The performance DNA that the 2nd year played at the end of 2019 was bought by Ishøj Teater and the team got their professional debut
Copenhagen Acting school
Visions & history
Since 2001, Copenhagen Acting School has trained more than 100 professional actors for the Danish and international theater, film and TV industry, several of whom have won awards for their performances .
Our vision is to educate Denmark's most present and authentic actors for film, TV and theater. Artists with format who can reflect characters and reality through acted reality.
At Copenhagen Acting School, we are artists who educate artists.
A strong actor network
Here you see a selection of teachers and former students at Copenhagen Acting School.
We have collaborations with several casting agencies and prominent production companies who find their new talents with us. Our students and teachers have a strong sense of community and bring a very special energy.
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The story of Copenhagen Acting School
Read on as actor, screenwriter and founder of the school Carsten Kressner tells
The story from New York to Ophelia Acting School and Copenhagen Acting School
By Rector Carsten Kressner
One Thursday morning in the summer of 1994, I attended a course with the American acting coach Carol Rosenfeld. Two colleagues were working on a scene from 'Mourning Dresses Electra' by Eugene O'Neill.
Until then, the course hadn't produced anything exceptional, but this morning the stage suddenly opened up. The two women playing Lavinia (Elektra) and her mother merged with the text and the situation. Suddenly, it wasn't acting that was happening, but life unfolding. Natural, unaffected, as if a peephole had been established to where life occurs and is lived without any interference from spectators, actors or directors.
This experience was seminal and led to a quest to explore and realize this vision.
Is it possible to create plays on Danish soil that possess this quality, I wondered?
This led to study trips to New York to investigate Meisner technique, method acting and many of the other methods that have been developed in American acting training over the last hundred years.
And these discoveries have been processed, applied, reused and adapted to the Danish reality.
A natural step at that time was to establish a school that concentrated on this task. Thus, the Ophelia Acting School and later the Copenhagen Acting School was born.
Since 2001, the Ophelia Acting School, which began as a training center with preparatory work for aspiring actors, has evolved into an actual 3-year education that delivers fully professional people to the Danish film, TV and theater industry.
Along the way, I've seen many examples of how it's possible to make this vision a reality. First in glimpses here and there, over and over again. And later in longer passages and, in rare cases, entire performances.
But we still need to move on. Towards more eminent actors who can live an artless life on stage and in front of the camera. A life that can hopefully bring audiences back to the theaters and experience the unique encounter with live actors and a true life under imaginary circumstances that they can mirror themselves in.
And now it's time for the next step: In the spring of 2022, Copenhagen Acting School is born, with the vision of educating world-class actors and performing artists.
Contact Rector Carsten Kressner