Drama School, But With Swords
There are not many university degrees where hitting someone over the head with a breakaway bottle can technically count as studying. Mine is one of them. I study Acting and Fight Performance at East 15 Acting School, combining professional actor training with stage combat and physical performance. For me, it was almost suspiciously perfect. I came from martial arts and dance, but acting was what I ultimately wanted to pursue. When I discovered a course where I could train seriously as an actor without giving up the physical side of performance, I knew I had found something special.
Drama school is a full-time job
Before East 15, I had already experienced a more traditional university education. Drama school is very different. Most days start around 9am and do not officially finish until nearly 6pm, with rehearsals often stretching well into the evening. There are scenes to prepare, fights to practise, songs to learn, accents to train and texts to analyse. It is also physically demanding. Depending on the term, a significant part of the week can involve combat, movement and other physical work. It can be exhausting, but I love the intensity. I did not come here because I wanted acting to be something I occasionally studied between lectures. I wanted to train.
It is much more than fighting
The first thing people usually ask about my course is the combat. And yes, there is plenty of it. We train in armed and unarmed stage combat and explore everything from smaller moments of physical conflict to full choreographed fight scenes. But the important part is that the fighting never replaces the acting. Alongside combat, I train in voice, movement, singing, accents, scene study and classical text. I have worked on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, devised original performances and explored areas of theatre I knew very little about before starting. That balance is what makes the course special to me. A fight should never only look impressive. It still has to tell the story.
Learning by watching each other
One thing I particularly enjoy about East 15 is being able to see so much of the work happening around me. Practical assessments can often be watched by other students, and later productions are performed publicly. That means you are not always performing only for an examiner. You have an audience that reacts. I also watch work from courses completely different from mine. Physical theatre, puppetry, devised performance and other forms of storytelling all exist alongside actor training. It makes you realise how broad the performance industry actually is.
Discovering where acting can take you
Before drama school, I had a much narrower idea of what an acting career might look like. During my training, I have been exposed to areas such as immersive theatre, motion capture, devised performance and professional fight work. We also work with tutors, directors and practitioners who are active in the industry. One particularly memorable experience was seeing one of my own Shakespeare tutors performing professionally at Shakespeare's Globe. There is something motivating about watching someone onstage and then returning to class knowing they are the person teaching you. Drama school cannot teach you everything you will ever need. But it can show you how many directions there are to explore.
Finding my kind of people
Perhaps the thing I underestimated most was how good it would feel to be surrounded by people who care about the same strange things I do. People who voluntarily spend their evenings rehearsing a sword fight. People who get excited about Shakespeare. People who will happily discuss why a movement worked, why a line did not or how to make fictional violence look truthful without actually hurting anyone. It is wonderfully nerdy. And I love it. You also become close quickly because actor training requires trust. You see each other exhausted, nervous and frustrated. You watch each other fail, improve and try again. Being one of the few international students in my class has added another dimension to that experience. English is not my first language, so sometimes I need to ask about an expression, a cultural reference or an accent. My classmates have been incredibly supportive, and those moments often become part of the fun.
Starting later worked for me
I came to East 15 in my mid-twenties, after already completing a different degree and taking a less direct route into acting. Rather than feeling like I had arrived late, I found that I was bringing something useful with me: a clearer sense of what I wanted, more confidence in my own choices and a stronger appreciation of the opportunity to train. There is no one ideal route into drama school. Some people arrive straight from school, others take a few detours first. For me, those detours turned out to be part of the journey rather than time lost.
This is why I chose it
I spent my first two years studying in Southend-on-Sea and will complete my final year in Colchester, but I realised quite early that the location itself was never what mattered most to me. What mattered was finally getting the chance to train in something I had wanted to pursue for a very long time. There are exhausting days at drama school. There are days when a fight refuses to work, an accent disappears the moment a teacher starts listening or a line you knew perfectly suddenly vanishes from your head. But then a scene clicks. A fight finally works. Or you are standing backstage with people who have become your friends, about to perform something you created together. That is when I remember why I chose this path. I wanted a place where acting, movement and the physical side of storytelling could belong together. At East 15, they do.
- Octavia
