Ashley Wain
Course Coordinator
Ashley Wain
Bio
Ashley Wain has worked in the theatre as an actor, director and teacher since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, where he trained with David Latham, June Jago and other influential teachers. He has appeared in significant roles for the Hole in the Wall Theatre, The Effie Crump Theatre, the Perth International Festival of the Arts and the Blue Room. Most recently, he performed in Dear Sisters, Sweet Sisters: a fantasia on Chekhov, directed by Leonid Verzub, with whom he has also trained intensively in Active Analysis, the Russian acting tradition which incorporates the work of Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Maria Knebel and others.
Recent directing credits include Palaces in Ruin, devised with his own company, Agamemnon for the University of Ballarat and The Cherry Orchard and Orpheus Descending at Charles Sturt University , where he is currently Lecturer in Acting.
Ashley has taught at the Victorian College of the Arts, St Martin ’s Youth Theatre, The National Theatre Drama School, the Broken Limb Theatre Company and the University of Ballarat , and in public workshops. His teaching encompasses movement, neutral and character mask, the Stanislavski ‘system’ and Michael Chekhov technique, and Active Analysis as an approach to text and rehearsal.
Research interests include the archetypal, essential and spiritual dimensions of modern acting, states of consciousness in performance, transpersonal psychology, participatory epistemology and hermeneutic research in the performing arts. He completed his PhD thesis, Acting and Essence: experiencing essence, presence and archetype in the acting traditions of Stanislavski and Copeau, through the University of Western Sydney .
He studied transpersonal psychology with Stanislav Grof, and is a trained facilitator of Holotropic Breathwork™ and an ongoing student of the Diamond Approach. His writings have appeared in the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, The Inner Door and Radical Spirit, an anthology of essays by young transpersonal writers. He is currently involved in ongoing training in psychology and inner work in the United States .
"Theatrical art creates the life of the human soul. We are called upon to interpret on the stage the life of contemporary humanity and its ideas. But we must not imitate our spectator, no, we must lead him up the rungs of a great ladder."
~ Stanislavski, 1928
