The Donald Woodburn Acting Masterclass 

Great acting is closer to you than you realise and easier than you think. Over the 2 days, you’ll be invited to destroy pedestals and ivory towers in order to recon with the False Gods of Acting that hold you and your work at bay. It’s time to resist defaulting to the belief that acting is complex, challenging or difficult, to embrace a significantly more accessible approach and to recognise that you have automatic access to the full breadth of humanity.

Donald Woodburn is an accomplished coach with over 25 years of teaching experience and he is known for his sharp diagnostic ability, provocative content and dynamic practice. He currently teaches across all three of The Hub Studio’s long form programs and at the Actors Centre Australia. He works with Feet First Collective, an independent Perth based production company, runs Woodburn Voice out of Sydney and is a Director at BrandU Media, a boutique international training company. He is currently writing a book on his work.

Donald majored in Acting at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and early in his career worked as a performer in theatre, TV and film. In 1996 he completed the Graduate Diploma in Voice Studies at NIDA and immediately went on to become Head of Voice at the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA). In 2010 he was employed by the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) where he worked across Acting, Aboriginal Performance, Music Theatre, Opera, Broadcasting and occasionally even Dance. In 2013 he secured residency in Australia as a Distinguished Talent in his field and was later appointed as the Coordinator of Voice at WAAPA. He has also worked with an array of state, national and international broadcasters across several continents. 

Donald’s coaching career, which has seen him train a cross section of performers from vastly different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, emerged from a blend of cultural experiences growing up in rural KwaZulu-Natal and his extensive involvement with professionals operating in demanding environments. He noted how heightened situations, such as wars and natural disasters produce profound immediacy by stripping people of the need for social filters, and that confident outspoken cultures are generally less bound by the social rules that hamstring many actors today. He is obsessed with how the environment and culture impact on the the bodymind relationship, and is driven to help performers strip away ‘the rules’ that inhibit their acting.