Karen's feeding her passion

Karen Ellett is living her dream at The Actors Program. PICTURE / PAUL BROOKS

Karen Ellett was home recently, and eager to talk about her first term at Auckland's premier drama school, The Actors Program.
"It's a million times better than what I thought it would be," she says, trying hard not to exaggerate, "For everybody on the course. Everyone has said that it has exceeded expectations, and then some, and then some ...
"We have a one or two week block with a visiting professional artist, depending on what we are looking at within that block. It's like doing a four or five-day intense workshop, but we get to do this every single week, so the amount of intense learning, growth, stretching, unfolding that we get to do is a privilege."
For the first two weeks they were taught by Sarah Wiseman who currently acts in the Australian drama, A Place to Call Home, alongside her husband, Craig Hall.
"We did a lot of inner ripping apart, getting to the truth of a lot of emotions. It was the most freeing and uplifting thing to do," says Karen. "It was scary but they set up a lot of safety nets for us to be able to go quite deep."
She says they have an enormous amount of trust within the group, enabling them to take emotional risks in a safe environment. There are 16 in the class; 10 female, six male.
In Sarah's class they learned techniques to play different scenes they were given to learn.
"It was incredible to learn we had these things inside us."
John Callen (The Hobbit trilogy among acting other acting credits) took the class for on-screen work.
"They really do balance the programme. It's not all heavy."
"As a contrasting example, we did a week with Deb Filler. On the first day, after doing other classes, we all took some time to tell a story we wanted to tell, so some were deeply traumatic and some, like mine, were quite light and funny. Over that week we workshopped on how to do our own solo performance. On the Thursday we performed it for an audience."
Karen says it has been 11 weeks of growth.
"I love every single second of it. My passion gets fed and grows and grows every day."
The entire programme is performance and practical with no written work to be graded or examined. And Karen loves Auckland.
"I love the diversity, the busyness, I love people watching. It was the right move. It's right for me at the moment.
"I've worked at the pop-up Globe, that was incredible - I was assistant stage manager for The Tempest. I also did assistant stage managing for Nixon in China, the New Zealand opera for the Arts Festival in the Grand Hall, which was mind-blowing in itself."
Sara Brodie was directing it and Karen had worked with her in Whanganui on Peter Pan.
"It was really nice to re-meet her and see how she works as director with such a huge beast, working with the Philharmonic Orchestra, professional opera singers, extras."
Karen studies from Monday to Thursday then works from Friday to Sunday.
She also volunteers at Basement Theatre, where the graduate show will be staged, and works in a glass blowing studio - an environment with which she is familiar.
"There's a nice little Whanganui contingent up there and I've made a lot of new friends on the course and outside of class work."
And next year?
"Wherever the wind takes me. I know something will come up and I'll be working in the industry."