Jelly Paperback - 2011

Brian Astbury founded and ran South Africa's first non-racial theatre/arts venue, The Space, in the 70's, where he commissioned internationally famous plays like Sizwe Banzi is dead, The Island and Statements after an arrest under the Immorality Act by playwrights such as Athol Fugard, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Geraldine Aron and Fatima Dike, South Africa's first black woman playwright. Many of the 'graduates' of The Space have gone on to become mainstays of the post-Apartheid South African theatre, TV and film scene. At The Space he began his career as a director. In the 80's he moved to London when his wife, South Africa's greatest actress Yvonne Bryceland, joined the National Theatre Company. Here he began to teach - first at LAMDA, then, in the 90's at Mountview, where he was Head of Acting, Directing and Musical Theatre Courses. At E15 he set up the Contemporary Theatre Practice course to teach actors, directors and writers the arts of survival through production of their own material. Later he headed the MA in Professional Theatre for Writers and Directors, before retiring in 2008. Over the years Astbury formulated the techniques for training actors, writers and directors described in his book, Trusting the Actor. He developed methods of accessing and freeing the imagination of actors and writers through the use of mind-mapping and image-streaming. He has also written a book on The Space, a play - Things Past, produced in London, Edinburgh and Hong Kong; and collaborated on an adaptation of Chekhov's Platonov with his students.