Denis Defreyne

Weeknotes 2026 W40: Teaching?

September 28​–​October 4, 2026
 

Quick bits

  • MacOS Golden Gate, which I upgraded to last week, is buggy. My primary annoyance is that the focus occasionally gets taken, with no rhyme or reason, by another window. It sure is annoying to be suddenly typing in a different window.

  • On the tube, a kid pointed at me and asked his mum “what is that?” How rude!

  • London problems: not getting sleep because there is a fox screaming at the bedroom window in the dead of the night.

  • I still lack a cozy reading corner in my home, and this is one of the reasons why I struggle to get much reading done. Boo.

This week’s projects

Teaching… acting?

Last week and the week before that, I attempted to talk about tacit knowledge but really ended up talking about the transfer of knowledge and skill. This, through teaching and coaching, is something I am passionate about, and I’d like to do more of.

I’ve helped people with mathematics,2 physics, and of course software engineering — the latter being a topic that I have decades of experience in. I’d still enjoy helping people today to improve their skills in any of these topics.

But lately, I’ve been wondering: can I teach acting?

This might sound absurd, given that I’m very much in training myself — but I think this could work, for a few reasons:

  • I have my values straight. I know what I value in a good performance, and when I see a performance that is lacking, I have a decent idea of what’s causing it and what is missing.

  • I’ve got teaching skills. Despite having no formal educational training, I’ve successfully taught and coached people. This is a skill in and of itself, and I am keen to continue developing it.

  • I know what it is to be a beginner. I know what I need, or would have needed, to improve my skills. There have been classes and courses where I didn’t get that.

I will talk about that vision in a bit, but first: what would I and potential students get out of it?

  • What would my students get out of it? Become better at producing believable, grounded performances — realistic acting, not formalistic acting.

  • More importantly: what would I get out of it? Teaching and coaching is a rewarding challenge in itself. I keep being drawn to it! On top of that, I bet that I would learn a lot about acting by being in the position of a teacher or a coach.

As for the pedagogical approach, I see it centred on two pillars:

  • Embrace the work. Many acting classes cater to people who do acting as a hobby, and those classes as a result are aimed, first and foremost, at being fun. I’m certainly not opposed to fun, but that focus can be detrimental. It yields feedback like “great work,” which is meaningless when that’s the feedback everyone gets, no matter their efforts.

    I prefer to receive genuine and honest feedback. The reward comes from inside of you, rather than from external validation. A reward that you had to truly work for is so much more satisfying and valuable than when it is freely given.3

  • Take small steps. Many of the classes that I’ve taken rush towards putting full scenes on a stage, sometimes even in the first class. I would take a different approach where I’d work on individual aspects first, and only put the pieces together once they are sufficiently covered. That approach would yield feedback that is specific, which I much prefer over vague and general feedback on an entire scene.

That mimics the approach of some of the best teachers I’ve had.

I am fully aware that it would be genuinely challenging to pull this off. The payoff, however, would make it worth it.

Realistically, I wouldn’t pick this up properly until next year. My intensive acting course is starting in two days, and I’ll be pressed for time. If I do put something together, it’ll be a one-off instance. In any case, there’s no rush; I’ve got plenty of time to mull this over.

If this sounds at all interesting to you and you’re London-based, shoot me a brief message.

Entertainment

  • The Assistant4 is subtly claustrophobic and gross. And engrossing.

Tech links:

  1. Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting: Expanded Version (John Wiley & Sons, 2023). ↩︎

  2. I once helped a friend out with discrete mathematics, who then got a higher score than me on the same exam! How unfair. ↩︎

  3. For the same reason, some of my former teachers had the policy of not applauding after a good exercise. Applause inherently becomes the target; doing a scene in such a way to get the best applause misses the point. ↩︎

  4. The Assistant, written and directed by Kitty Green (3311 Productions, Bellmer Pictures, Cinereach, 2020). ↩︎

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