Benjamin Archer
BA (Hons), MA, MPhil

For six years Benjamin was head of acting at The Performing Arts Depot, a specialist performing arts college in Bedfordshire.

He spent two years as an associate lecturer in acting and performance at Buckinghamshire New University, teaching on their BA Acting and BA Performing Arts programmes.

Since 2021 Benjamin has lectured at The University of East London on their postgraduate programmes: MA and MFA Acting, MA and MFA Directing and MA Acting for Stage and Screen. He continues to work for The University of East London alongside his position at Solent University.

Benjamin is currently in the write-up year of his PhD at the University of East London His research focuses on creating a new and more assessable actor training methodology for performing Shakespeare, drawing on Stanislavski’s ‘system’, Elizabethan acting practices and First Folio Technique.

Current approaches tend to position the text and its analysis in verbal reasoning and the initial point of departure for the actor, leading to character much later in the process. This often privileges actors and actors in training from academic backgrounds and disadvantages those from more performative backgrounds.

Benjamin’s research focus on a character driven approach will leads to an understanding of the text and the requirements of the verse drama and heightened rhetoric prose through practice rather than verbal reasoning.