Sylvia Schwarz

As the Programme Lead for Screen Acting, Sylvia is the overarching contact person for all Screen Acting[SA] students and tutors. She also applies her knowledge to improve and refine the SA course and opens up the course to different formats.

Before Catalyst, Sylvia worked as an actress for almost 30 years, covering the three disciplines of theatre, film and TV. Sylvia began her acting career at Thalia Theatre in Hamburg and has also worked with directors on stages like BAM in New York, Odeon in Paris and National Theatre in Seoul. She has performed in numerous German cinema productions.

Sylvia has taken a continued interest in training in a variety of acting techniques and undertaken intense teaching education in the Meisner Technique. She has given workshops in using this technique at workshops around the world and taught the acting method at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg since 2014. She wanted to work with Catalyst because she loves working with an international diverse team of open minded, creative people and relishes the opportunity to guide and support young people during these exciting years of their education.

When asked what her favourite piece of film is, she found it to be a very difficult question. “I fell in love with cinema as a teenager with Truffaut, the early Almodovar films, David Lynch and Cassavetes. I find it unfair to pick one film!“ However, Sylvia recommends Iranian and Japanese films, Kiorastamis’s 'Close Up' or the films of Hirokazu Koreeda, for example. “There is a humanity in their films and in the acting that touches me deeply”