creative research community, dedicated to exploring what it means to be human through theatre, psychology, and the acting process itself.

Our work has a 3-ACT structure:

ACT 1: People

ACT 1 is about how we take care of ourselves and each other as artists. At the heart of this is ACT for Acting, our psychologically informed approach to actor training and development, bringing together evidence-based practice and creative reflection, and combining artistic ambition with genuine care for well-being.

ACT 2: Process

ACT 2 is about how we create. Through our evolving approach to Character Dynamics, we develop new ways of understanding character and new tools to support rehearsal, collaboration, and performance. This work informs our classes, coaching, workshops, research, and productions.

ACT 3: Performance

ACT 3 is where our ideas meet an audience. Through collaborative theatre-making, we bring our research and training into perfmance practice, creating work that invites audiences into the same conversations that shape our creative process. LADY M, a contemporary psychological portrait of Shakespeare's infamous queen, is the first production to emerge from this work.

Together, these three acts form a continuous cycle: caring for artists, developing practice, and creating theatre.

We hope our work contributes not only to actor training and performance, but to broader conversations about psychology, creativity, and what it means to be human in a twenty-first century context.

This is The Working Action Group.
And we'd love you to be a part of it.

#TheWorkingActionGroup #ACTforActing #CharacterDynamics #LadyM #theatremakers by @theworkingactiongroup

I spent ten years as a professional actor: mainly theatre, quite a bit of Shakespeare. Then another ten teaching at leading UK drama schools, including Drama Centre London, where I trained and later taught for a long time.

Somewhere in that second decade, I became convinced that actor training was in trouble. Not because the ideas at its heart were wrong, but because something had gone wrong in how they were being carried forward. The power of work like Stanislavsky's was being lost through fragmentation and stale repetition. Attempts to respond to real pressures - financial, psychological, cultural, professional - were often rushed, superficial, and poorly executed. Training was starting to look more like a symptom of shallow consumer culture than a serious response to it.

What was needed wasn't simply new techniques. It was a root and branch investigation of the art form itself: what acting is, what it does, what it means and what it requires to interpret humanity for the 21st century.

This conviction led to the birth of The Working Action Group and our ACT for Acting project, which interrogates the processes of acting and actor training from the perspective of contemporary psychology: modernising character analysis, enhancing rehearsal strategies, and helping actors to develop evidence-based psychological skills that can actually support them in their careers and creative practice.

These practical innovations are grounded in research: I publish regularly on acting and psychology and I'm currently co-editing a book on Stanislavsky and psychology for Routledge, alongside developing our company's debut production.

I'm Ben, founder and director of The Working Action Group, and all of this is my attempt to make work that takes the art form of acting, and the people who practise it, seriously.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, you're in the right place.

Follow for more, check out our workshops and coaching offers, and look out for ways to get involved in our projects.

#ActorTraining #ACTforActing #TheWorkingActionGroup #Psychology #DramaSchool by @theworkingactiongroup

FOUR STARS FOR LADY M! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A huge thank you to @theatrewithmilly for taking the time to see the show and share such lovely words about our production! by @theworkingactiongroup

Actors, whether it's audition prep, ongoing development of your craft, or in-depth character work to support your latest project, I can design and deliver bespoke coaching to help you on your journey.

Writers, directors, and makers, I also offer specialist script consultation and dramaturgical support, including work to help you unlock the deep-lying psychology of the drama you want to create.

So, if you're ready to work... let's do it.

Get in touch. by @theworkingactiongroup

FIVE STARS FOR LADY M! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A huge thank you to @rhysreviews for such a generous and thoughtful review of LADY M!
It means so much to have someone engage so deeply with the work, and we were especially touched that Rhys made the journey from Cardiff to London and joined us for one of our workshops, too.

Thank you for being part of our little Lady M journey! 🩸 by @theworkingactiongroup

FOUR STARS FOR LADY M! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We're absolutely thrilled with this wonderful, thoughtful review from @curtainup.club, celebrating Jessica Kinsey's extraordinary performance and the team behind LADY M.

A huge thank you to Curtain Up Club for taking the time to engage so deeply with the work.

The curtain may have fallen on our London run, but we have a feeling Lady M isn't finished with us yet…🩸 by @theworkingactiongroup

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. AGAIN. 🩸

More lovely words from our LADY M audiences. by @theworkingactiongroup

What happens when we look beyond Shakespeare’s most notorious villain and ask what lies beneath her ambition, ruthlessness and desire for power?

Created by @theworkingactiongroup , @ladymplay is the pilot production of Psyched-Up Shakespeare, a project bringing contemporary psychology into dialogue with Shakespeare’s characters. It explores Lady Macbeth’s inner world, revealing the fears, vulnerabilities and contradictions behind the woman we think we know.

@jesskinsey_ commands the stage in this mesmerising one-woman performance, taking us on a 70-minute journey through ambition, manipulation, self-doubt, heartbreak and moments of unexpected humour.

What makes Lady M particularly fascinating is that it preserves almost all of Shakespeare’s original lines for Lady Macbeth, using new writing to explore the thoughts, contradictions and emotions that lie between them. Rather than simply modernising Macbeth, it expands our understanding of the woman Shakespeare created, offering a more complex psychological portrait than the familiar legend allows.

The production’s distinctive vision comes together through @drbenjaminaskew ‘s writing and direction, @racheldefontes ’s creative producing, @carlottadegregori ‘s movement direction and Hannah Kaye’s associate direction, all brought to life through Jessica Kinsey’s compelling performance.

Sometimes, the most interesting way to revisit a familiar character is not to change who she is, but to change how we see her.

Thanks for the kind invite, feeling lucky to witness your work 🍀 @theworkingactiongroup

#ladymachbet #TheWorkingActionGroup #CurtainUpClub #LondonTheatre #TheatreReview by @theworkingactiongroup

What you sayin'?

More audience responses to LADY M at Playhouse East.

If you joined us for the show, we would love to hear your thoughts. Use the link in our bio to fill in our audience feedback form.

Join the conversation! by @theworkingactiongroup

Out, out, brief candle.

We say good night to our run of LADY M at Playhouse East.

I am hugely grateful to everyone who came to see the show, to all the people and venues, both in London and in Yorkshire, who have supported us on this journey, and to every member of Team Lady M: to Rachel De Fontes, our creative producer, without whom the production simply would not have happened, and to Carlotta De Gregori and Hannah Kaye, our movement director and associate director, each of whom made incalculable contributions to what the piece has become.

Most of all, I am grateful to and for the remarkable Jessica Kinsey. We started working together on this project long before there was a team, before there was a production, before we really knew what the project might be. That process of shared exploration has been one of the most creative and rewarding of my theatrical career to date. What Jess has brought to this project, both as a person and an artist, has been nothing short of extraordinary. It has been a privilege to do this work together, and I am so proud of us for getting to where we got to and dumbstruck with admiration for the performance that Jess created.

There is more to be said than can be captured in a caption. So, for now, I'll stick with thank you - with the addition of watch this space.

Because this is the first project we've made as The Working Action Group...

And I, for one, am fascinated
to see what happens next.

Ticket link no longer available.

Photo by Hack Studios.

@ladymplay
@jesskinsey_
@racheldefontes
@carlottadegregori
@meshuginah.hannah.and.ted by @theworkingactiongroup

ONE LAST DANCE WITH LADY M🩸

We're so proud of what Ben, Jess and the rest of our amazing team have created, and we'd love nothing more than to fill the room for their final performance.

So if you've been thinking about coming, today's your day.

Bring a friend. Bring your mum. Bring someone who hasn't thought about Lady Macbeth since GCSE English.

FINAL PERFORMANCE TODAY · 2PM · PLAYHOUSE EAST

Tickets in bio. We'd love to see you there. by @theworkingactiongroup

Don't just take our word for it… 🩸

Our audiences have been sharing their thoughts on LADY M.

ONE FINAL PERFORMANCE TOMORROW!

Sunday 18 October at 2PM
Playhouse East, London

Come see what everyone's talking about.

Tickets in bio! by @theworkingactiongroup