About Us - JBAT Theatre Studio

About THE STUDIO

This is a new actors’ studio initiated by Annie Tyson and John Beschizza, both former acting teachers at Drama Centre London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. They have also taught in many other institutions including academies in the USA and Europe.

Annie and John have been close collaborators for three decades and continue to interrogate and develop their practice in a fast-evolving industry.

an inclusive community for professionals

JBAT Theatre studio is not a drama school and it does not seek to offer a foundational acting training for beginners. Instead, it is a place where trained professional actors* can explore a variety of acting techniques and material about which they are passionate; where they can renew, nurture, sustain and develop their process, and continue an ongoing relationship with their art and craft.

All our classes are inclusive and open to professional actors aged 18 or over regardless of disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender. We will afford all participants respect.

Our practice, together and individually, is rooted in an idea of both craft and the actor as transformative, as an artist who can empathise and imagine walking in the shoes of another. We hope that the Studio will be appealing as a place to work in depth and detail.

We believe that actors should have sufficient time to test their work in depth and so numbers will be necessarily limited. Applications to join the sessions are via this website and there is a link for payment.

* This means actors who have undergone at some point a professional training in the craft of acting either at an accredited drama school, university, or as part of a private professional training in techniques such as Meisner or Michael Chekhov.

About the Directors

MEET THE TEAM

ANNIE TYSON

Director

Annie read Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University. On graduating she then trained at Drama Centre London and worked as an actor in regional theatre, in London and in TV and radio. Recent acting work has included work at the Octagon Theatre Bolton in Arthur Miller’s The Last Yankee, the White Bear Theatre in An Honourable Man and the Park Theatre in Hell Yes, I’m Tough Enough. She was also an actor in the digital project Adult Children produced by the Donmar in 2021. Recent audio work has included the podcast The Murder Monologues.

At Drama Centre London she was Course Director of the BA Honours Acting Course 2002-2010. Her public productions there included All’s Well That Ends Well, Wild Oats, Mary Stuart, A Laughing Matter, Love’s Labours Lost, Richard III, The Winter’s Tale, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, A Cure For A Cuckold and Mother Courage.

From 2012 – 2022 she worked at RADA as an acting tutor and director. She directed Love For Love in the Vanbrugh theatre in 2013 and Strange Orchestra by Rodney Ackland in 2017. She directed Macbeth February 2020. Annie remains involved with RADA as a freelance director.

She was part of the core team for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s project Open Stages, running acting workshops for Dream 16 – A Play For the Nation. She has given masterclasses in Restoration Comedy at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama where she directed The Rivals in 2012. She has contributed to the book Approaches to Actor Training and her book Successful Auditions, the Complete Guide was published by the Crowood Press in April 2022. Annie is now writing for the new Arden Shakespeare Practical Guide series, Shakespeare and Stanislavsky, published by Bloomsbury Methuen. She regularly gives both classical and contemporary audition workshops for the Mono Box of which she is a Patron and is an Open Door mentor.

JOHN BESCHIZZA

Director

John trained as an actor at Drama Centre London under co-founders Christopher Fettes, Yat Malmgren and the legendary first Head of Acting, Doreen Cannon. These three extraordinary teachers were innovative and rigorous in their approach to actor training in the UK in the second half of the 20th century and through them an inspiring vision of What Theatre Could Be was communicated daily.

The challenges offered at the Drama Centre were immense but the rewards were positively life changing. It was here in the Acting Classes that some of the greatest discoveries were made under the watchful eye and expert guidance of Doreen who later, as Head of Acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, offered John the opportunity in 1994 to teach acting at the Academy where he taught until leaving in 2022.

The techniques I provide are simple, clear and specific evoking a gut, heart and head understanding of the acting process.

I work to achieve one goal: to help the actor transmute their raw, instinctive talent into dependable skill.

I maintain a standard of excellence in my work that is evident through the specificity and rigour in my teaching that over thirty years has developed into a highly practical way of working that serves the ever changing requirements and challenges that actors must face in the profession and industry of today.