An Interview with Mairi Hayes and Jake Harders
Mairi Hayes and Jake Harders are Central alumni and the Co-Course Leaders for the School’s Online Acting Diploma.
Having graduated from Central’s BA Acting course in 2008, Mairi Hayes is now the School’s Community Drama and Diploma Manager with responsibility for overseeing the entirety of Central’s Short Course provision. Jake Harders graduated from the BA Acting course in 2003 and, alongside his Co-Course leadership of the Online Acting Diploma with Mairi, he is also a Visiting Lecturer across several of Central’s Short Courses.
We sit down with Mairi and Jake to discuss their work with Central, and with the Online Acting Diploma in particular.
Q. How long have you been at Central?
Mairi: I started as a BA student at Central and graduated in 2008. I then worked as a freelance actor and performance maker. I always kept in touch and would come back to do visiting teaching work. I returned to Central full time to lead the Diploma and Short Courses.
Jake: I studied BA Acting and graduated in 2003 and have worked as a professional actor ever since. I’ve been back to Central regularly as a Visiting Lecturer on various courses. I have become particularly involved with short course provision in the last 5 years.
Q. What does your work on the Diploma involve?
Mairi: I work with the students to explore acting and performance making. Practically that means facilitating acting classes, directing plays and short films. I plan the course, responding to the changing industry and the students we have that year. I work closely with other subject specialists, like voice and movement teachers, to design and adjust the course and support the students throughout.
Jake: I work with students to help them discover how they can best release and channel their creativity. With previous diplomas I have focused on areas such as emotional induction, experiencing life in the body, the work on physical actions by practitioners Konstantin Stanislavski and Jerzy Grotowski, plus specialist areas such as acting Shakespeare and acting on screen. My aim is for each student to develop their own meaningful, personal process out of the various techniques they encounter on a course.
Q. What makes the Online Acting Diploma course unique?
Mairi: The way the course is structured means we have core fundamentals but there is room for us to be flexible. We can be responsive to what is going on in the world and who we have on the course, around those fundamentals. We want to be able to use every and any tool available to explore acting and performance making. I didn’t realise a year ago that we would have the ability to connect people in this way. It’s exciting to use the online tools that we have in a new way, underpinned by actor training tools that we have been exploring and developing for years.
As it’s a part time course, students often do it alongside other work, as a starting point, a way into training. Students tend to have really varied backgrounds, experience and reasons for doing the course. I am excited by difference of thoughts and experience. Everyone is connected by a love and passion for acting and a real want to explore what that means to them.
Jake: It’s very exciting to work with a very diverse group of actors from different backgrounds who bring their accumulated knowledge and lived experience into the virtual space. The online nature of the course means that we can make connections across countries that would be nigh on impossible in the old world of face to face teaching. Because lessons are recorded, students have a unique opportunity to watch their work develop over time.
Q. What’s your favourite part of teaching at Central?
Mairi: Working with the students - I love working with people to explore acting and performance making! Every time I work with a new group I learn so much. And directing actors on anything – films or plays – makes me feel alive!
Jake: It’s very rewarding to help an actor find new or deeper ways to express their creativity, to discover and dissolve blocks which were preventing that expression, and to be involved in collaboratively creating art. For Stanislavski and Grotowski, art and life were interchangeable terms, so being involved with actors making art is a way of staying very alive!
Q. What piece of advice would you offer to someone thinking of applying?
Mairi: We are really interested in you. Who you are, how you connect to a text and character and why you want to explore acting. Pick a piece that you are connected to and exited by. Also to think about why you want to do the course, what it will mean practically and what you would want to get out of it.
Jake: If you have something within you that you want to express, the diploma is a safe and nurturing environment to find out what your artistic self is like. Find a piece that has meaning for you, that inspires you to move and speak, that will change you in some way to perform it - and apply with it!
Find out more about Central’s Online Acting Diploma
Central’s Online Acting Diploma is practical, part-time and delivered online. Students develop their skills as actors with classes on acting fundamentals, text analysis, voice, movement, devising, voiceover and acting for screen. Created in response to the rapid changes in the industry, the Diploma course is delivered by theatre industry professionals and those who work within the drama school sector.
The course is designed to give students the greatest level of involvement and participation possible, whether they are able to travel to London or choose to Zoom from the other side of the world. And after honing the necessary skills online, the course culminates (Covid-dependent) in an intensive on-site training project in the Summer of 2021. Students will spend nearly two weeks on the Central campus filming and crewing a series of short films, gaining invaluable experience both in front of and behind the camera and creating work alongside their fellow students.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the course, including how to make your application before midnight on Sunday 3rd January for a 2021 start, please visit the dedicated course page. You can also visit the Audition Guidance pages for guidance on making your application including information on how to record and submit your audition self-tape.
