Peter McAllister

BA, PGDip, MA
Job title
Senior Lecturer, Acting

Profile

I’m an acting teacher and a theatre director. I’m Senior Lecturer on the three-year Acting, BA degree where I teach a range of classes based on the work of Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen and Susan Batson, and a number of projects based on 19th Century Russian Realism, 20th Century American Poetic Realism and 20th Century British Social Realism.

I began my career as assistant director to the British theatre and film director, Lindsay Anderson. In 1983 I was awarded a British Council / Polish Government scholarship to study directing in Poland where I was attached to Andrzej Wajda’s celebrated production of Antygona. On my return to the UK I directed the British premiere of Sławomir Mrożek’s A Summer’s Day.

I taught acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow where I was a Lecturer in Acting and Direction. While in Scotland I became a founder member of the Scottish classical touring company, Theatre Babel, for whom I directed six productions Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Julius CaesarA Doll’s HouseMacbeth and King Lear.

I was Course Coordinator of the BA in Acting Studies at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College, Dublin, where I ran the first acting degree course in Ireland. While in Dublin I taught masterclasses at the International Theatre Festival, and worked as a voice coach at the Abbey Theatre on their productions of Asylum! Asylum!The Doctor’s Dilemma and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme.

Since May 2000 I have taught acting at Central and directed the following public productions: Vassa Zheleznova by Maxim Gorky, Stars in the Morning Sky by Alexander Galin, Barbarians by Maxim Gorky, Absolute Hell by Rodney Ackland, and Music Lessons by Ludmila Petrushevskaya.

My main research interests are in the work of Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Richard Boleslavsky and their American successors. I trained in the Method with Professor Edward Greer of Syracuse University, and participated in the teacher training programme of the Michael Chekhov Studio led by his original students from Dartington.

I coach actors professionally for theatre and film, and I am on the advisory board of ‘Stanislavsky in the 21st Century’ led by Professor Sharon Marie Carnicke, author of the groundbreaking Stanislavsky in Focus. I am one of only two qualified instructors in the Perdekamp Emotional Method (PEM) in the UK.

Areas of Expertise

  • Acting Classes
  • Scene Study
  • Characterisation
  • Directing Projects / Productions
  • PhD Supervision
  • Acting Methodologies
  • Acting and Actor Training

PhD Supervision

To date, I have supervised one PhD thesis to completion:

Reeves, Rebecca (2020). Character ‘under erasure’: a Stanislavskian approach to post-dramatic theatre-making.

Key Publications

2018. ‘Lee Strasberg’s Method’, Stanislavski Studies, 6.1, 105-110. ISSN 2056-7790

External Practice

2007: Stars in the Morning Sky by Alexander Galin, Jagged Fence Productions - Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London

2004: A Doll’s House by Ibsen, Theatre Babel - Perth Theatre; Nuffield Theatre, Southampton; National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center, Taipei, Taiwan; Citizens Theatre, Glasgow; Oxford Playhouse

1999: King Lear by Shakespeare, Theatre Babel - Dundee Rep and UK Tour

1997: Macbeth by Shakespeare, Theatre Babel - Tron Theatre, Glasgow, and UK Tour

1997: A Doll’s House by Ibsen, Theatre Babel - Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and UK Tour

1996: Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, Theatre Babel - Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and UK Tour

1995: Hamlet by Shakespeare, Theatre Babel - Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and UK Tour

1994: Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, Theatre Babel - Tron Theatre, Glasgow, and Tour

1985: A Summer’s Day by Sławomir Mrożek, POSK - Polish Theatre, Hammersmith, London

Register of Interest

Nothing to declare.