ACT International Voice & Performance Intensive 2027 led by Anna-Helena McLean

“McLean’s work as an actor trainer brings powerful transformation to students conducting them into the deepest expressive parts of themselves through intense physicality and play, ceaseless attention to ensemble, vocal release, and impulsive bravery.” 

“Life-changing! Unforgettable! Magical!”
“I cannot think of a greater summer!”

ACT International Voice & Performance Intensive 2027 on voice and performance to be held at Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research, Pondicherry, India from Feb 19 – 26, 2027.

The intensive workshop is based Integrated Voice & Performance Practices which is a toolkit of physiovocality developed by Anna-Helena McLean.

Lead Practitioner: Anna-Helena McLean

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ACT International Voice & Performance Intensive

A week-long residential laboratory exploring acting, physiovocal craft, and psychophysical approaches to scenework with director, musician, and researcher Anna-Helena McLean (ACT International, UK/Italy).

Designed for theatre and music theatre performers, directors, pedagogues, artist-researchers, and acting students, the intensive introduces McLean’s Integrated Physiovocality® Toolkit: a six-stage compositional framework bringing together spinework, breath, voice, song, ensemble practice, embodied consent practices, and text.

The programme draws on post-Stanislavskian laboratory actor training, including practice research deriving from Stanislavskian perezhivanie, Grotowskian verticality, and Gardzienice’s mutuality, while reframing these traditions through contemporary feminist and ethical approaches to difference, access, and relational practice across identities and media.

Participants work through voice, role, and scenework to explore how craft can support presence, listening, intentionality, and fluency within a devising ensemble. Drawing on ancient, classical, and new writing texts, the intensive supports performers to connect self, role, music, and theatrical form in ways that speak to contemporary interdisciplinary practice.

About Anna-Helena McLean

Anna-Helena McLean is a director, coach, composer and actor-musician. She specialises in research into ethical practice tools for contemporary performance practitioners and has extensive experience working in a psychophysical methodological field. Currently completing a Ph. D focusing on her experiences within laboratory ensemble theatre supervised by Andy Lavender (Vice Principal and Provost of Research and Professor of Theatre at Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Tara McCallister-Viel (Head of Voice and Speech and Research Dept Lead at Uni of Essex) and Niamh Dowling (Principal of RADA). In 2010 Anna-Helena set up an International Theatre and Music Exchange called Moon Fool. It was developed to create a single platform through which to host a diversity of collaborative practices taking place between UK, Europe, India and USA. After 4 years developing an original approach to collaborative theatre making by combining core contributions from leaders in Opera, Psychophysicality, Classical Acting, Puppetry and Immersive Theatre, Moon Fool became a host organisation for performances, educational work, music events and multimedia collaboration. This research started out in partnership with Trestle Touring. Overtime ACT INTERNATIONAL, the educational arm of the company’s activity, moved into the foreground and in 2023 ACT became the organisational name for Anna-Helena’s original methodology for acting, voice and performance. ACT highlights the particular relevance of Anna-Helena’s expertise in voice and performance practices, integrating contemporary ethical frameworks with industry concerns, taking a special interest in representation, diversity work and transdisciplinary praxis.

Brought up in a travelling theatre company to a violin maker Father from Copenhagen, Anna found her way to Poland after graduating in Music, Theatre Studies and Drama (Performance) at Royal Holloway Uni of London in 2000. Further to initial collaboration with the renowned Song of the Goat (Piesn Kozla) Theatre in Wroclaw, Anna went on to become the principal in Wlodzimierz Staniewski’s interpretation of Euripides’ ‘Electra’, touring extensively with the Gardzienice Theatre Company and leading its training around the world (Yale, New Haven; MIT, Boston; Columbia Uni, NYC). Anna lived and worked in the rurally Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices situated on the border between Poland and the Ukraine from 2000 to 2007. As a young woman she was a senior voice coach, music director and composer within the legendary ensemble company. During this time she also led the Ancient Greek Orchestra and the Academy for Theatre Practices. These experiences have been formative to Anna’s unique approach to theatre making, coaching, community practice and research. Anna’ originality contributes to core knowledge within the Grotowskian Diaspora Laboratory tradition. Anna brings an embodied love of theatre, literature, music and new materialism toward the political power of theatre. She shapes collective consciousness across diverse settings and unite different worldviews and communities in her ACT practices, research and Transcending Leadership programmes.

About the Space

The Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research is am iconic theatre research and repertory company near Pondicherry, India. The space is artist run and has great facilities for training, stay and a kitchen. For more about the space visit https://adishaktitheatrearts.com

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Feedback from the participants of the previous editions of ACT International Workshop Residency in India

“The site specific alongside the singing and choreographed movements made Shakespeare very digestible”.

“ACT truly aims for living up to the expectations of creating a heightened reality on stage. No drama or production or a story telling medium should overlook such a process even if it is filtered or edited in later stages of productions to nuanced levels. I would suggest every actor to experience this training, especially in India”

“… it has had a profound affect on me both EMOTIONALLY and PHYSICALLY like never before. A life changing experience… The atmosphere never ever put me in a vulnerable position so it felt like I had been doing this for a long time”.

“This workshop has changed the way I look at things. It has taught me to be more open, more expressive and always be full of energy. I came out a completely different person than the one who initially walked-in”.

“There were some very special moments when everything fell into place. I experienced a kind of fullness whilst acting, using my body, using the space, saying my lines and meaning them, listening to my fellow actor, and listening to the music at the same time. It’s given me an insight into composition and arrangement that I’d been seeking for a long time, but never quite managed to find. ACT seamlessly connects the training, text and performance without being abstract. Everything about the workshop was practical, although in hindsight one can be certain of the theoretical backing”.

“The workshop helped me be more in sync with my instincts and just trust it no matter what. The workshop helped me push my limits. The workshop exceeded my expectations. It actually gave me more than what I was looking for”.

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