About the Public Studio Project
The Public Studio Project is an independent theatre studio offering pay-what-you-can acting classes and workshops in London. We provide a space for actors and theatre-makers to train, experiment, and develop their craft outside traditional commercial structures.
Decommodifying Practice
Cultural and economic power and resources have become increasingly concentrated over recent decades, with research showing rising market concentration and growing wealth inequality. Independent spaces for rehearsal, experimentation, and training are becoming harder to sustain, even as they remain essential to the ecology of the art form.
The studio works with a pay-what-you-can model within that context — not to only reduce the cost of classes, but to shift the point of engagement with the work. Actor training is often framed as a service to be purchased; here, the attempt is to treat it as a shared artistic practice sustained collectively by the people who take part.
The project is an ongoing experiment exploring the tensions between finance, power, and independent artistic practice.
What Happens in the Studio
Broadly speaking, classes are split into ‘foundation’ and ‘advanced’ groups – this is not about gatekeeping the space but rather to run sessions at an appropriate pace for participants.
Open Practice
Regular sessions where actors can return to the room, train consistently, and develop their craft over time.
Guest Workshops
Occasional sessions led by visiting practitioners working across theatre, performance, and actor training.
Public Sharings
Informal opportunities for actors and theatre-makers to test material in front of an audience and share work in progress.
About the Studio Director
Laurence Baker is an actor, theatre-maker, educator and writer working across theatre and screen. His practice draws on a range of methodologies, including Meisner Technique, documentary theatre and ensemble-based, community-led co-creation. He teaches Acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he trained, and continues to work professionally alongside his teaching.
‘My work centres real perspectives and shared authorship. Through running the Public Studio Project, I’m interested in how community collaboration can meaningfully shape artistic practice, rather than sit alongside it as outreach. Drawing on formal training methods as well as ensemble and devising practices, I want to explore how power, narrative and lived experience intersect in the rehearsal room.’
